To illustrate: There are portions of Plato's Phaedo that give clearer and more forceful expression to the great yearnings of the soul for immortality than do any chapters of the Bible outside of the utterances of Christ himself. There are great men, past and present, in what we call secular history, whose lives reveal more of the spiritual content of the world than do the lives of some of the characters of the Bible. I should rather have my children get their ideals as to what a human life should be from men like John Howard and Abraham Lincoln, than from men like David and Solomon. There are facts in the literature of the biological sciences, like physiology and neurology, that may do more to stir the earnest, intelligent mind, and direct it towards spiritual salvation, than do many of the texts commonly taken from Biblical literature. I see no reason why such material should not find a place in the curricula of religious education. Personally, I have had my own religious nature more profoundly stirred by work in a neurological laboratory than by any series of Bible studies or sermons I have ever attended. This, too, is said in no disparagement of the latter.

Moreover, Biblical material itself should be selected and arranged with strict reference to the economies of emotional and intellectual energy. This is not generally the case at present. The selection according to standards outside of the learner's own life has ignored the fundamental principles already mentioned interest and self-activity. The results are apparent. The minds of pupils have not assimilated the Bible, and neither its facts nor its spirit have been thoroughly incorporated into their lives. There are two tests of what a mind gets out of a subject of study. First, and most important, how much does it love it? And, second, how much does it know about it? Apply these tests to the young men and young women who have come up through our Sunday schools. Do these young people love to read and study the Bible in their leisure hours? And do these young people have an accurate, unified knowledge of the Bible? If we may rely upon the testimony of well-qualified observers, both within and without the Church, the answer must, in both cases, be in the negative.

An important cause of the failure to realize the object of religious instruction has been the altogether well-intentioned but irrational use of the Bible as a text-book. The Bible is not properly a text-book of instruction, historically or pedagogically considered. The canon of the Scriptures was not established, nor the compilation of diverse writings made, for pedagogical purposes. It is more nearly an encyclopedia of history, philosophy, literature, and religion, dealing more especially with the life of the Hebrew people. It is not a pedagogically unified book,

but a collection of books. Imagine such a collection of books, made up of the works of Hesiod, Homer, Herodotus, Xenophon, Æschylus, and other Greek writers, being used in our public schools as a text-book in Greek history, literature, or religion. The Bible is what would be called in secular education a collection of documentary material, a sourcebook as it were, to be used for reference. This is not to detract in the smallest degree from the importance of the Bible. It is merely to assert that it is not a pedagogical text-book.

If, then, we regard the Bible as a religious, historical, and literary encyclopedia, and not as a text-book, how should its material be used? Manifestly, as source-material is used in secular education. Let us apply this conception, for instance, to instruction in Bible history. Here we should have a series of historical text-books, presenting the material of Hebrew history in a comprehensive and unified form, drawing not only from the Bible but from every other source, historical, ethnological, archeological and other, and being carefully adapted to the grades of pupils for which they were intended. Each of these books would include references to the Bible and give directions for special readings in the Bible so as to make the pupils familiar with it from an historical point of view. To pursue this idea further, there might be written a beginners' book, treating Bible history in a comprehensive and attractive way, somewhat like Dickens' "Child's History of England," and suited to boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years of age. This could be followed by several books dealing with separate periods in a more thorough way, and providing opportunities for supplementary reading in the Bible and elsewhere.

A similar plan might be pursued with regard to the literature of the Bible. A text-book could be written on the literary masterpieces of the Hebrews, and with this as a guide, special studies could be made of the Psalms, Proverbs, etc. There might even be provided a text-book on the religion of the Bible, presenting the great religious conceptions it contains from the point of view of modern knowledge and showing their development in Christianity. What a splendid opportunity such a book would afford for using the material of comparative religion that is so richly accumulating! What a splendid opportunity, too, through such a book, to lead a class of adolescents into an intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of religion

A considerable number of books, based upon this principle of selecting Bible-material, are already in existence. But we need a carefully prepared series of text-books that shall cover the whole field of religious education, written from a strictly educational point of view and de

signed to give our children an accurate knowledge of the sources of our religion, its development in the hearts and lives of men, and its supreme economy in our own lives. If it be said that such a series of text-books would tend to divert the attention of pupils from the Bible itself, my reply is, that it could not possibly create a greater chasm between the learner and the Bible than already exists through the use of the various chaotic lesson-helps. The influence of the latter in cheapening the material of the Bible for the minds of children, in rendering such material fragmentary and uninteresting, and so in taking the Bible, as a book, out of children's lives, can never be estimated. On the contrary, such a series of text-books would inspire a new interest in the Bible, by giving its contents in an attractive, consecutive, and intelligible form, while at the same time providing a chart and compass with which the pupil might be helped to study the Bible for himself. It certainly does not destroy a pupil's interest in the masterpieces of secular history, literature, or science, or his reverence for them, to approach their study through scholarly and interesting manuals. There is no reason to believe that such a result would occur in the case of the Bible.

ADAPTATION OF IDEAL CURRICULUM AND METHODS

TO LOCAL CONDITIONS

HERBERT WRIGHT GATES

SECRETARY OF CENTRAL DEPARTMENT Y. M. C. A., CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

One of the most encouraging things about the present Sunday-school situation is the existence and evident influence of a new ideal. On every hand there is an unrest, which may be called a divine discontent. Old standards and methods are being judged in the light of inadequate results and we are looking for better things.

This is good but therein also lies a certain danger. In any great movement there is always a goodly proportion of those who are possessed of the Athenian desire to see or hear some new thing and for whom a little knowledge is exceedingly dangerous. They are apt to seize upon a new idea and run away with it, or allow it to run away with them, before they have thoroughly considered ways and means. They accept the advice to hitch their chariots to a star, but they seem to have a sublime disregard for the buckles. The star in this particular case is our ideal curriculum for religious instruction; fully graded, with courses adapted to the intellectual and spiritual needs of pupils in each grade, the whole combining unity of purpose with due variety in treatment and progress from part to part. This is the ideal, but it is unwise for a school to adopt wholesale any graded curriculum of study without adequate material in the way of text books and equipment, and teachers competent to use the same.

Many schools in their eagerness for progress have really retarded it by this very mistake. It is usually coupled with the idea that if one can only have a graded course all difficulties will be solved. Disillusionment and disappointment follow as a matter of course, the experiment is given up in disgust, and one more "failure for fads" is chronicled by the conservatives.

The best course of study ever devised will not take the place of good teachers. Even graded lessons will not work themselves. They simply give the efficient teacher a better instrument to work with, or at best, help to arouse an indifferent teacher and secure improvement there. We often hear it said "What we need is not better lessons but better teachers." If it is any comfort to approach the subject from that point of view, I am ready to assent with cheerfulness for as soon as we get really better teachers the better lessons will come. A real teacher revolts

sooner or later against the self-stultification of ineffectual work with inferior instruments.

The average school therefore should be cautious about adopting a graded course because it has worked well somewhere else until sure that the local conditions are suitable. One school in a small town, with teachers of only ordinary ability, adopted a really fine course which had been worked out by a school in an university town, having for teachers many of the university faculty and abundant facilities in the way of reference literature. Now the smaller school thinks graded work is a failure.

So it was there.

Another school, similarly equipped, was misled into adopting a course of study outlined in a well known book. The course was an excellent one and full of valuable suggestions. But to put teachers not thoroughly trained in methods of independent study up against the task of working out lessons for themselves, with only the topics to guide them, is to invite defeat. I would not be misunderstood as making plea for the predigested type of lesson quarterly, where everything is made easy for the teacher except the task of interesting the pupil and really teaching him anything. We have had enough of this sort of intellectual narcotic. But while we should not insult the intelligence of any one deemed fit to teach our children in religious matters by denying his ability to think at all, neither should we ignore the limitations that do exist.

The fact is that the average Sunday school at present is doing its work and must continue for some time to do its work through young men and women of average ability and intelligence not particularly trained in habits of study, much less in methods of independent scholarship. Moreover most of these teachers have other work which occupies the greater part of their time. They have not the leisure for research even if they have the ability. We must not ignore the practical advantages which the prevailing type of lesson helps afford to such workers. The material for use is presented in compact form, clearly outlined and easily mastered. To be sure most of it is not worth mastering but if we are to lead teachers on to something better we must not make too great a jump. Before attempting a change, the average school should be assured of text books which outline lessons with reasonable clearness, furnish the requisite amount of historical and illustrative material as briefly as is consistent with adequate presentation and suggest methods of treatment without undue moralizing. With so much of caution as to what should not be done, a word or two of practical suggestion in a positive way may be encouraging to those schools eager for progress but not yet seeing all the way clearly before them.