RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 3

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

By Amplius

“The teacher's life is the life of his teaching.”

The Sunday School’s Challenge

A clergyman joined a recruiting campaign, and though he found many recruits, few of them were called to be Sunday school teachers. But faithfully meeting and teaching a Sunday school class, say eight or nine children, week by week, is the work that tells and counts much more than is commonly realised. The need and glory of being a Sunday school teacher needs to be stressed. Steps must be taken to enlist and keep an adequate supply o r teachers. Most Sunday school staffs have vacancies, and no one is in sight to fill the gaps. Are our resources so plentiful, our material so hopeless, that “ possible teachers ” is a term at which we shake our heads?

Let us start in with thinking how some of our best teachers and workers became what they are. Some of our best teachers and Sunday school officials were “ arrested ” and placed, in spite of protest and their own feelings of fearfulness, at the task in a Sunday school class. That was the beginning of their long and fine record. A Sunday school superintendent successful in class and at desk told that when he was a blushing, frightened, incapable young fellow, with only the love of Christ and the Church to his name, he was simply commandeered by the Sunday school authorities, made a teacher and an official, and just had to do it. The writer has a very vivid recollection of himself at the age of 15 put into a Sunday school class of boys and told he was to try and teach them. A more hopeless, helpless situation did not seem possible. But the class was kept for years, and it is one of the joys of life to go back over the ups and down of that teaching experience, and to remind oneself that God was found as not confining Himself to the use of gold and silver vessels in His work, but that it pleased Him to use common glass or ordinary earthenware or rough metal, such as I could only claim to be. to serve His holy purposes when the vessels of this order were clean and whole. We are sure we need the trained teacher with all the technical training that is possible. But if our schools were to wait till they are staffed with such workers, our work would fall to pieces. We must recruit possible teachers insistently and prayerfully hope for their eventual training. Who is the possible teacher? It may help us to see him if we try to state the task and the objective of teaching briefly. It is not one who is so very capable of informing the mind so much as one who will nourish noble tastes. He or she need not be an expert at imparting creeds, or training litle theologians, but there must be a faculty for getting scholars on friendly and intimate terms with Jesus. When we remember it is the primary duty of a teacher to call into exercise, and provide materials for the holy gifts of wonder and imagination, the precious aptitudes of love and spiritual susceptibility. the waiting memory, and the soul’s love of adventuring, found in every scholar, all leading to the appreciation of the majestic loveliness and heroism of Jesus, we are able to form our concept of the possible teacher.

We do not deny or question that the task of Sunday school teaching is worth the consideration and investment of those most intellectually competent and socially distinguished, provided they have the Christian graces. But there are lowly, retiring, immature, untried persons in every congregation who might at first shrink terribly from the suggestion of teaching a class who are possible teachers. An apprehension of the unutterable importance and demands of the task is a first qualification. He who does not sense the serious responsibility and tremendous significance and claims of the work should not be solicited. We have reason to be dubious of the optimism, bravado, and self-confidence that some show before religious tasks. Some thereby have been led, and that easily, to ignorant impudence and humiliating withdrawals. That great teacher, Arnold of Rugby, once said: “If I ever could receive a new boy from his father withput emotion. 1 should think it high time to be off.” Both the possible and the experienced teacher tremble at the tremendous responsibility of their vocation. Where a person is found with a real Christian experience, right religious attitudes, interests, ideals, feelings, loyalties, and love like unto the love of Christ that fills a big heart, we can be safe in saying: “ There is. a possible teacher.” These characteristics will create the necessary aptitude, suggest methods, and overcome difficulties of inexperience and inadequate equipment of a poorly-furnished mind or deficient scholarship. Men and women, unversed in theology, and with but a scanty knowledge, at first, of Scripture, nevertheless spiritually moved and gifted, have shown wonderful development and possibilities as teachers. Where it has been the case that some have never shone in the intellectual mastering and skilful impartation of the lesson, the fact that they, like their Lord, had sanctified themselves for the sake of those they gathered round them ensured the deeper interpretation of truth through the quality of their personality. The teacher himself is. after all. the greatest lesson taught. We mqst set forth our claim for Sunday School classes as a challenge to the unharnessed Christians in our congregations. We must follow them up urgently and prayerfully, desperately in earnest, especially if we find a love for the young and the glow and warmth of human touch. On the chart of the possible teacher’s character after this has been found, we will welcome the exhibition of the qualities of openmindedness. cheerfulness, amiability, kindness, loyalty, honesty, modesty, courage, patience, generosity, responsiveness, self-control, with fine reverence of spirit and marked Christian feeling and certainty. Any man or woman reflecting these qualities or even endeavouring to reach them, should never see a Sunday school crippled for want of proper support, and should be finding time and a place where their teaching possibilities can find expression.—A. W. B.

Scholarship and Christianity

In the Apostle Paul we have the first known instance of scholarship paying obedience to the Christian religion. This places him at the head of a long line of scholars, scientists, statesmen — the learned of the centuries —who have seasoned intellectuality with Christian faith. He thwarted any disposition to consider Christianity only fit for “ unlearned and ignorant men ” to accept and follow. He recognised the authority of Christ over scholarship, and held any learning in cipntempt that asserted its own dominion or authority, and refused to hear, heed, or follow the Lord. Not that he had contempt for learning as such, but for the learning that represented the closed mind. Paul was a great scholar, and yet he was willing to throw scholarship into discard, along with many other things, for the sake of the Gospel. While he always held his learning subject to his inner experience, his scholarly defence of the Christian religion caused one to accuse him of allowing excessive study to prove too much for his mind, that “ much learning ’’ had made him mad. His intellect and his learning were thrown into the_ defence and propagation of the religion that had transformed his life. There was no arrogance in his scholarship: he was humble like the Christ he followed. In Paul intellectuality recognises its master in its own field. Paul was a true scholar and scientist who could do nothing against the truth. He suffered many times because he refused to shade_ the truth as he knew it. He stood in humility before the power and might of truth. In this he showed the instinct and passion of the honest scholar. Not once did he set himself above other men because of his intellect or learning. He was as humble and devoted as the simplest of the “ common people ” who have heard the Lord gladly, and have followed Him faithfully and heroically down through the ages.