RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21580, 27 February 1932, Page 2

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

By Amplius. THE POWER OF PRAYER. “Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make! What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh us with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why. therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others, that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak and heartless bo, Anxious or troubled, when with us in prayer. And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee? ” FIRST ALL-EUROPEAN SUNDAY SCHOOL CONVENTION. A most significant event occurred in Hungary last August, when the first AllEuropean Sunday School Convention met in Budapest. Delegates were present representing 27 nationalities. All was under the direction of James Kelly, D.D., Glasgow, general secretary of the World’s Sunday School Association, representing the British section. Sir Harold Macintosh, Halifax, England, president of the World’s Sunday School Association, had expected to be _ in attendance, but was prevented by direction of his physician. Sir Harold’s address was read by Dr Kelly. Dr Kelly writes concerning this convention; “Every session was splendidly attended, and the addresses were exceedingly fine. The printing of the addresses was a very wise move, as every National Association in Europe has asked permission to translate and reprint them in their own language, and that will mean a very wide dissemination of these messages. The closing communion service was a very wonderful gathering. The elements were administered by a bishop of the Reformed Church of Hungary and an ex-moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland. The entire delegation made a pilgrimage to the Hungarian unknown soldier’s grave, when a wreath carried by a representative of the French and of the German Sunday School Unions was laid on the grave in the name of all the delegates. It was a most impressive ceremony, and touched the Hungarian friends very deeply. As far as the social side of the convention was concerned,_ we had a most successful dinner, at which presidents and speakers, together with certain leading officials from the Government and municipality of Budapest, were present. One of the most outstanding features of the entire convention has been the spirit of fellowship and goodwill which has been so evident among the delegates. Right from the start, this was very manifest, and friendships have been made and misunderstandings cleared up which will do much towards peace in the days that lie ahead.” THE TEACHING VALUE OF A STORY. There is a difference between the story considered as a work of art, and thus as an end in itself, and the story considered as an aid to teaching. In the first case the aim ia artistic enjoyment on the part of the hearer; in the second case it is for his intellectual enlightenment and moral improvement. However, it is undesirable, and, in fact, impossible,, to separate rigidly these two aims. Unless we enjoy a story we are almost certain to miss whatever message it may have for our minds and whatever inspiration it may have for our conduct. Conversely, our enjoyment is ordinarily increased by a thorough grasp of the story’s meaning. Notwithstanding this close relationship, however, we are wise in remembering that the teacher and the professional storyteller are two different persons, and that the latter can, with only a small part of the technique indispensable to the former, accomplish all of the main results toward which story-telling as an agency in teaching is properly directed. There is a maxim which professional educators have been using for half a century or more to the effect that all teaching should proceed from the concrete to the abstract. The meaning of this maxim is simple enough. All of us more or less, and children in particular, live our lives from moment to moment. Our minds move, as it were, on the surface of things. The ability to take long views, to see things in perspective, to delve beneath the surface, comes later, and only, to most of us, after much patient toil on our own' part and on the part of others in onr behalf. Our concepts of right and duty and patriotism, and even our concepts of _ God and Jesus and heaven, do not exist ready made in onr minds; they are not even conveyed to ug in ready-made forms. They are a sort of finished product of which the life we live from moment to moment is the raw material. That which comes to ns through the avenue of sense becomes eventually, through patient selection and condensation, something which reason and faith can own and utilise. Now the story is a transcript of life, not necessarily, and in fact not often of our own lives, but of the lives of people like ourselves. That which we can see and touch and handle, feel and experience on our own account is limited, but it may be widened almost indefinitely through imaginative contact with what has transpired beyond the narrow boundaries of time and space by which our own lives are circumscribed. Through the skilful use of the story in Sunday school teaching the child lives in a tent with Abraham, and in a palace with Moses; he serves at the shrine of Shiloh with the young Samuel, and follows the sheep on the hillside of Judea with the youthful David; he feels something of the gladness which accompanied the birth of Jesus, and of the broad humanity which informed His works of teaching and healing: he feels something also of the unutterable- sadness of Gethsemane and Calvary, and of the triumph of the first Easter morning. He’accompanies the apostles on their perilous and yet glorious mission of founding the Christian Church; he sits in the stocks with Peter, and suffers shipwreck with Paul. He follows sympathetically the careers of heroes of the faith like Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther, and that glorious band of modern apostles which have made the last century as wonderful in the annals of the Church as the century of its foundation. Frequently we are content with the use of the story as an ornament to our teaching, as a something to arrest the attention of the careless or to point a moral for the indifferent. It has these values, of course, but it has a greater value still, and a more important function. It is at the foundation of any worthy system of religions instruction, for it deals not only with life as it is lived from day to day, but with that life at its noblest and best. It is on this foundation we must build if our teaching and doctrine are lo have any sufficient and enduring basis. The marks of a well-told story are easily discernible. It gives proper emphasis to the salient points and keeps these points—as to their number and their character —well within the interest and the intellectual grasp of the pupils. It proceeds in a straightforward way .towards a climax, and after the climax has been reached does not weaken the effect by unduly postponing the conclusion. It uses detail as the painter uses colour, and, like the wise painter, it does not use so much colour that the lines of the picture are obliterated. Above all, it possesses a coherence which makes it an artistic unity rather than a mere patchwork of incidents. But to say more would really be to discuss the “ how ” rather than the “why” of story-telling, and that would not be in keeping with the title of this article.