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Untitled Article
We greatly fear there is not much of this feeling . In practice , the difficulty of getting an honest insight into the mind of a poor child is great , and such difficulties are rendered more numerous by the publication of books , which , professing to simplify the teacher ' s labours , furnish him with a ready plea for sloth or superficiality . Shew us the teacher who knows , intimately knows , but one of his pupils , who has helped to
strengthen practical Christianity in his heart , and we will place him far above the most gifted of masters . It is no easy matter to take a right view of our weakness and our strength . Many will be discouraged when we piress upon them extempore teaching in preference to the constant use of books , as though we required some great or lofty work j and some , perhaps , will think we form too low an estimate of the difficulty of the task when we say that a thoroughly conscientious teacher will always succeed in the
most important part of Christian instruction . All this arises from our habit of estimating Sunday-Schools by the quantity they teach , rather than the practical good they do , and from a vague idea that the latter is in
proportion to the former . Here again books assist in the delusion . Their easily-obtained aid is ever at hand , to present us with a substitute for the labours of thought , and to silence the modest plea of incompetence . A teacher , but for them , would perhaps oftener be content to wait till an increasing spirit of religion in himself gave him the power of teaching it . Books speak a different language—they convey the idea that his power
is in them . He finds it no difficult thing to retail other people ' s ideas ; often mistakes the quickness with which children acquire knowledge , for religious progress ; and finishes by deceiving others as he has deceived himself . Most deeply should we regret having discouraged one conscientious individual in his work , but here we can make no compromise . The last thing we should say to a teacher in doubt respecting his own qualifications would be , *« Take up a book and use other people ' s ideas , since you have none of
your own . * ' We would rather say , " Wait a while ; do not fancy it is a duty to do what you feel unfit to do : give yourself time to look deeper into your own nature and the child ' s . Reflect on the Bible and yourself . Be thoroughly faithful to God and conscience in every thing , and the power to communicate the good you have received cannot fail to increase within you . " When we look at the state of practical religion in this country , we
find nothing which disproves our view of the ineffectiveness of Sunday-School teaching , generally speaking . On the contrary , we are perpetually struck alike with the extent of mere Christian knowledge , and the dry ness and unproductiveness of the spirits upon which it is poured , and can only resolve the problem of the little good all this teaching has effected by supposing that it has been founded on mistaken views of the manner in which knowledge acts on the character of a child . No . 7 . Mr . Wood's Bible Stories are , perhaps , better written than any on a like plan we have seen . They are a very appropriate introduction to
Untitled Article
682 Books for Children .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 682, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/30/
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