BV 1533 
 
 .H35 
 
 1904 
 
 
 Hamill , 
 
 H. M. 
 
 1847- 
 
 -1915. 
 
 Sunday- 
 
 school 
 
 teacher- 
 
 training 
 
 
 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 TEACHER-TRAINING 
 
 By H. M. HAM ILL, D.D. 
 
 Superintendent of Teacher-Training Work in the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Chairman 
 of the Educational Committee of the International 
 Sunday - School Convention ; author of "Legion 
 of Honor Normal Course of Study," "The Sun- 
 day-School Teacher," " International Lesson His- 
 tory," "The Bible and Its Books," etc. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES CO. 
 1904 
 
Reprinted from The Sunday School Times, and 
 Copyright 1903, 1904, 
 
 BY 
 
 The Sunday School Times Co. 
 
/BEG pardon for a. personal 'word, I begin this 
 series of chapters <with no small embarrassment, 
 I have neither sought nor shunned the call to ivrite 
 them, I hanje been a teacher most of my life, I ha<ve 
 been trying to train Sunday-school teachers for tm)enty 
 years, Mr, B, F, Jacobs laid hand upon me, and ga-ve 
 me charge of teacher-training in a great Sunday-school 
 state. In the larger International fidd I did <Tvhat I 
 could to solve this greatest of all Sunday-school problems, 
 I am harder at <work upon it no<w than ever, in the 
 service of the church of my fathers, I Jong ago began 
 to knov) the difficulties in the <zvay, but I have seen 
 most of them overcome, I love the <work, I shall at 
 least put my heart into these chapters. If I can only 
 make them hopeful and helpful to those voho may read 
 them, I shall be happy indeed, 
 
 H, M. H. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Is Teacher-Training Needed? i 
 
 Who Should Do It? 13 
 
 What It Should Be? 27 
 
 Ways of Doing It 43 
 
 Te.\cher-Training Agencies 59 
 
 Interdenominational and Denominational 
 
 Work 71 
 
 What Southern Methodism is Doing .... 83 
 
 A Specimen Teacher-Training Course .... 95 
 
IS TEACHER-TRAINING NEEDED? 
 
I 
 
 IS TEACHER-TRAINING NEEDED? 
 
 O Y DAY and by night it is the thought of the great 
 *-^ host of American Sunday-school teachers, many 
 of whom I know and all of whom I love, that comforts 
 and cheers me in my work. If one can help at all to 
 solve the problem that confronts and hinders them, it 
 will be labor well spent. And behind these teachers 
 now teaching is another even greater host. It is the 
 young people of the church who are to teach and train 
 when we are gone. What can be done for them ? If 
 teacher-training means much to the teacher at work, 
 it means much more to the young man or woman 
 whose life work is yet to begin. 
 
 The first reason why I believe teacher-training is 
 needed is that our teachers, and our young people who 
 are willing to teach, sincerely and generally desire it. 
 In fifteen years of Sunday-school work I have met 
 very many of both classes, — in Canada and the 
 United States, in the big cities and little villages, in 
 the finely equipped schools of modern pattern and 
 in the log and sod houses of the frontier, in conven- 
 tions great and small, individually and collectively. 
 Comparatively few of them were really indifferent. 
 Some of them teach perfunctorily, because they know 
 nothing better. Most of them sincerely desire to 
 become better teachers, if only the way would open. 
 I have watched them at conventions, some of 
 
 3 
 
4 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 them coming long distances at large expense. I 
 have seen them scanning the program anxiously 
 to see if it had anything to help the teacher. I 
 have noted their eager, upturned faces, always pa- 
 thetic in their keen desire to find something in the 
 speaker's words that would help them teach next 
 Sunday's lesson. Name a teacher-training book, 
 and quickly would come the inquiry, "Where can 
 it be bought?" "What will it cost?" Whoever 
 taught a lesson from the Bible to these teachers and 
 young people as a teaching model but noted the 
 quick flash of the eye and flush oi the cheek if his 
 work was skilfully done? I know the meaning of 
 that flushed cheek. I have seen it so many times 
 when Jacobs and Schauffler and Miss Harlow taught. 
 It means, "I want to be a better Sunday-school 
 teacher. How can I learn to do it ?" 
 
 I have two recent letters lying on my desk. One is 
 from Columbia, South Carolina. 
 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 I am anxious to take up the teacher-training course of 
 our church. I feel a httle afraid to undertake it, as I am just 
 a young girl with little time or experience to help me along ; 
 but I am very much interested in Sunday-school work, and, 
 with God's help, I will try and do the very best I can to become 
 a good teacher. Hoping to hear from you very soom, 
 I am respectfully, 
 
 a B. 
 
 The other is from Lynchburg, Virginia, 
 
 Dear Dr. Hamill: 
 
 Your letter received, stating that I was the first to 
 complete the full teacher-training course. I am glad to know 
 that the old Dominion's representative came out first, and 
 
Is TeacJier -Training Needed? 5 
 
 that the honor fell on one of old Centenary's teachers. I have 
 eighty-one scholars in my Sunday-school class, and am also 
 superintendent of our Home Department, numbering several 
 hundred, which is the largest in Virginia. Every teacher in 
 our church should complete the full training course. 
 
 M. M. G. 
 
 In these two letters extremes meet, and prove my 
 point. The Lynchburg teacher was already one of 
 the best in the South, a degree man from several 
 schools and colleges, but among the first to respond 
 to the teacher-training call of his church. The girl 
 from South Carolina speaks for many thousands 
 like her, with little time or experience to help, 
 but wanting to "try and do the very best to be- 
 come a good teacher." And because I am sure 
 of my ground, I say that, wherever teacher-training 
 fails, it is not the fault of the teachers or the young 
 peopla 
 
 WHAT THE AGE DEMANDS IS ELECTRIC 
 
 It is the "electric age. At ten years of age, I 
 reveled in a stage-coach ride of sixty miles a day. 
 Last month I covered the same route and distance in 
 an hour. At twenty, I was guest in a hotel that 
 burned gas, and was mindful "not to blow it out." 
 At thirty, I marveled over my first electric light. 
 "The old order passeth. ' * The youth of the day sees 
 more, hears more, and ofteai knows more things, than 
 came to his grandfather in a lifetime. If he is not 
 as wise, it is not for lack of knowledge. The multi- 
 plying cities, the great railroad systems, the long- 
 distance telephone, the public library, the lyceum, 
 the Chautauqua, the "little red schoolhouse," the 
 
6 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 penny daily, the Sunday-school "lesson-leaf," are 
 Aladdin's lamp to our boys and girls. If he is a 
 country lad, the rural route rider lays the big 
 world daily at his door. I heard a boy of fifteen 
 recently, in a country day-school, classify and sum- 
 marize the news of the world from his father's 
 daily in a way that would have made Thomas Jef- 
 ferson gasp. 
 
 What does this mean to the Sunday-school teacher ? 
 It means that this boy, alert, wide awake, insistent, 
 seeing and hearing many things, and always on the 
 lookout for more, is his Sunday-school scholar. It 
 means that he is taught by the finest day-school 
 teachers in the world, and is not averse, ars I am, to 
 drawing odious comparisons between the teachers of 
 his public school and the man or woman who teaches 
 him on Sunday. It means that he knows good teach- 
 ing from bad, and whether the Sunday-school teach- 
 er' s Bible knowledge is genuine and thorough or 
 mere " make-beUeve. " The other day I saw from 
 my car window a wagon-load of darkeys, big and 
 little, drawn by an old gray mule, trying to race with 
 our Limited Express. The public-school teacher is 
 the "Limited," and the Sunday-school teacher who 
 makes mock of his work, and sneers at teacher-train- 
 ing, is the gray mule. Spilman, our Baptist field 
 man, tells of the young North-Carolinian who refused 
 to go to Sunday-school, though one of the best learn- 
 ers of the village day-school. • ' They teach a feller 
 something down here," he protested, "but up there" 
 — with a look of disgust towards the village church — 
 '• they just mess with me." 
 
Is Tcachtr- Training Needed? 7 
 
 THE CHURCH IS CONCERNED AEOUT IT 
 
 And well it may be. For a hundred and fifty years 
 of American Protestantism the church has concerned 
 itself chiefly over the message from the pulpit, and 
 paid little heed to the lesson from the pew. Big 
 preachers, high-priced evangelists, costly choirs, 
 luxurious "auditoriums," were the accessories of 
 public worship. Subterranean "basements," bare 
 floors, dust, smoke, niggardly equipment in the way 
 of books, libraries, maps, blackboards, etc., have 
 usually been good enough for the Sunday-school — 
 a sort of juvenile purgatory through which the child 
 might work his way to the church heaven above- 
 stairs. The stanch old Catholic Church, in spite of 
 what we don' t agree with in it, might well be our 
 example. That church's concern for the child, and 
 for the teaching of the child, as against the churchly 
 needs of the adult, is as three to ona The moi-ning 
 mass is good enough for the one, but the finest Jesu- 
 itical teaching is not too good for the other. I think 
 I know a hundred of our fine city churches whose 
 quartets and choirs cost more money per annum than 
 would hire the finest teacher- training experts for their 
 Sunday-schools. Within four years I know of one 
 great denomination, that counts its Sunday-school 
 scholars by the millions, voting down an appropria- 
 tion of only three thousand dollars a year to keep an 
 expert in the field at the service of its teachers, though 
 lavish in its expenditure for the salvation of the 
 heathen. 
 
 I am glad to note, however, the breaking up 
 of the old idea that great sermons, adult conversions, 
 
8 How to Bc'coine a Trained TcacJier 
 
 and "go-as-you-please" Simday-schools, is the scrip- 
 tural order. When a state cooistitutiooial convention, 
 as the papers inform us, can spend an entire week 
 debating how to improve its public schools, church 
 synods, convocations, and conferences may well take 
 hint. Denver — Chicago — Winona ! Of what are 
 these three names the sign ? At Denver, in June 
 of 1902, two thousand picked representatives of 
 American churches came together into their triennial 
 International Sunday-school Convention. At first it 
 was a question of many opinions as to what kind of 
 Sunday-school lessons should be taught At the last, 
 after days of discussion, as one voice it was the judg- 
 ment that, whatever the system of Bible study, the 
 Sunday-school teacher, rather than the Sunday-school 
 lesson, should hereafter be the chief concern. At 
 Chicago, eight months later, the " Religious Education 
 Association," with four hundred pastors and college 
 men, met to consider the whole field of related re- 
 ligious education. Their final word, as at Denver, 
 was the need of trained Sunday-school teachers. At 
 Winona, in August of 1903, the elect men and women 
 of the management of American Sunday-school work 
 were in council for a week, and the making of Sun- 
 day-school pastors and the training of Sunday-school 
 teachers were the dominant themes. 
 
 Already I could name six or more of the greater 
 churches which have recently erected, or are begin- 
 ning to erect, teacher-training departments, and are 
 putting training-courses and men into the field. 
 In a later chapter in this book I shall have some- 
 thing to say of the great work they are doing. And 
 
Is 7 eacJier -Teaming Needed? 9 
 
 of the nearly sixty inter-denominational state and 
 provincial Sunday-school Associations which consti- 
 tute the International Convention, several of them 
 have been doing systematic and efficient teacher- 
 training work among the churches, while all of them 
 have formally approved, and most of them have 
 entered upon it. 
 
 Sixteen years ago, when I began my Sunday-school 
 rounds as an itinerant teacher-trainer, I can recall not 
 a few humiliating experiences in the presence of the 
 dignitaries ol the church, as I pleaded for an ex 
 cathedra endorsement of teacher-training. Brethren 
 whose divinity had been well doctored would eye me 
 askance under the rims of their gold glasses as if I 
 were vender of some sort of pious popcorn or patent 
 medicine. Times have changed, and the doctors 
 have been changed by them. I am not as lonesome 
 nowadays, and the "popcorn" business has grown 
 and prospered. 
 
 THE WAY IS OPENING 
 
 Whether through denominational 01 interdenomi- 
 national agency, the time must come when the un- 
 trained Sunday-school teacher will be without excuse 
 or standing. The growth of public sentiment is slow 
 but sure, and when fully aroused it is resistless. I 
 have tried to show how that sentiment is crystalizing 
 about the work of the Sunday-school teacher. Years 
 ago, when Horace Mann was opening the way, poli- 
 ticians and legislators made mock of his plea for 
 thoroughly trained secular teachers. We all know 
 how that battle was fought and won. The teachers 
 
lo Hoiv to Bcco))ie a Trained Teacher 
 
 wanted it, the patrons of the schools began to favor it, 
 the taxpayers finally demanded it. Now a costly 
 normal school, within reach of and free to every pub- 
 lic-school teacher, is taken for granted. But it took 
 more than fifty years to bring it to pass. I can re- 
 member when a Methodist bishop took his fling at 
 college-bred preachers and preaching, and carried the 
 laugh of the conference with him. Look for him 
 now, and you will find him — in the cemetery. Every 
 plea that was made, every battle that was fought for 
 a trained ministry, is now upon the side of trained 
 Sunday-school teachers. We are heirs of all the 
 promises as well as the achievements of secular or 
 religious educational history. My field of labor is in 
 a section rightly looked upon as conservative and a 
 little old-fashioned, particularly in religious habits 
 and opinions. I only wish the readers of The Sun- 
 day School Times could make my rounds with me, 
 and see something of the graciousness, for my work's 
 sake, of my bishops and ministerial brethren. And 
 wliat is true of my own field and work is true of other 
 fields and men. 
 
 There is no trouble about the opening of the "way." 
 Lying on my desk is the report of a college professor 
 who is using his spare hours to organize and conduct 
 class after class in teacher-training, with a roll of 
 probably two hundred students in one city. Letters 
 come to me from pastors wanting to know how to go 
 about forming teacher- training classes. Here is what 
 a plain country superintendent writes : " My school is 
 small and away from the railroad. But I have been 
 reading of teacher-training plans, and I think we 
 
Is Teacher -Training Needed? il 
 
 can do as well in the country as in the city. I am 
 sure we need it. My hardest trial is to get good 
 teachers. I send you twelve names, including my 
 officers and teachers and some young people who I 
 believe have the making of good teachers in them. 
 We propose to go through with it to the end, and I 
 intend, as superintendent, to keep in the lead." 
 
 Here is another from a young pastor : "Nothing 
 has so stirred up my Sunday-school and helped my 
 teachers as the training-books we are now studying. 
 I can see the change coming over them." In nine 
 out of ten such letters there is not a hint of expert 
 leadership. Much as they would like to have that 
 they are not wasting time looking for it. Here and 
 there is a good Christian public-school or college man 
 who can be had as leader for the asking, but in the 
 main it is like a young man who wrote : "I need it, 
 and I am going to have it. I would like to join with 
 others in a class. I intend to try to get others in the 
 school to join with me, but, if I fail, you can count on 
 me single-handed and alone." This last letter struck 
 the keynote. The "way" is always open to one 
 who has a "will" to do it. It is the teacher who 
 says ' ' You can count on me single-handed and alone 
 that I am counting on. 
 
WHO SHOULD DO IT ? 
 
II 
 
 WHO SHOULD DO IT? 
 
 I HAVE a bunch of five teacher-training keys, each 
 thoroughly fitted and trusty. They are ' ' skeleton ' ' 
 keys, which means that they fit any teacher-train- 
 ing lock, wherever and whatever it may be. Take any 
 one of the keys, try it upon any lock, and the door 
 will open. You may have to use it upon a succession 
 of doors before you come upon what you are seeking, 
 
 but, if you fail, the fault is not in the key. I have 
 given to each of my keys a name, and I believe I can 
 put the five keys at work in such a way that not a 
 door of hindrance to teacher-training will continue 
 closed. If I could be allowed to use them all at once, 
 
 15 
 
1 6 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 every key turning and every door opening, the prob- 
 lem of teacher-training would speedily be solved. 
 You will notice, however, that three of my keys have 
 been little used and are growing rusty. Whatever 
 has been done in ways of teacher-training is to the 
 credit of two keys only, and even these have been 
 sparingly and awkwardly used. Let us take up the 
 keys one by one, and consider what each, in order, 
 might do. 
 
 THE CHURCH KEY 
 
 The Church Key comes first. The 
 CHURCH ^^^^1 training of Sunday-school teachers 
 
 will continue to be an incident until 
 the churches, per se, shall grapple with it. 
 More than a score of denominations, small and great, 
 constitute the International Sunday-school Convention. 
 Some of them count their schools by the tens of thou- 
 sands. Most of them have money and men at com- 
 mand for every possible problem. All of them are 
 beginning to see that a grave question affecting their 
 future growth is that of trained Sunday-school 
 teachers. 
 
 Yet for nearly fifty years, since the Rev. John H. 
 Vincent as pastor at Joliet, Illinois, in 1857, organized 
 the first teacher-training class known to church his- 
 tory, the Church Key has been hanging rusty on 
 an unopened door. The trouble was that the church 
 unwisely handed over the key to the Chautauqua 
 movement in 1874, and the one hundred or more 
 summer assemblies which sprang from that move- 
 ment, after vainly trying to do for the churches what 
 
JV/io Should Do It? 17 
 
 the churches ought to have been doing for themselves, 
 have about lost the teacher-training key. 
 
 Along with the Chautauqua, as early as 1888, came 
 the teacher-training work of the stronger inter-denomi- 
 national Sunday-school associations, Illinois and Ohio 
 leading the way ; and I shall later try to show how, 
 under serious difficulties and with inadequate means, 
 they have essayed to do for the church what the 
 church was bound by its divine commission to do for 
 itself. In the nature of the case, an inter-denomi- 
 national agency can only supplement the denomi- 
 national, and can never supplant or displace it. 
 Inter-denominationalism is at best a servant, not a 
 master. With its eye upon the entire field of the 
 churches, it can gather what is best in all and serve 
 the needs of each. 
 
 But its best service is done when it has reinforced 
 and encouraged the denominations severally in doing, 
 each for itself, its own proper work. It is the duty 
 and right of each church to organize, maintain, and 
 direct its own teacher-training. It owes this to its 
 teachers, who serve it without pay and often without 
 thanks. It owes it to the Sunday-school scholars that 
 they shall have the best Bible traming the church can 
 supply. It owes it to the Bible itself as a book not 
 easily handled by even the trained teacher, and often 
 travestied by the untrained. The church can speak 
 with authority to its own pastors and people, who will 
 heed what it says if only for the sake of loyalty to it. 
 Blood is thicker than water, and it is no reproach to 
 inter-denominationalism to say that it can never com- 
 mand such loyalty as a worthy churchman will render 
 
1 8 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 to his own denomination. If I see one thing plainer 
 than another, it is that each church must take up its 
 own burden of teacher-training, and by every honor 
 it can confer and every authority it can rightfully 
 exercise inspire its teachers to prepare themselves for 
 their high vocation. It is a comfort to know that 
 some of the churches are beginning to do this, and 
 that the lost "church key," that opened doors for 
 outsiders and left its own doors hard and fast, is being 
 recovered and freed from rust. 
 
 THE SEMINARY KEY 
 
 It is a question whether church 
 ^S EMINARY U^ n key or theological seminary key is 
 
 the more effective. The church 
 has the final word of authority, but the church, 
 in these days, is largely what the seminaries make it. 
 Let the seminary magnify a principle or method, and in 
 a few years, among the laity, it will be reflected in a 
 thousand pastoral fields. I have an easy and con- 
 vincing illustration. A few years ago the Louisville 
 Baptist Seminary had at its head a prince among 
 preachers and scholars, Dr. John A. Broadus. He 
 was a devoted friend of the Sunday-school and its 
 teachers, and impressed his students with the value 
 and dignity of Sunday-school work. Beginning with 
 Sunday-school "practice work" in Louisville, and 
 extending it throughout the entire South, the old 
 "Broadus boys," and their worthy seminary suc- 
 cessors, have become the aggressive organizers and 
 teacher-trainers ot a great and growing church. A 
 ''pastor's Sunday-school institute" has become the 
 
Wko Should Do It? 19 
 
 big annual event of the seminary calendar, and the 
 Sunday-school idea is leavening the Baptist lump 
 from Virginia to Texas. 
 
 Recently I was asked to contribute to a symposium 
 upon ''What can be done by our seminaries to ad- 
 vance our Sunday-school work ? ' ' My first plea was 
 for a better Sunday-school "spirit" in the semi- 
 naries, an esprit du corps like that at Louisville. The 
 "seminary key" has too much of the smell of 
 "ology" and dogma about it, and too little of the 
 scent of the living flowers that grow, or ought to 
 grow, in the pastor's garden. The young men are 
 too busy digging for Hebrew particles and Greek 
 roots, and are not enough concerned for the plain 
 people in the Sunday-school pews. So far as the 
 writer knows, there is not a Sunday-school chair, or 
 the pretense of it, in an American theological semi- 
 nary, though professors abound for everything else, 
 from Sanskrit to sociology. With (in round num- 
 bers) 150,000 American Sunday-schools, 1,500,000 
 officers and teachers, and 15,000,000 enrolled mem- 
 bers, all depending for skilled leadership chiefly upon 
 the output of our seminaries, it is a little singular that 
 only four or five of these seminaries include a Sunday- 
 school text-book in their curricula, a few more hold 
 Sunday-sell ool "lecture courses," not always by ex- 
 perts, and most of them depend largely upon a student 
 practice-work in neighboring Sunday-schools, usually 
 without official direction and revision. 
 
 Theology is good and necessary, but Sunday-school 
 soul-winning and teacher-training are better. West 
 Point drills its cadets thoroughly in science, mathe- 
 
20 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 matics, and language, but does not stop with theory. 
 The West Point graduate is nothing if not master of 
 detail and trainer of others. From filling a cartridge 
 to maneuvering an army corps he knows how to do 
 things, and is never so happy as when transforming an 
 awkward squad into well-disciplined soldiers. A young 
 pastor just out from the seminary, who is not a type 
 of the better class of our seminary men, said to me 
 recently, upon urging him to conduct a training-class : 
 "I haven't time, — if I had, I wouldn't know how. 
 Let the superintendent train them — it's not my busi- 
 ness." I can well believe it was of this man's semi- 
 nary examination a Sunday-school wit remarked, 
 "They asked ten questions about angels, and not one 
 about the child." I beg pardon for insisting that it 
 is the *' business" of the ex-seminary pastor to train 
 his Sunday-school workers, and of the seminary to 
 cause him to "know how." My " seminary key " 
 ought to *be the most serviceable, but I am sorry to 
 say it is the rustiest of the bunch. 
 
 THE pastor' S key 
 
 The pastor of a church has been 
 PASTOR U" "—I defined as "the eye, the ear, and 
 
 the last word." He ought to see 
 and hear everything that makes for the welfare of 
 his charge. His word ought to be, and usually is, the 
 final word of authority. There is nothing more beau- 
 tiful, and at times more pathetic, than the upturning 
 of the hearts of the people toward their pastors. It 
 is like the flowers that turn their faces toward the sun. 
 Even the children give their brightest smile and word 
 
Who Should Do It? 21 
 
 to the pastor, and the stalwart men of the street in- 
 stinctively pay him honor when he comes among 
 them. In many years of Sunday-school work I have 
 noted this singular respect for men of the cloth. I 
 pray God it may never be less. It has been my con- 
 stant habit, in every teacher-training endeavor, to lean 
 heavily upon these men of God, whom he has called 
 to be "overseers" of his church. I count a hearty 
 word of advice and encouragement from a pastor to 
 his Sunday-school workers as worth more than all my 
 letters and speeches. Many times, when discouraged 
 over attempts to start a teacher-training work, a touch 
 of the pastor' s hand, a word from his lips, has scat- 
 tered indifference and secured success. I think I 
 owe as much to this gracious pastoral word as any man 
 living, and I have come to rely upon it when every- 
 thing else fails. 
 
 I take my appeal to these men. If the church has 
 failed to put into your hands a teacher-training plan, 
 if the seminary failed to give you a Sunday-school 
 training, your "pastor's key," brethren of the cloth, 
 can open the door and solve the problem. By virtue 
 of their work, your teachers are your under-pastors, 
 and can help largely to make or unmake your minis- 
 try. How well or poorly they teach, it is for you 
 chiefly to determine. No other man can do with or 
 for them what you can do. The good shepherd " put- 
 teth forth his sheep, he goeth before them, and the 
 sheep follow him ; for they know his voice, and a 
 stranger will they not follow," 
 
 One of the earliest and tenderest recollections of my 
 teacher-training work is of a gray-haired Presbyterian 
 
22 How to Become a Teamed Teacher 
 
 pastor, a man of rare scholarship and of well-rounded 
 pastoral efficiency, whose ministry of nearly fifty years 
 had brought honor to himself and his church. I had 
 tried to set forth the need and practicability of teacher- 
 training, but met with seeming mdifference. The old 
 man took me to his home, called in his workers, took 
 the points of my plea and made them his own, and 
 with scarce an effort, in ways that only a loved pastor 
 could use, organized a class, heading the roll with his 
 own name. When I praised his good work, he said : 
 " I get more out of it than I put into it. It renews 
 my own youth, and will be about all I can leave 
 behind." 
 
 THE superintendent' S KEY 
 
 I have asked many superinten- 
 ^s uPER!NTCNDE«T"^^^n dcnts, " What is the one hardest 
 
 thing you have to do ? " And their 
 uniform answer was "To get teachers." The 
 question of " supply teachers " invariably comes to the 
 front in Sunday-school conventions. I am not surprised 
 that it does, and I have not found that the usual ready- 
 made devices from the platform meet the difficulty. 
 The cashier of a Southern bank, superintendent of a 
 Presbyterian Sunday-school, confronted me recently 
 with this old and vexed question. W^hen I had put 
 before him my stock alternatives of a "supply class" 
 keeping a week ahead of the school in lesson prepa- 
 ration, or of pledged "emergency" volunteers, his 
 countenance fell as he pronounced them a "snare 
 and a makeshift." I heartily concurred, and my 
 parting word was : "You will have to grow your own 
 
IV/w Should Do It ? 23 
 
 crop of teachers. It is the one thing to do, and you 
 are the one man to do it." 
 
 I tried to tell him how he could pick from his 
 school the most hopeful subjects for teacher-training, 
 put them under his most competent teacher in the 
 regular session of the school, select for them a teacher- 
 training course, taking the place, for the time being, 
 of the International Lesson ; make much of them, in 
 honor, and pledge them in advance to the ministry 
 of teaching when the course was completed. Any 
 other way out of the difficulty is at best a "make- 
 shift," and many superintendents are beginning to 
 find it out. 
 
 Whatever the pastor may or may not do, the prob- 
 lem of teacher- training, in its last analysis, is "next" 
 to the superintendent. The failure of his teachers, 
 or his failure to get more teachers, is his peculiar 
 burden, and involves his own good name. The 
 churches generally look to the superintendent to 
 choose his teachers, and lay the direct blame of their 
 failure upon him. Getting consent of somebody to 
 teach a class is not his main difficulty. It is finding 
 those who know what and how to teach. 
 
 The superintendent has found by hard experience 
 that piety is one thing, and skill to teach is another. 
 He needs a combination of both, and his trouble is 
 largely on the educational side. His call to those 
 already spiritually equipped is usually met by such 
 protests as these : "1 am not a teacher ;" " I do not 
 know the Bible well enough;" "I can't manage 
 boys and girls ;" " If I knew how, I would be will- 
 ing." I find no fault with these excuses. They 
 
24 How to Become a Trahied Teacher 
 
 come from a conviction that Sunday-school teaching 
 is a serious and delicate work, and that piety alone, 
 without specific preparation for it, should disqualify 
 the candidate. 
 
 No man is closer to his teachers than the faithful 
 superintendent. No man, not even the pastor, should 
 try to come between him and them, if the superinten- 
 dent is doing his duty. No true superintendent is so 
 wanting in influence over his helpers as to be unable 
 to lead them into ways of improvement. I like the 
 superintendent who magnifies his office and leads his 
 school, and does not hand round his problems to be 
 solved by others. Let him try the key of his great 
 office upon this problem of teacher-training. His 
 success will depend upon three things, — his pride, 
 his pluck, his persistence ; his pride in his standing 
 as a superintendent, his pluck in striking out into 
 new ways, his persistence in stubbornly holding to 
 his purpose until success is achieved. 
 
 THE teacher' S KEY 
 
 I make much of my "teacher's 
 TEACHER^^^^^^ key," and the key itself shows 
 
 how well the teachers have begun 
 to use it. It is like the old fable in ^sop of 
 the lark and the wheat-field. As long as the farmer 
 waited for his neighbors to cut his wheat, the little 
 larks might make themselves at home. But when 
 the farmer decided to do his own cutting, Mrs. Lark 
 and family went visiting. I believe strongly all I 
 have written about "church," "seminary," "pas- 
 tor," and "superintendent's" key. But I studied 
 
IV/w Should Do It ? 25 
 
 inertia in my school days, and learned that large 
 bodies move slowly. Perhaps the new metal, ra- 
 dium, which they say is to revolutionize the old order 
 of nature, may help to hurry them up. Meantime 
 Farmer John would better cut his own wheat 
 
 The teacher's key, in the teacher's own hand, is 
 slow but sure. It would turn far more easily if the 
 other keys were constandy in use, but without them 
 it has proved its effectiveness in the hands of at least 
 ten thousand American Sunday-school teachers. 
 
 At Cold Harbor, under General Lee, a brigade of 
 us— raw recruits from the "brush country"— waited 
 several hours for General or Colonel Somebody 
 to come along on horseback and lead us into our 
 first charge. Becoming a litde excited by bursting 
 shells and buzzing minie-balls, and ignorant of the 
 conventionalities of such an occasion, we finally 
 popped out from our hiding-place like so many jack 
 rabbits, and made the charge on our own account. 
 It was done with roughness and despatch, but it won 
 the day. 
 
 Individually or collectively, with or without leaders 
 or orders, the Sunday-school teachers who are really 
 concerned about the matter should quit waidng and 
 begin work for themselves. A self-trained teacher 
 may lack a little in finish, but, like a home-made 
 shoe or coat, wears well. If a company of teachers 
 can come together and make a success of a teachers' - 
 meeting, they have already learned to do as hard a 
 work as maintaining a teacher-training class. 
 
 In a litde city some years ago, I advised a small 
 teachers' -meeting that wanted to broaden the scope 
 
26 How to Become a T?-amcd Teacher 
 
 of its study, and make its sessions more profitable 
 to read and discuss by chapters, for twenty minutes 
 of each session, Dr. Trumbull's "Yale Lectures on 
 the Sunday-School." The advice was taken, and 
 with a single copy of the book in hand a course of 
 teacher-training was begun, and continued through 
 other books, with the result of revolutionizing the 
 antiquated methods of the school, and making it 
 one of the foremost in the state. It was a crude, 
 homespun way of getting at it, but it won, and that 
 is always the main point. 
 
 I remember, when a boy, chasing a bird through 
 ten acres of meadow to put salt on its tail. I 
 was advised by a kind friend that this was a sure 
 method of bird-catching. I have not lost faith in 
 the method, — for other boys. The trouble with me 
 — or with the bird — was in not finding the "point 
 of contact." I had not then read Mr. Du Bois's 
 fine book on that subject. 
 
 My experience, however, leads me to counsel the 
 teachers who may read these lines to quit chasing the 
 bird in the meadow, and put salt on the bird in hand. 
 It does not pertain to this chapter to show how this 
 may be done. The question is first whether the 
 teacher, if a way can be opened to him, has the 
 faith and courage to attempt for himself, unaided, a 
 work which he has been vainly waiting for others to 
 aid him in doing. The "teacher's key" is both sign 
 and test. It points the way, and it tests the nerve 
 of the teacher. 
 
WHAT IT SHOULD BE 
 
Ill 
 
 WHAT IT SHOULD BE 
 
 PIRST, and chiefly, it should be the study of a 
 ■1 course of teacher-training books. I am some- 
 times met at the outset by the objection that "train- 
 ing comes by experience, not by books." My answer 
 is that a book itself may be the finest exposition of 
 teaching experience. On my table lie two little books. 
 In one is the clear-cut statement of teaching principles 
 by one who worked his way from a district school 
 to the presidency of a great state university ; in the 
 other is the broad common sense of one who is easily 
 the Nestor of American Sunday-school teachers. The 
 objection would sweep away all educational training, 
 whether religious or secular. Books are mainly the 
 working-tools of state normal college and common 
 school. The young student in training for the state's 
 license to teach, or the schoolboy trudging home with 
 well-filled satchel, illustrates the training value of 
 books. The Sunday-school teacher has no friend so 
 near at hand and capable of serving his ambition as 
 a well-chosen training-book. 
 
 I am met by another objector who cites the old 
 maxim that "a little learning is a dangerous thing," 
 and challenges any system of teacher-training as of 
 necessity elementary, and therefore superficial. But 
 elementary learning is not of necessity superficial. 
 The multiplication-table and the correct spelling of 
 
 29 
 
30 How to Become a Tramed Teacher 
 
 words are the simplest elements of learning, but they 
 run through the entire gamut of scholarship. It is 
 not so much the quantity as the quality of one' s learn- 
 ing that gives it value. If teacher-training does no 
 more than serve as a guide-post in pointing out the 
 way to future effort, it will have done a noble service. 
 Personally I can testify to the invaluable help I re- 
 ceived from a little book which gave me my first real 
 view of the Bible and my first impulse to its sys- 
 tematic study. 
 
 One other objection worth considering is the lack 
 of expert leadership to organize and conduct teacher- 
 training classes. "Training needs a trainer," they 
 say. But trainers are being evolved out of the very 
 processes of training. From a little company, with- 
 out skilled leadership, faithfully studying together, 
 one who has the training instinct will be developed. 
 There is a natural and inevitable development of 
 leadership for every new movement. When the 
 steamboat was invented, the flatboatman became its 
 pilot or captain. When the scythe was displaced by 
 the reaper, the scytheman began to drive the reaper. 
 With seven hundred training-classes and ten thousand 
 students in my charge, nine out of ten are doing the 
 required work under untrained leaders, who are learn- 
 ing to cross bridges as they come to them. 
 
 Summing up what a teacher-training course should 
 be, I would say ; It must largely be elementary, 
 for the many to whom an advanced course is im- 
 possible. It should be flexible, allowing for ad- 
 vanced work for those who are capable. It should 
 consist of a few choice books, small in compass, not 
 
What It Should Be 31 
 
 expensive, written by undisputed masters of both 
 theory and practice. It should require honest study 
 from the students, and not tempt them to pious fraud 
 in a contest for its honors. It should have a definite 
 objective, in the way of examinations, a diploma for 
 those who have done conscientious work, and public 
 recognition locally and generally, wherever both are 
 practicable. It should be comprehensive, including 
 in well-proportioned parts every department of learn- 
 ing in which a Sunday-school teacher needs to be 
 trained. 
 
 What are these several parts ? First, the Bible, as 
 the one book the teacher must teach. Second, the 
 scholar, who is to be taught and trained in the knowl- 
 edge and use of this book. Third, the teacher and 
 the art of teaching. Fourth, the school, in which the 
 teaching and training are to be chiefly done. Last, 
 the church, under whom and for whom should be all 
 religious teaching and training. 
 
 DO YOU KNOW YOUR BIBLE ? 
 
 I shall not indulge in platitudes about the Bible, 
 — its divine origin, its infallible doctrines, its mar- 
 velous achievements. I can easily take these for 
 granted. I am more concerned for the Bible as a 
 text-book in the hands of an untrained teacher. 
 The old illusion still widely holds, that any pious 
 man or woman, Bible in hand, is competent to teach. 
 A certain indefinable "afflatus," the promise or 
 proof of which I could never discern, is supposed to 
 hover over the good man who teaches with pious 
 motive and bungljng method. I can find no warrant 
 
32 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 in the Bible for this ancient illusion. David's prayer 
 was, " Make me to understand the way of thy pre- 
 cepts ; so shall I talk of thy wondrous works." Paul's 
 last plea was that Timothy might " rightly divide the 
 word of truth." Perhaps no two men were more 
 honored of God in the use of the Bible than Mr. 
 Moody and Mr. Jacobs. Each said of the other, 
 "He knows the Bible better than any man living." 
 I happened to know something of the intense and 
 methodic Bible study of these two men. Here and 
 there God may have made use of sanctified ignorance, 
 but it is his rule to honor men only as they "rightly 
 divide " his Book. 
 
 I know I shall be met by some who will say that the 
 Bible is a hard book, and that it can never be truly 
 learned except in the languages in which it was writ- 
 ten. If it be hard, it is a comfort to think of the in- 
 numerable lights converging upon it. As to its 
 Hebrew and Greek originals, my English Bible is not 
 to be despised. Every word of it has been threshed 
 over and over by the scholars of many centuries, and 
 I can even presume to face the man of Hebrew and 
 Greek with my Revised Version and a standard com- 
 mentary in hand. Indeed, I have been made to 
 question at times, in the presence of pretentious and 
 "liberal" scholarship, if the modicum of Hebrew 
 and Greek behind it was not the "fly in the pot" of 
 Bible ointment. 
 
 I am not a stickler for particular methods of Bible 
 study. " One man's meat is another man's poison." 
 I would rather know one well-defined principle un- 
 derlying its sixty-six books than to become expert in 
 
What It Should Be 33 
 
 the use of a score of methods. The three qualities in 
 Bible study which I exalt are : First, a spiritual 
 grasp of the truth, which comes only through slow- 
 wrought experience to those who " will do the will of 
 God ; " the intellectual grasp, which comes only by 
 hard study, as with any other book ; the educational 
 grasp, which comes only of systematic study. The 
 trouble with much of our Bible study is its aimless- 
 ness and lack of educational system. Here is the 
 testimony of one of the foremost Bible students of the 
 age : " It is a mistake to suppose for a moment that 
 Bible study consists in the study of isolated texts, or 
 in the study of single chapters, or even in the study 
 of entire books. A man might study verses all his 
 life, and know comparatively little about the Bible." 
 It is the difference between knowing the world about 
 us through microscope or telescope. When a boy, I 
 was given the former, and reveled in wing of gnat 
 and eye of fly. Later, I saw the heavens through the 
 telescope, and entered at once into comradeship with 
 the universe. 
 
 Let me test you as a Bible student by a few perti- 
 nent questions. Have you a purpose in your Bible 
 study ? Or are you drifting from Sunday to Sunday 
 over the few hurriedly scanned verses of your Sunday- 
 school lesson ? Are you content with the opinions of 
 others, or are you trying to find a way to the truth of 
 the Bible for yourself ? Have you a plan of Bible 
 study ? Can you call up from memory in order the 
 salient events in the history of God's chosen people, 
 through theocracy, kingdoms, and exile, thence on- 
 ward through Christ and the apostles ? Can you call 
 
34 How to Become a Tyained Teacher 
 
 the roll of Hebrew prophets, and assign to each his 
 place and message ? Can you give me a "character 
 sketch" of Bible heroes and heroines? Can you 
 pass a simple schoolboy examination upon the life 
 and ministry of our Lord ? Can you think your way 
 through any book of the Bible, chapter by chapter, 
 knowing that you know it ? Can you tell me how the 
 Bible came to us, or give me the story of your Eng- 
 lish Bible from Wycliffe's rude copy to the noble 
 version from which you teach ? If you say you are 
 too busy to learn this, I can point you to thousands 
 of young people who have done or are doing all this 
 and more. But it was done under a plan of sys- 
 tematic study, from some such small book as Dun- 
 ning's "Bible Studies," — my little teacher-training 
 " standby." 
 
 HOW TO KNOW YOUR SCHOLAR 
 
 It is an era of books and lectures on pedagogy, 
 " child psychology," " paidology," which have a 
 classical sound, and are much in evidence. I prefer 
 to write about plain boys and girls. "If he means 
 human natur," said a countryman at a convention, 
 while a lecturer was unfolding his paidology from a 
 chart, " I know something about that myself." In 
 the multitude of child-counselors there is not scrip- 
 tural assurance of safety. I sometimes turn away 
 from these glib paidologists with the feeling I had 
 when the phrenologists used to examine our craniums, 
 and make charts of our future destiny — at a dollar per 
 chart. Human nature in books and in boys is not 
 always the same. The best book on child study I 
 
What It Should Be 35 
 
 know of is a little black Book, to which I refer all 
 problems of religious psychology. Next to that book 
 in my library is Froebel. I beg pardon for taking my 
 paidology from the Bible, though I am glad, however, 
 to pay tribute to much of the current study of the 
 Sunday-school scholar, especially to such books as 
 Miss Harrison's "Study of Child Nature," DuBois's 
 "Point of Contact," Trumbull's "Hints on Child 
 Training," and Forbush's "Boy Problem." A fault, 
 as I see it, in most of the recent books, is their ex- 
 clusive concern for childhood. The foundation of all 
 teaching and training is childhood, indeed, but I risk 
 being held as a heretic in suggesting that the boys 
 and girls of the intermediate, and the big boys and 
 girls of the advanced department, are quite as deserv- 
 ing and needful of our concern- My neighbor is 
 building a fine home, and his contractor took much 
 pains over the foundation. But, as a wise master- 
 builder, I notice that he is equally painstaking with 
 the rising stories of brick. I would as soon have a 
 faulty foundation as a leaky roof to my house, and it 
 does not follow that because the foundation is secure 
 the roof will not let in water. I am frank to say that 
 I believe primary books and theories are a little over- 
 done, and are obscuring problems quite as grave and 
 imminent. Certainly the "adolescent period" folks 
 and the primary folks, with their counter claims, need 
 to get together. 
 
 As to the study of the scholar in his intellectual 
 states and processes, I would like to have every teacher 
 trained to know the laws of mind, and the order and 
 relative value and use of the unfolding mental facuU 
 
36 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 ties. But I doubt if the average teacher, who is 
 usually a busy person, has time or need for systematic 
 study of pure psychology. The applied psychology 
 of such books as I have named will come nearer 
 meeting his need and opportunity. Give me one who 
 really loves boys and girls, whose affection leads him 
 into intimate personal contact with them at all points, 
 who has faith in the wisdom of his Bible to interpret 
 human nature in all of its changing moods, whose 
 chief concern is to save souls and form Christian 
 character, — the best I can do for such a teacher is to 
 commend to him one of the four books I have named, 
 and leave professional pedagogy and paidology to 
 take care of themselves. 
 
 THE WELL-ROUNDED TEACHER 
 
 There are few "born teachers." They are as rare 
 as born artists or authors. Most of the successful 
 teachers of the day were bunglers at beginning, but 
 by study and practice have mounted step by step to 
 success. Learning how to teach is not harder or 
 more complex than learning to keep accounts, to bind 
 books, to run a farm. It involves both science and 
 art. The science of teaching gives one the principles 
 by which teaching must be shaped. The art comes 
 from patient application of these principles to the 
 work of instruction. There are certain fundamental 
 principles of teaching, few, simple, and unchanging. 
 The great teachers of the past used them, and every 
 successful teacher consciously or unconsciously em- 
 ploys them. Christ gave them his sanction. When 
 a "certain lawyer" stood up, tempting him with 
 
What If Should Be 37 
 
 questions about his neighbor, and our Lord put the 
 burden of answer back upon his questioner, he was 
 enforcing what is now one of the "seven laws" in 
 Gregory' s Httle book : "Use the pupil's own mind, 
 exciting his self-activity." 
 
 To learn thoroughly such a principle, then to make 
 one' s self master of it by practice, is far better than 
 slavish copying of methods without understanding 
 the reason for them. Ready resort to borrowed 
 methods is the bane of much modern teaching. The 
 mere copyist shifts from copy to copy, and, though 
 some of his methods may happen to hit, is shooting 
 arrows in the dark. Sunday-school conventions and 
 institutes are a hindrance rather than a help to the 
 teacher who takes home from them for use in his 
 class a method the reason for which he does not 
 understand. What the trained Sunday-school teacher 
 needs is to be grounded in the unchanging laws of 
 teaching, and from these to deduce his own methods, 
 or wisely adapt the methods of others. Otherwise he 
 is like one trying to pick out of piles of stone and 
 brick and lumber the architect' s plan of a building. 
 
 I cannot urge too strongly upon those who are am- 
 bitious to succeed as teachers the study of these 
 "principia," or first things in teaching. They come 
 only by study and from books. The old-world expe- 
 rience transmits them to the new, as a heritage from 
 master-teachers like Socrates, Paul, Luther, and 
 Arnold of Rugby. Gregory' s ' ' Seven Laws of Teach- 
 ing," Trumbull's "Teaching and Teachers," Wells's 
 "Sunday-school Success," are modern expressions 
 of these principles, all the better for Sunday-school 
 
38 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 teachers because they deal with the application of the 
 principles rather than with the principles themselves. 
 
 The Sunday-school teacher needs training in other 
 matters than the science and art of teaching. He 
 needs to study the ever-broadening field of his work. 
 He is more than instructor. He is student, teacher, 
 trainer, officer, under-pastor, shepherd. He is the 
 spiritual ally of the home, the recruiting officer of 
 the church, the conscience-maker of the state. His 
 work, for the first time in religious history, is being 
 inquired into by university and college men, who 
 seek to correlate it with their o-wn. He is vidette and 
 drill-master of the church. Over against him and his 
 one hour on the Sabbath is set an array of evil forces 
 — the neglectful Christian home, the godless home 
 with positive evil training, the vices of the street and 
 the evil companions who ensnare youth, the bad 
 books and papers in easy reach. He must study 
 ways of counteracting these evils. He will need to 
 study the art of the trainer even more than the art of 
 the teacher. Training is more difficult than teaching. 
 It is putting into practice what is taught. It is the 
 difference between planting the seed and caring for 
 the plant until it comes to maturity. Teaching gives 
 knowledge ; training makes character. And the 
 teacher's abiding work is along the lines of training. 
 
 But above his teaching and training, as his supreme 
 mission, the teacher needs to study the art of soul- 
 winning. It is a divine art, and its processes are 
 nowhere so plainly set forth as in the teacher's Bible. 
 The lesson that is made plain to the mind, but does 
 not find its way to the heart, is a failure. The teacher 
 
What It Should Be 39 
 
 who has no conversions in his class is an anomaly. 
 To save his scholars is his one great duty, and his 
 position gives him opportunity iDeyond that of even 
 pastor or parent. Any teacher-training system that 
 does not include and exalt this soul-winning art is 
 unworthy its name. 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL 
 
 Place a tallow candle at one end of a room and an 
 Edison electric lamp at the other, and you have by 
 contrast the school of Raikes and the modern Sunday- 
 school, Learning to spell and read have given place 
 to graded teaching and graded lessons. The unclassi- 
 fied room of Gloucester gamins is transformed into 
 the model Sunday-school building, with departments 
 and class-rooms. The four women, at a shilling a 
 Sabbath, have grown into millions of picked men and 
 women, the "cream of the church," as Mr. Jacobs 
 was fond of saying. Raikes' place as a superinten- 
 dent is held by Wanamaker, Pepper, and Lawrance. 
 What was a "mission school" has become the chief 
 dependency of the church for growth and power. 
 
 It is in the light of such progress, and under such 
 increasing pressure, that the Sunday-school teacher 
 must do his work. He is not a mere spectator. He 
 is a vital part of the complex machine, — cylinder, 
 shaft, balance-wheel, or safety-valve. The school's 
 frictionless movement depends upon him, and he in 
 turn depends upon the school. He must know his 
 place and keep it, or become the "hot box" of hin- 
 drance to life and motion. I have known a single 
 teacher and class to obstruct the entire machinery 
 
40 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 of a Sunday-school. The teacher, by virtue of his 
 office, is an officer of the school. He is an assistant 
 superintendent, though not known by that title. The 
 school is his workshop and drill-ground. His own 
 class is but one of the successive stages through which 
 his scholars must pass. 
 
 He ought therefore to know what precedes and fol- 
 lows him. He should study the various departments, 
 their management and methods. He should know the 
 ins and the outs of every approved modern method. 
 He should study the art of managing a school from 
 the standpoint of the superintendent, which differs 
 only in measure from his own management of a class. 
 He should learn how to keep the school' s records and 
 finances, and run its library and Home Department. 
 He should study the music, the literature, the pro- 
 gram. Especially he should be a student of the his- 
 tory of the Sunday-school movement, from its crude 
 Old Testament beginnings to its splendid modern de- 
 velopment. He need not lack for training-books that 
 will give him this bird's-eye view of the modern 
 Sunday-school. From a score or more of recent text- 
 books it would be hard to say which is best, but if my 
 choice were restricted to one book I would take 
 Axtell's "Organized Sunday-school," or McKinney's 
 "Bible School," or Vincent's "Modern Sunday- 
 school," or Schauffler' s " Ways of Working. " 
 
 LOYALTY TO CHURCH 
 
 I do not place the church last in the elements of a 
 teacher-training course because it is greatest or least. 
 Logically it comes last, as all our Sunday-school ser- 
 
tV/ia^ It Should Be 4t 
 
 vice should be to exalt and magnify the church as 
 the one divine institution in the earth. I cannot 
 sympathize with or understand a system of teacher- 
 training that does not begin and end in the church. 
 Nor can I esteem one fully equipped to teach and 
 train the children of the church who is himself 
 untaught and untrained in its noble history and doc- 
 trine. I would as soon think of training the public- 
 school boy for citizenship in our republic without a 
 knowledge of the country to which he belongs, and of 
 the men who purchased our liberties by their blood. 
 One day in Chicago I saw a crowd of boys silently 
 gazing into a shop window, oblivious to all sights and 
 scenes of a great city. I followed their reverent look, 
 and I saw what had fixed their eager eyes. It was a 
 small, tattered, and powder-blackened flag, and be- 
 neath it was the legend, ' * This flag was in the battle 
 of Bunker Hill." There is a love of church that is 
 deeper than love of country, and I would have every 
 teacher to know and feel it, and to inspire it in his 
 Sunday-school class. 
 
 I have no love for that mawkish sentiment that any 
 church is good enough, and that "it makes no diff"er- 
 ence to what church one belongs." I have found 
 that the men and wom.en who counted for something 
 in faithful, self-denying work, were those in whom 
 denominational love and loyalty were deep rooted. 
 Although a paradox on its face, I have also found 
 that the rock-ribbed denominationalist was oftenest the 
 most catholic and helpful in any Christian fellowship 
 or work. I am sure that every trained teacher will 
 be a better and stronger teacher if he adds to his 
 
42 How to Beco77ie a Trained Teacher 
 
 training equipment a knowledge first of the general 
 church of Christ in all lands and ages, and then t^uilds 
 upon this a fuller knowledge of his own denomina- 
 tion. I call to mind Hurst's "Outlines of Church 
 History," a small book, fairly and accurately written, 
 which will serve as a book of study of the general 
 church. The denominational history, each denomi- 
 nation will provide for its own. I beg pardon for a 
 personal reference. I was born into a family that 
 has been Methodist for six generations, my father a 
 Methodist preacher. There is nothing I love so 
 much in all the world as the church of my fathers. 
 Yet I have never been accused of narrowness or big- 
 otry. When I am in trouble, and things seem to go 
 hard against me, it is my custom to take down the 
 life of Wesley or Asbury, or some story of the men 
 who suffered and died for my Methodism, and in their 
 heroic presence I come to myself again. 
 
WAYS OF DOING IT 
 
T 
 
 IV 
 
 WAYS OF DOING IT 
 
 suggestive training-courses 
 An Elementary Course. 
 IME. — One to two years. 
 
 Term. — October to June, — eight months each year. 
 
 Membership. — Sunday-school officers, teachers, and 
 chosen young people. 
 
 Requirements. — A written pledge to attend the meet- 
 ings and to study and complete the course. 
 
 Meetings. — Weekly, at an hour apart, or in connection 
 with the teachers' -meeting. 
 
 Plan of Study. — The leader or a committee apportions 
 in advance the subject-matter of the course, in weekly sec- 
 tions, for home study by members. 
 
 The "Weekly Program. — The hour used chiefly in re- 
 view and drill upon the week's section, as previously as- 
 signed. 
 
 Leader. — The best man or woman available, to direct, 
 but not always to teach, the class. 
 
 Examinations. — As prescribed by the course selected, 
 or as prepared and conducted by the leader upon completion 
 of a book, together with frequent additional oral reviews. 
 
 Graduation. — A special public church service, with 
 address and presentation of diplomas. 
 
 Course of Study. — (Any books mentioned in these 
 chapters can be obtained of The Sunday School Times Co., 
 Philadelphia.) Your own church course, if it has one ; if 
 not, then any one of the following training-courses : Pease's 
 "Normal Course " (first and second series. 50 cents each) ; 
 
 45 
 
46 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 "Assembly Normal Union " (two books. 50 cents); Hurl- 
 but's "Revised Normal Lessons" (40 and 25 cents); 
 Semelroth's "Complete Manual" (50 and 25 cents); 
 "Legion of Honor" (first and second series. 25 cents); 
 Spilman's "Normal Studies" (25 cents). 
 
 An Advanced Course. 
 
 Time. — Two years, as a minimum. 
 
 Term, Membership, etc. — As with elementary course 
 above. 
 
 Course of Study. — Your own church course, if it has 
 one ; if not, a course composed of five books, — one book 
 each upon the five subjects following : 
 
 The Bible. — Dunning's "Bible Studies" (40 and 25 
 cents) ; or, Sell's "Bible Study by Periods" (60 and 35 
 cents) ; or, " The Bible and its Books " (50 cents). 
 
 The Scholar. — Miss Harrison's "Study of Child Na- 
 ture " (^i) ; or, Du Bois's "The Point of Contact in Teach- 
 ing " (75 cents) ; or, Schauffler's "The Teacher, the Child, 
 and the Book" (^i) ; or, Wells's "Sunday-school Suc- 
 cess " ($1.25) ; or, Trumbull's " Hints on Child-Training " 
 (^1.25) ; or, Forbush's "Boy Problem" (75 cents). 
 
 The Teacher. — Gregory's "Seven Laws of Teaching" 
 (50 cents, net) ; or, Trumbull's "Teaching and Teachers " 
 (^1.25); or, Hamill's " The Sunday-school Teacher " (50 
 cents). 
 
 The Sunday-School. — Schauffler's "Ways of Work- 
 ing " (^l) ; Vincent's " Modern Sunday-school " (90 cents); 
 Axtell's "The Organized Sunday-school" (50 cents); 
 McKinney's "Bible School" (50 cents); Foster's "Sun- 
 day-school Manual" (75 cents); Boynton's " Model Sun- 
 day-school " (50 and 30 cents). 
 
 The Church. — Hurst's "Outlines of Church History" 
 (40 cents), followed by brief history of your own denomi- 
 nation. 
 
Ways of Doifig It 47 
 
 Special Pastor's Course. 
 
 Hatcher's "The Pastor and the Sunday-school" (75 
 cents) ; Chapman's "Spiritual Life of the Sunday-school" 
 (35 cents); Axtell's "Organized Sunday-school" (50 
 cents); Trumbull's " Teachers'-Meetings " (30 cents); 
 Gregory's "Seven Laws of Teaching " (50 cents, net). 
 
 CONDUCTING A TRAINING-CLASS 
 
 The touch of elbows in any good work is always 
 stimulating and helpful. Wherever it is possible, 
 therefore, to form a class, the work will be better and 
 surer. The choice of an elementary or an advanced 
 course, as outlined suggestively above, will depend 
 upon local conditions. The mistake is often made of 
 setting too severe a standard at beginning. Many 
 who turn away from an advanced training-course will 
 return to it after successfully completing an elemen- 
 tary course. A desire for the more thorough study is 
 begotten by the easier work. Especially is this true 
 of the young people who are willing to be put in 
 training. The pressure of time, the cost of books, 
 the lack of the study habit, the small ambition of 
 many of these, need to be considered. The elemen- 
 tary course is not child's play. In any one of the 
 elementary courses I have named a good foundation 
 is laid in the subjects which should constitute a 
 teacher-training course. For my own part, I would 
 advise any teacher, or one who wishes to become a 
 teacher, to take the severer course. Its five or more 
 books, patiently studied and assimilated in two years' 
 time, will assure success as a Sunday-school teacher 
 to the ambitious student, though of moderate ability. 
 
48 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 Several points need to be carefully guarded in the or- 
 ganization of a training-class. Much depends upon the 
 spirit and purpose of those who compose it. Hence 
 I have suggested a written pledge to attend the meet- 
 ings of the class, and to study and complete the 
 course. I would admit none who would not subscribe 
 to this pledge. After the novelty and enthusiasm of 
 the first study and rrieetings have passed, as they in- 
 evitably will, I should need the reinforcement this 
 pledge would bring. Better a little handful \\\\o ' ' mean 
 business," than a multitude of mere enthusiasts. 
 
 SECRETS OF GOOD LEADERSHIP 
 
 More than this is the choice of a leader, upon 
 whom, in most cases, the final success or failure of 
 the class will depend. A training expert is not always 
 the best leader. Successful leadership, I have found, 
 is a matter of personal rather than educational qualifi- 
 cation. The leader who has common sense, sympa- 
 thy with others, watchfulness to encourage the weak 
 and laggard student, and an unfailing purpose to hold 
 his class together to the end, may know Httle about 
 training-books, but is the kind of leader who will suc- 
 ceed. Much, too, depends upon the regular weekly 
 meeting of the class, and the wise apportionment of 
 the subject-matter of the course of study. 
 
 In the beginning, the order in which the books are 
 to be studied, and the time to be given to each book, 
 and the further division of each book into weekly 
 study sections, should be carefully planned and ex- 
 plained. Nothing should be allowed to change or 
 cancel the regular meetings of the class. Either the 
 
IVays of Doing It 49 
 
 one expert leader should conduct the weekly session, 
 or, if no one is more expert than the others, the mem- 
 bers in turn may lead. As the one purpose of the 
 weekly meeting is to review the week's study, and to 
 test what has been learned, however clumsily this may 
 be done, any member of the class is competent to do 
 it. A review of the salient points only of the subject- 
 matter studied, followed by a spirited drill upon these 
 points, as written upon the blackboard and recited 
 over and over by the class, is a simple yet effective 
 method of class leadership. 
 
 As this method proceeds, the value of class study 
 will be shown in the sifting of the subject-matter, and 
 the determination of what is or is not important. 
 From time to time the class should be tested by care- 
 fully prepared oral reviews, based upon questions 
 ranging through the book in hand, and including its 
 salient matter only. I recall one class whose mem- 
 bers thoroughly mastered their course of study by the 
 use of this very simple catechetical method. Their 
 weekly meeting was nothing more than the old-fash- 
 ioned "cross-questioning," back and forth, first by 
 one, then by all. Again I urgently insist, as enforced 
 by the experience of many years in training-work, 
 that it is not upon expert leadership or method the 
 average training-class must depend. If these are at 
 hand, use them and be thankful. But there is a 
 something which I cannot define, yet have often seen 
 and admired, — a rugged sort of independence and 
 purpose, in the home-grown, necessity-evolved leader 
 and method, which somehow eclipses the finest work 
 of the professional trainer, 
 
50 How to Becoine a Trained Teacher 
 
 I once asked the secret of such a leader' s success. 
 He was a hard-working Western farmer, who had a 
 wonderful "knack" of holding together and getting 
 the best out of his country training-classes. "Oh! 
 he' s just one of us, — he knows us, and we know him, ' ' 
 was the reply I received. I have found no finer 
 qualification for local training leadership than that 
 country phrase, — "Just one of us." 
 
 TESTING A TRAINING-CLASS 
 
 There is an old maxim about the "proof of the 
 pudding," etc. I confess that I have little respect for 
 so-called " reading courses " for Sunday-school teach- 
 ers, at the end of which there is nothing to test thor- 
 oughly the work that has been done. A training- 
 course without a thorough and comprehensive written 
 examination to enforce this test is like a kite without 
 a tail. It may be a good kite, but it will not fly. I 
 never encourage a mere "reading" course. I have 
 found by disappointing experience how carelessly and 
 superficially such reading is often done. I exact 
 downright honest study instead as the only road to 
 success, whether in secular or religious learning. 
 There ought to be nothing of the patent medicine, 
 "quick-cure" method in our training work. For 
 years I put at the head of all training-books and leaflets 
 the admonition, "Do not play at normal work." 
 Anything less than hard study and mastery ot the 
 text is a snare to the student, and has deservedly in- 
 curred the sharp censure of those secular educa- 
 tors who have a sincere concern for Sunday-school 
 teaching. There is already too much of the knowl- 
 
Ways of Doing It 51 
 
 edge that puffeth up. I think one reason for the 
 indifference towards teacher - training on the part 
 of some of our brighter pastors is their just aver- 
 sion for training schemes that make a teacher of 
 you "while you wait." Any reader of these lines 
 who wants to become a Sunday-school teacher in 
 fact as well as in name, but is unwilling to pay 
 the price of hard study as tested by a thorough ex- 
 amination, will find nothing farther of interest in 
 these chapters. 
 
 It was a saying of Lord Bacon that "reading mak- 
 eth a full man, conversation maketh the ready man, 
 but writing maketh the exact man." Upon the com- 
 pletion of each book of study, the leader of the class, 
 or his pastor or superintendent in his stead, should 
 conduct, in writing, an examination sufficiently com- 
 prehensive and severe as to test fully and fairly the 
 quality of the work done by members of the class. 
 Several hours should be given to it, and every allow- 
 ance made for clumsiness and faultiness of papers, 
 and every encouragement shown to any who scare at 
 the ghost of an examination. But I insist that in 
 these written papers will be found the final and fair 
 test of whether the student put mind and heart into 
 his work. Let him understand that he must earn 
 what he gets, if he is to be trained to respect himself 
 and his work as a teacher. I have not found that 
 this standard of hard study and thorough testing 
 repels. Wherever it does, repulsion is better than 
 attraction, and sifts the wheat from the tares. Along 
 with every batch of examination questions I have 
 been sending out to training-classes, I have tried to 
 
52 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 guard the integrity of the examination by some such 
 requirements as the following : 
 
 1. These questions are mailed to you directly as leader, 
 or as pastor or superintendent of an individual student. 
 
 2. Please see that the questions are withheld until the 
 hour for examination, and that the examination is fairly 
 conducted, under your immediate supervision and at one 
 sitting. The time, place, length of time given, and all 
 other details, are left to your own discretion. 
 
 3. Call all members together ; read these instructions ; 
 urge each to take the examination at the one time and 
 place fixed, as the questions are not severe, and the stand- 
 ard for diploma fair and reasonable. Every examinee, 
 upon completing his examination, should certify in writing 
 that "the examination has been taken upon honor." 
 Please see that this statement accompanies each set of 
 papers sent. 
 
 GRADUATING A TRAINING-CLASS 
 
 As I have urged a written examination as a final 
 test of study, so I urge the public recognition of those 
 who have proved faithful students. If the test of 
 study discloses conscientiousness and thoroughness of 
 work by the student, he should be accounted worthy 
 of every honor, local or general, that can be con- 
 ferred. While the training diploma is not the end in 
 view, it should signalize the end of the training-course. 
 It is the concrete objective, and will do much to hold 
 the class together and assure a better quality of study. 
 It gives dignity to the training work, and calls public 
 attention to its importance. I do not count it a weak- 
 ness in men or women to covet the honors they have 
 fairly won. The desire for honorable recognition is a 
 
Ways of Doing It 53 
 
 weakness to which most of us are liable — if it is a 
 weakness. The Bible allows for it. Paul and Peter, 
 and other apostles and good men, were not above it. 
 Our Lord, as he tells us in one of his parables, holds 
 in reserve a word of public recognition that I trust all 
 of us at the last may hear, each for himself: "Well 
 done, thou good and faithful servant." 
 
 I have had the privilege thus far of signing more 
 than five thousand training diplomas, and of present- 
 ing very many of them in person to the hard-working 
 Sunday-school people who had earned them. In the 
 West and South, and in Canada especially, this clos- 
 ing service of public recognition has proved a strong 
 and needed stimulus to the work. In Illinois, year 
 after year, the one great hour of the annual Sunday- 
 school Convention is that devoted to honoring its 
 host of teacher-training graduates. No expense is 
 spared, no device is unused, and the great audience 
 is always at its greatest and best when that hour 
 occurs. In my present field I am setting the gradu- 
 ates of my church in the finest place of honor I can 
 contrive upon the platform of Annual Conferences, 
 before the chief dignitaries of the church, and am 
 putting their names upon the "Roll of Honor" in 
 all its Sunday-school literature. 
 
 Most, if not all, of the training-courses I have named 
 in this chapter provide diplomas for their graduates, — 
 the Assembly Normal Union, the Pease, the Semel- 
 roth, the Hurlbut, the Legion of Honor, and others. 
 Several of the churches have their own training- 
 courses and diplomas, which every loyal churchman 
 should first consider. More than a score of the inter- 
 
54 How to Becoine a Trained Teacher 
 
 denominational, state, and provincial Sunday-school 
 associations award their own diplomas to graduates of 
 association courses. Diplomas, general in form and 
 adaptable to local conditions, may also be procured. 
 
 At its Winona, Indiana, meeting, in August, 1903, 
 the Executive Committee of the International Sunday- 
 School Convention appointed a "Committee on Edu- 
 cation," composed of seven college and Sunday- 
 school men, who were instructed to formulate "stand- 
 ards and rules governing the issuance of an Inter- 
 national Sunday-schoolteachers' diploma," for use 
 throughout the entire continent. Of the seven men 
 of the committee it is worth noting, as a sign of the 
 advance of teacher-training in the church, that three 
 of its members are President W. O. Thompson, of 
 the Ohio State University ; President E. Y. Mullins, 
 D.D., of the Southern Bapdst Theological Seminary, 
 and Dr. S. F. Upham, of Drew Theological Seminary. 
 In the next chapter the reader will find a brief state- 
 ment of what this committee has already done. 
 
 Whatever the diploma that marks the end of the 
 course, it should be awarded with every accessory of 
 honor. In the local church chosen by the class, on 
 Sunday evening preferably, as a special service, the 
 graduation of the class should be observed. The 
 pastor or pastors of the graduates should "lay them- 
 selves out" to make it an occasion of peculiar interest 
 and profit. It should be thoroughly advertised in 
 every paper and home in the community. The fair- 
 est flowers and the brightest music should enhance it. 
 The graduates, the elect pastors and superintendents, 
 and the officers of the church, should occupy the 
 
Ways of Doing It 55 
 
 place of honor upon the platform. The finest address 
 that some pastor or speaker of ability can deliver 
 should be the feature of the evening. The award of 
 diplomas should be made as impressive as possible, 
 and the occasion generally should prove an impetus 
 to local Sunday-school work. I am not dealing with 
 the theoretical. I know what these occasions may 
 do. I have had the honor to take part in more than 
 a hundred of them within the last ten years. May 
 their number and their influence for untold good in- 
 crease ! 
 
 Here is a souvenir program of such a graduating 
 service. The paper is growing yellow, and the lines 
 are fading out, but I specially cherish it as a token of 
 the first service in which I presented diplomas to a 
 teacher-training class. Behind the fading names a 
 host of tender memories arise of the faithful leader 
 and class of that Southern Illinois town : 
 
 LEGION OF HONOR GRADUATING EXERCISES 
 Methodist Church, Carmi, Illinois, January 15, 1891 
 
 Program 
 Duet : "The Light of the World," Mrs. A. A. Lehman 
 
 and M. W. Spencer, 
 Bible Reading : Thomas Parkhurst. 
 Song: "Coronation," congregation. 
 Prayer : Rev. J. G. Dee. 
 
 Theme : The Bible. 
 A Book for Every One : Miss Florence Emerson 
 Duet: "Lamp of Life," Miss Annie Tate and W. J. 
 
 Blackard. 
 Its Literature : Miss Mae E. Dunlevy. 
 Its Teachings : D. L. Boyd. 
 
56 How to Beco7ne a Traiiied Teacher 
 
 Song : " Wonderful Words," by normal class. 
 
 Its Authenticity : Miss Ina Anderson. 
 
 Its Inspiration : Mrs. Ira Reeves. 
 
 Song : " Walk in the Light," by normal class. 
 
 Address : Rev. H. M. Hamill, followed by award of 
 
 diplomas to class of twenty graduates. 
 Song : " Here am I, send me," congregation. 
 
 DOXOLOGY AND BENEDICTION. 
 
 A HOME-GROWN VETERAN TRAINER 
 
 Mr. George P. Perry is a successful druggist of 
 Sterling, Illinois, and a Baptist in good standing. He 
 is of the " home-grown " variety, with a pronounced 
 Western flavor. There proved to be much more in 
 him than his friends or myself had discovered. 
 Never a college or seminary man, he invented a 
 unique and most helpful objective study of the 
 "Life of Christ," v^^iich has gone round the world. 
 For many years, though yet a young man, this 
 veteran organizer and conductor of training-classes 
 has been modestly making fame for his little city. 
 There is nothing phenomenal about the man or 
 his methods. He has those three homespun quali- 
 ties of the American proverb, — "grace, grit, gump- 
 tion." He is a fair illustration of the possibilities in 
 thousands of men and women, who could match his 
 achievements if they w^ould. I wrote asking him to sum- 
 marize his teacher-training work. I have his modest 
 reply, from which I extract the more pertinent facts. 
 
 Sterling, III., October 19, 1903. 
 Dear Dr. Hamill :— 
 
 I began my teacher-training work here in 1885. For 
 months before I conducted a campaign of agitation on the 
 subject in township conventions and by personal contact. 
 
IVays of Doing It ^y 
 
 Since that time no year has passed without systematic teacher- 
 training. My classes have almost always been composed of 
 members from various denominations. My method of con- 
 ducting the class is to assign a lesson in advance for study, 
 then, by question and blackboard and illustration, teach it as 
 best I can. I have never organized a class but it finished the 
 course of lessons. I have used a number of series of teacher- 
 training courses, — the " Assembly Normal Union," Dunning's 
 " Bible Studies," Hurlbut's " Normal Outlines," the " Legion 
 of Honor," etc. I can go into nearly any school in the city 
 and pick out my pupils as part of the school's teaching force, 
 many of whom have assured me of great good derived from 
 the course they studied. Usually I begin my classes in Octo- 
 ber, and continue through April, the number of meetings 
 ranging from twenty to twenty-eight. I am now conducting 
 my eighteenth and nineteenth classes. My total enrolment of 
 students to date is five hundred and twenty-seven, average 
 attendance two hundred and ninety-five, and the number com- 
 pleting a course by written examination and receiving diplo- 
 mas is one hundred and sixty-one (including the probable 
 graduates of my present classes). 
 
 Sincerely, 
 
 George P. Perry. 
 
 I shall not paint the lily nor adorn the rose by 
 comment upon that letter. 
 
TEACHER-TRAINING AGENCIES 
 
V 
 TEACHER-TRAINING AGENCIES 
 
 BY THE TEACHERS' - MEETING 
 
 I AM mindful of my promise. It was to the effect 
 that a variety of ways would be suggested, by 
 some one of which any teacher might secure the 
 training desired. I know nothing better to begin 
 with than the teachers' -meeting. Wherever and what- 
 ever the Sunday-school, the teachers' -meeting is 
 indispensable. It stands first in any catalog of 
 teacher-training agencies, because the weekly lesson 
 must be studied, and the one place for its most effec- 
 tive study is in this meeting of teachers. I might go 
 farther, and say that, when a school holds regularly 
 and faithfully its meeting of teachers, it has already 
 taken a long step in the direction of teacher-training. 
 But it needs to take another step. It should add 
 to its weekly lesson study a course of specific teacher- 
 training. To do this would double its interest and 
 usefulness, and would do away with the popular ex- 
 cuse that busy teachers have not the time for both 
 teachers' -meeting and training-class. Let the two 
 be made into one, as both are closely related and 
 interdependent. One cannot study the lesson with 
 others without getting a measure of training, nor can 
 one study a training-course without learning how better 
 to study and teach the lesson. I can see how teacher- 
 training work might become at once a feature of 
 
 6i 
 
62 Hoiv to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 thousands of Sunday-schools, if pastors and superin- 
 tendents would readjust their teachers' -meetings to 
 the double end of lesson study and teacher-training. 
 Let any one of the approved elementary training- 
 courses be selected, if there is no prescribed denomi- 
 national course ; or, from the list of training books 
 given in these articles let a special course be chosen, 
 and for a year of pledged attendance and study let the 
 following weekly program be enacted : 
 
 Teachers'-Meeting Program 
 
 Time : Eighty minutes. 
 
 Place : The cosiest church room. 
 
 Leader : The superintendent or pastor, or both. 
 
 Members : The ofificers and teachers and young people of 
 the "teacher-supply class." 
 
 Meetings : Monday evening. 
 
 Pledge : To attend and study both lesson- and training- 
 course for one year. 
 
 Program : Ten minutes' prayer-meeting ; ten minutes as a 
 council upon the school ; thirty minutes' lesson study ; thirty 
 minutes training-study. 
 
 THE TEACHERS' CLASS 
 
 I have suggested the use of the teachers' -meeting in 
 a training way as an easy initiative. From the best 
 estimates at hand, about one-fourth of our Sunday- 
 schools already conduct these weekly meetings of their 
 teachers, and have therefore a convenient time, 
 place, and opportunity for beginning a teacher-train- 
 ing work. But I urge it as a compromise at best. 
 There are many Sunday-schools whose officers and 
 teachers are willing and ready for independent and 
 
Teacher- Training Agencies 63 
 
 specific teacher-training. To these the teachers' - 
 meeting, if one is held, is a place for lesson study 
 only. Their desire is for a distinct course of teacher- 
 training, apart from all other meetings, after a plan 
 and under a leader of their own, with the one set pur- 
 pose of becoming trained teachers. I sincerely sym- 
 pathize with this desire for independent study. The 
 end to be attained is worth the additional effort, and 
 even the teachers' -meeting is subordinate to the train- 
 ing-class. Both are practicable in the same school, 
 the membership of both being substantially the same. 
 It is simply a question whether the teacher, in addi- 
 tion to the hour given weekly to the teachers' -meeting, 
 is willing to add an hour each week for the study of a 
 training-course. With such direct and exclusive pur- 
 pose in view, it is easy to frame a program for train- 
 ing-work : 
 
 The Teachers' Training-Class 
 
 Members : The teachers, officers, and pastor. 
 
 Time : Any convenient hour each week. 
 
 Place : The pastor's study or church parlor. 
 
 Leader : Elected by class or appointed by superintendent 
 and pastor. 
 
 Course of study : Denominational or selected, — two years. 
 
 Condition : Pledged members only. 
 
 Program : Review of previous study, led by members alter- 
 nately, fifteen minutes ; blackboard drill upon main points of 
 the week's study, by class leader, thirty minutes ; discussion 
 by class, fifteen minutes. 
 
 I have at hand the report of such a class. It comes 
 from the Bethel Sunday-school of old Charleston. 
 *'Dux fcniitia acti,'' — which is Virgil's way of saying 
 
64 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 that a woman was the moving spirit in it. It is one 
 of the teachers' classes in my charge of which I am 
 especially proud, and I shall not, therefore, introduce 
 it apologetically. I wrote to the leader, asking a 
 matter-of-fact statement of the ups and downs of the 
 class, that I might use it, if desired, in print. Here 
 is the reply : 
 
 Charleston, S. C, October 16, 1903. 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 I disclaim credit for the success of our train- 
 ing "Circle No. 369." Our pastor, the Rev. E. O. Watson, 
 has been virtually our leader in conducting the meetings of the 
 Circle. He first called the notice of the teachers to the forma- 
 tion of the teacher-training department of our church. He 
 explained its organization and purpose, and called for the 
 names of those who would enter upon the work. Thirteen 
 responded. I was elected leader. From the roll of the teach- 
 ers of the school, by personal appeal, I added five more mem- 
 bers. We had our difficulties. Some were skeptical as to this 
 new movement ; some were elderly people who had not kept 
 in touch with the educational progress of our day ; some were 
 unaccustomed to study ; and others, after beginning, were in- 
 clined to drop out. We had extremes as to age, and I was 
 embarrassed by the fact that the older teachers had known me 
 from infancy, and one had been my teacher. As to how these 
 and other difficulties were met and overcome, I can put it in a 
 single sentence, — by persistently and patiently keeping at it. 
 At our meetings I would carefully watch the various members, 
 then would privately manage to give to the discouraged a word 
 of cheer. With those who seemed indifferent I would en- 
 thusiastically enlarge upon the great opportunity our church 
 was affording us for preparation in the great work we had un- 
 dertaken as teachers. I used all the tact I had, and kept at it 
 at every opportunity. I would tell them how I had studied 
 the course, what notes I had taken, and how I tested my work. 
 I began with eighteen members. Fifteen will receive the full- 
 course diploma of our church, and the remaining members are 
 
Teacher- Trainmg Agencies 65 
 
 yet at work on the first-year course. I lost one member only, 
 — by removal. Most of our members are self-supporting, and 
 find it therefore difficult to meet at night, as we were com- 
 pelled to do. I was much encouraged by the enthusiasm of 
 some of our members, by the timely encouragement and notice 
 of us given in our Teachers' Magazine, and by the fact that 
 the pastor, who is a born leader, used our " Bible studies " as 
 the basis of his prayer-meeting talks. All our work was free, 
 hearty, informal, and conversational. What I did was with 
 the individual members, privately encouraging and persuading 
 them. I believed in the movement with all my heart, and 
 tried to present it to the others as I saw it. 
 
 (Miss) Mary E. Hamlin. 
 
 THE CLASS IN THE SCHOOL 
 
 If I have a training " hobby," it is this, — a class of 
 picked young people in every Sunday-school in train- 
 ing to teach. All else, in its last analysis, is a mere 
 make-shift in solving the vital problem of teacher- 
 training as it now confronts the church. The utiliza- 
 tion of the teachers' -meeting is good if there is 
 nothing else at hand ; the formation of a distinct and 
 independent teachers' trainmg-class is better ; but 
 the class of young people in the Sunday-school under 
 training to become the future teachers of the school 
 is by all tokens the very best. It is the one way to 
 "grow a crop of teachers." Teachers' -meetings 
 come and go, and ebb and flow. Teachers' - classes 
 at best mend existing methods of teaching. The 
 class in the school strikes at the root of the church' s 
 need. All other methods are reformative ; this is 
 essentially formative. My old friend in Illinois. Dr. 
 C. C. Miller, used to cut across my oft-repeated pleas 
 for temporary training expedients with the curt ques- 
 
66 Hoiv to Become a Tj-ained Teacher 
 
 tion, "Why don't you aim directly at the bull's-eye? 
 You are not hitting it with these devices." I knew 
 my critic was right, though I was doing the best I 
 could under adverse conditions. I must go the same 
 round of devices and expedients now, but I realize 
 more than ever that the one sure and satisfactory 
 solution of teacher-training is for every church to put 
 into its every Sunday-school in patient training a class 
 of young people who shall be made ready to teach. 
 
 1 wish I could impart some of the unbounded con- 
 fidence 1 have in this method to the pastors and su- 
 perintendents who may care to read these lines. 
 Already I am finding that it is the one solvent of most 
 of the difficulties in my way as a trainer of teachers. 
 There is an enthusiasm, a docility, often a holy zeal, 
 in youth, that compensates for all other defects. My 
 mail brings me frequently nowadays the cheering in- 
 telligence that, while little could be done here and 
 there to arouse the teachers, a company of ambitious 
 young souls have banded together in the Sunday-school 
 hour, and have begun the study of my church' s train- 
 ing course. A chairman of a state board of public- 
 school examiners saw his opportunity, got together 
 some young people in his Sunday-school, and is my 
 latest correspondent and comforter. In a Sunday or 
 two I am to visit, on invitation, a big school of several 
 hundreds in which the teacher-training work has 
 dragged heavily among its fifty or more teachers ; and 
 the purpose of my visit is to set in motion a training- 
 class of twenty picked young women who are eager 
 to enter upon their two years' course. Years ago I 
 got my first inspiration along this line from a Western 
 
Teacher- Training Agencies 67 
 
 college president, now grown famous, and his super- 
 intendent, now governor of a great state, who jointly 
 entered upon the experiment of growing their own 
 crop of Sunday-school teachers from the devoted 
 young people of the school. I wish I had time and 
 space to tell how they did it, and how much life and 
 vim it finally put into their school. Their "gallery 
 training-class," with outlines on manilla paper and 
 rapid-lire drills, and the pride of its graduates as they 
 came to the end of a long hard course, before a great 
 congregation, is a memory that stirs my heart. Here 
 is a suggestive program for such a class : 
 
 Young People's Training-Class 
 
 Time : The regular Sunday-school hour. 
 
 Place: A separate room, the "gallery," or a convenient 
 corner. 
 
 Membership : Any number of picked young people who 
 " mean business." 
 
 Pledge : To study and complete the course, and then to 
 serve as teachers. 
 
 Leader : The best available. The pastor, if he must teach. 
 
 Traming-Course : Either elementary or advanced. To take 
 the place of the regular lesson study. A two years' course, 
 with graduation and diploma. 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL STUDENT 
 
 I come back at the last to the individual student. 
 Until the various denominations erect severally their 
 training-courses, or the interdenominational associa- 
 tions include all candidates for teaching in their train- 
 ing-classes, the individual student must have a way 
 provided specially for him. Even after all church 
 and general training agencies are in operation there 
 
68 Hoiv to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 will be many who have not access to training-classes, 
 or who prefer to do their training-study individually. 
 Heretofore the individual student has been at a dis- 
 advantage. From the many training-courses and 
 books issuing from the publishers he knew not which 
 to choose. Apart from the few distinct church or 
 associated courses there was no official stamp of rec- 
 ognition or authority upon them. The teacher-train- 
 ing movement generally has been crude and chaotic, 
 and needed classification and unification, to the end 
 that one who was seeking a way to self-training as a 
 Sunday-school teacher might have competent lead- 
 ership and counsel in finding his way. 
 
 Precisely what was needed has been done. In 
 the fall of 1903 the Executive Committee of the 
 International Sunday-School Convention, recognizing 
 the fast-increasing demands of a great field for guid- 
 ance along the lines of teacher-training, appointed a 
 "Committee on Education," clothed with plenary 
 power to help in the solution of all training problems. 
 In the city of Louisville, December 16 and 17, 1903, 
 the committee held its first session, and has issued 
 its first address, which deals chiefly, if not exclu- 
 sively, with the problem of teacher-training. It has 
 "cleared off the brush," not only for the individual 
 student, but for very many training-classes. As its 
 thoroughly efficient helper in the field, its plans will 
 be carried out by Mr. W. C. Pearce, of Chicago, as 
 ' ' International Secretary of Teacher-Training. ' ' Mr. 
 Pearce received his training in Illinois, the avatit- 
 courier among great associations in teacher-training. 
 He afterwards accomplished a great training work in 
 
Teacher- Training Agencies 69 
 
 the city of Chicago as its Sunday-school secretary. It 
 will be his duty and pleasure to assist all who desire 
 assistance in opening up a way towards teacher- 
 training. 
 
 The Committee on Education has already done its 
 work of classification and unification, as its initial 
 report will show. It has given " recognition" to the 
 elementary training-courses now in use. It is fixing 
 the standards for an advanced training-course. It is 
 preparing to issue, through the secretary of teacher- 
 training, its elementary and advanced diplomas to all 
 teacher-training classes and students who meet the 
 requirements of the several recognized courses of 
 study and the standards of the Committee. It will 
 ask and urge all publishers of teachers' periodical 
 helps to erect a teacher-training department for ex- 
 plaining, encouraging, and instituting teacher-training 
 agencies throughout the field, denominationally and 
 interdenominationally. Let the individual student, 
 and all others concerned as to teacher-training, read 
 the action of the Committee as contained in its official 
 paper now before the public, and he will see that a 
 long step has been taken towards solving the problem 
 of Sunday-school teacher-training. 
 
INTERDENOMINATIONAL AND 
 DENOMINATIONAL WORK 
 
VI 
 
 INTERDENOMINATIONAL AND 
 DENOMINATIONAL WORK 
 
 THE CHAUTAUQUA IDEA 
 
 ON A Tuesday evening, August 4, 1874, at Chau- 
 tauqua Lake campground, New York, the first 
 Chautauqua Assembly was convened, with John H. 
 Vincent as Superintendent of Instruction. It was 
 exclusively a "Sunday-school institute protracted to 
 the length of two weeks." It was a great occasion 
 and a great opportunity. Twenty-five states and all 
 leading Protestant denominations were represented. 
 But this was its one year of exclusive teacher-training. 
 The original idea was expanded to include all forms 
 of instruction, secular and religious. 
 
 The first Chautauqua, although it long ago removed 
 its ancient landmarks and has become the Chautau- 
 qua University, in its earlier years was the pioneer in 
 teacher-training, and its "Normal Union" blazed 
 the way for other movements, denominational and in- 
 terdenominational. A few of the hundred or more 
 American Chautauquas continue to hold in honor the 
 old idea of helping the Sunday-school teacher, nota- 
 bly among these the mother Chautauqua in the East, 
 and the Winona Assembly in the West ; but with 
 most of them it is within bounds to say that teacher- 
 training is a mere incident, and that the ratio of their 
 expenditure for popular entertainment to their expen- 
 
 73 
 
74 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 diture for teacher-training is a hundred dollars to one. 
 The change has not come from lack of appreciation 
 or patronage of Sunday-school workers, but chiefly 
 from considerations of a commercial nature. Popular 
 entertainment is a better dividend payer, and teacher- 
 training, so far as related to the average present- 
 day Chautauqua, is practically a lost opportunity. 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL ASSOCIATION IDEA 
 
 Within fifteen years the teacher-training movement 
 largely passed from the Chautauqua to the inter- 
 denominational Sunday-school Association. An inci- 
 dent to the former, it is now the chief concern of the 
 latter, as it is changing from formative to educational 
 conditions. To these associations is largely due the 
 credit of the present widespread revival of interest in 
 teacher-training. What the Chautauquas failed to do 
 these are doing in ail parts of the great International 
 Sunday-school field. Of the fifty or more associa- 
 tions of the United States and Canada — state, provin- 
 cial, and territorial — most of them have instituted 
 teacher-training departments and courses of study. 
 The number of their enrolled students runs up into 
 tens of thousands, and their graduates are to be 
 counted by the thousands. One state has an "Alumni 
 Association " of more than three thousand graduates. 
 By a few of these associations training speciaHsts 
 have been employed, and departments thoroughly 
 and systematically maintained. In all of them, so far, 
 the courses of study operated are substantially ele- 
 mentary, and the standards of study and recognition 
 are generally lax. 
 
Interdenominational aiid Denominational 75 
 
 Yet despite the chaotic conditions under which the 
 work has largely been done, together with faulty 
 methods and incapable leadership, a great and wide- 
 spread teacher-training work has been quietly done. 
 Noting this fact, and yielding to the insistent appeals 
 of Sunday-school leaders for a more clearly defined 
 and unified system of teacher- training, a "Committee 
 on Educadon " and an International secretary of 
 teacher-training were appointed in 1903 by the Execu- 
 tive Committee of the International Sunday-school 
 Convention, to whom the matter of teacher-training 
 was specially committed. At the first session of the 
 committee, held at Louisville, Kentucky, December 
 16 and 17, 1903, the entire field of teacher- training 
 was reviewed and considered ; reports from Secretary 
 Pearce were received ; a uniform standard for elemen- 
 tary study and graduation was erected, and an ele- 
 mentary International diploma provided for future 
 graduates ; a committee was appointed to fix the 
 standards for an advanced courseof study and diploma, 
 and a list of associations now doing satisfactory ele- 
 mentary work was formally approved. This list of 
 associations, together with other acdon by the com- 
 mittee, has been made public in the formal "Ad- 
 dress" of the Committee on Education, copies of 
 which may be procured from Secretary W. C. Pearce, 
 132 La Salle Street, Chicago. Mr. Pearce has already 
 entered fully and enthusiastically upon his great work. 
 Trained in Illinois under the eyes of the two Jacobses, 
 later doing a great teacher- training work in Chicago, 
 he comes thoroughly equipped into his difficult and 
 responsible position, and will heartily serve the thou- 
 
76 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 sands of teachers and young people who are seeking 
 a way to become the trained workers of the great 
 International field. 
 
 Of the twenty-six associations whose training plans 
 and courses of study were officially "approved" by 
 the Committee on Education, Illinois is easily fore- 
 most, as it was first in the teacher-training field. Its 
 normal department was organized in 1888, and its 
 success has largely been due to the insistence of 
 General Secretary W. B. Jacobs and the thoroughness 
 of institute work in all the counties of the state. Its 
 graduates now number 3, 333. Ohio, under Colonel 
 Robert Cowden, a veteran teacher trainer ; Pennsyl- 
 vania and Massachusetts in the East ; Kansas, Iowa, 
 and Michigan in the Middle West ; Kentucky in the 
 South ; Califcrniainthe Far West ; Nova Scotia, New 
 Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba in Canada, — take 
 rank next to Illinois in their years of teacher-training 
 service, the thoroughness of their plans of work, and 
 the numbers who have received recognition as gradu- 
 ates from their respective departments. Although the 
 movement among the associations ebbs and flows in 
 interest and power, under changing leadership, yet 
 year by year the writer has noted how more and more 
 deeply it has rooted itself as an integral and vital part 
 of the finest interdenominational Sunday-school work. 
 
 THE CITY TRAINING INSTITUTE 
 
 More than a score of the greater American cities 
 within ten years have successfully conducted extensive 
 campaigns of house-to-house visitation. Some of 
 these campaigns were remarkable for the skill with 
 
Interdenominatiojial mid Denominational 77 
 
 which they were phmned and conducted, and for the 
 results achieved. They gave conchisive proof of the 
 practicability of uniting the entire religious forces of 
 a great city into one great movement. Very few of 
 these cities as yet have entered the training -field, 
 although the city has conditions peculiarly favorable 
 to the maintenance of teacher- training plans. Its 
 compact populadon, material facilities, its massing of 
 religious and educational leadership, especially the 
 readiness and spirit of its workers and the usually ad- 
 vanced state of its Sunday-school work, should open 
 a way to the establishment in every city of a perma- 
 nent teacher-training institute. 
 
 From the signs about me I venture the opinion that 
 this will be the next step in Sunday-school progress. 
 Washington, District of Columbia, has for several 
 years been the headquarters of the American Society 
 of Religious Educadon, under the direction of J. E. 
 Gilbert, D. D., long prominent in training work. 
 Boston, which maintains the best "superintendents' 
 unions" in the land, has, so far, no concerted teacher- 
 training system. Philadelphia recendy organized an 
 elaborate Insdtute of Teacher -Training, with weekly 
 lectures by a faculty of six men of unusual ability, 
 and an official course of study with graduation and 
 diploma. How far its well-laid plans have succeeded 
 I have not learned. New York City has its Bible 
 Teachers' Training School, erected upon an almost 
 ideal plan, devoUng five periods of one hour each on 
 Friday afternoons to an appointed course of study 
 under some of the distinguished specialists of that 
 city. Chicago is the center of the Religious Educa- 
 
78 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 tion Association, the most recent organization for the 
 promotion of religious education. With more than a 
 score of departments, a membership of many distin- 
 guished ministers and educational leaders in annual 
 convention, much should be expected of this body in 
 helpfulness to Sunday-school teachers. 
 
 The trouble with the cities has been that their plans 
 have usually been too elaborate and high pitched. 
 The lecture method without text, weighty courses on 
 psychology, and critical discussions of the Bible, are 
 beyond the mass of plain Sunday-school workers, 
 however profitable to advanced students. Whatever 
 is done in the cities in ways of teacher-training must, 
 in the beginning at least, be very simple and imme- 
 diately helpful, or it will not touch the rank and file. 
 
 The most successful city experiment 1 have known 
 began in Chicago in 1901, under Mr. W. C. Pearce, 
 then Sunday-school secretary of Cook County. With 
 a purely elementary course of study he organized his 
 first training class, with an enrolment of two hundred 
 students drawn from many schools, and maintained 
 for six months of the year. In 1902, with four classes 
 in the four sections of the city, there were often one 
 thousand students in attendance. These students, as 
 they were graduated, in turn organized training classes 
 of young people in their respective Sunday-schools. 
 The sessions of Mr. Pearce' s classes were divided be- 
 tween the study of the training-course and the next 
 Sunday's regular lesson. Out of these classes have 
 already come hundreds of graduates. The very sim- 
 plicity of the system, with the elementary quality of 
 the work required, made it at once popular and ef- 
 
Inte7'denominational and Deriominational 79 
 
 fective. Now that the International Convention has 
 erected a teacher-training department, and appointed 
 this same leader as its secretary, a forward movement 
 may be looked for in other cities. 
 
 AMONG THE DENOMINATIONS 
 
 In the order of evolution denominational training 
 work comes last, and, by the same sign, is, or ought 
 to be, best. It is the survival of the fittest. Thus 
 far the work among the denominations is largely ten- 
 tative and experimental. Its most hopeful feature 
 is in the widespread interest aroused among all the 
 churches. Even such denominations as have made 
 no beginning are frank to confess through their Sun- 
 day-school leaders that they greatly need and desire 
 the introduction of some plan of teacher-training. 
 The denominations whose polity is " connectional" 
 have more easily instituted their plans, but those of 
 congregational autonomy are finding a way to broad 
 denominational systems. The Christian, or Disciples, 
 Church, at its convention in Detroit, in 1903, after 
 mature consideration, appointed a strong committee to 
 devise and direct a system of training for its teachers. 
 Two years ago the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 
 by the reorganization of its Sunday-school management, 
 made practicable and imminent the establishment of 
 a general plan of teacher-training, in place of the 
 synodical plans already partly in operation. The 
 Southern Presbyterian Church is not yet officially in 
 the field of teacher-training, but I have the assurance 
 of its capable superintendent of Sunday-school work 
 that this will be its next forward step. The Presby- 
 
8o How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 byterian Church and the Presbyterian Church of 
 Canada are both actively and thoroughly enlisted. 
 The former, under the leadership of Dr. Worden, 
 began a good work years ago, and is now centering its 
 training efforts upon the organization in every Sunday- 
 school of a training-class of young people. Nearly a 
 thousand of its schools are thus taking part. The 
 Canadian Presbyterians, profiting by the blunders 
 and successes of other churches, erected, in 1902, a 
 system nearly faultless in its details, that is already 
 becoming a power in that church. For thoroughly 
 good work, carefulness of supervision, and ability of 
 the men in charge, the Canadian Presbyterians are 
 easily leading the way. The Congregationalists have 
 not a general plan, uniform and authoritative, but in 
 many ways and throughout their entire communion 
 are emphasizing and enforcing the training of their 
 teachers. Dr. Dunning and his "Bible Studies" 
 and Institutes have for many years been an important 
 factor in the training work, not only of Congrega- 
 tionalism, but of other Protestant bodies. 
 
 The Baptist Church, with its millions of members 
 and aggressive Sunday-school spirit, is yet to organize 
 and unify its training work. Much has been done 
 through its staff of missionaries by way of institutes, 
 conventions, and normal classes under the skilful 
 leadership of such men as Blackall, Spilman, and 
 others ; but it is the sincere hope of the writer at least 
 that this great and progressive denomination will 
 overcome whatever difficulties inhere in its autonomy, 
 and erect a teacher-training system for its host of 
 workers. 
 
Iiitcrdenoininational mid Dcnomi7iatioiial 8i 
 
 The Methodist Episcopal Church, great also in 
 numbers and in achievement, gave Vincent, Hurlbut, 
 and other pioneers to sow the seed the fruits of which 
 all churches are now ready to harvest. For a time 
 the training work, begun officially in 1868 by Vin- 
 cent, intermitted, or was merged into the Chautauqua 
 movement. During the past quadrennium, however, 
 there has been a notable revival under Dr. T. B. 
 Neely, the head of its Sunday-school department. 
 Nine chosen trainers are now in the field of that 
 church, and the "People's Bible Institute" has 
 been set in operation for the organization of training 
 "centers" or branches in all communities and Sun- 
 day-schools, 
 
 The Church of England in Canada has done much 
 to further the work of teacher-training, especially in 
 the Diocese of Nova Scotia, where there has been the 
 most co-operation from the churches. There are 931 
 teachers in the diocese, and 62 now hold the diocesan 
 diploma as a result of two examinations, and another 
 examination will be held in May, 1904. Hurlbut' s 
 Revised Normal Lessons is the text-book in use. 
 
WHAT SOUTHERN METHODISM IS DOING 
 
VII 
 
 WHAT SOUTHERN METHODISM IS DOING 
 
 THE FIRST STEPS 
 
 1HAVE no apology for this exposition of what 
 Southern Methodism is doing in teacher-train- 
 ing ways. An object lesson is better than a study of , 
 abstractions, and the actual methods of one de- 
 nomination should be interesting and profitable to 
 others. 
 
 A beginning was made in 1901. Dr. James At- 
 kins, Sunday-school editor and chairman of the Gene- 
 ral Sunday-school Board, was, and is, the aggressive 
 head of the Sunday-school department of the church. 
 The idea of erecting a teacher-training department, as 
 thorough and modern as it could be made, was wholly 
 his. In the work of bringing this to pass he was cor- 
 dially helped by our Book Committee and by such 
 men as John R. Pepper and others. Considering the 
 conservatism of the South in all religious matters, and 
 the dependency of Methodism upon General Confer- 
 ence legislation, it was a bold and somewhat perilous 
 undertaking upon the part of an officer and his Board 
 to depart from the traditions of a department, and 
 project a far-reaching and expensive movement, in 
 the expectation that later General Conference action 
 would confirm and adopt it. It is proof at once of 
 the wisdom of the Sunday-school editor and the pro- 
 found interest of Southern Methodism in Sunday- 
 
 85 
 
86 How to Beco7Ji€ a Trained Teacher 
 
 school matters that this expectation was abundantly 
 confirmed. 
 
 When the General Conference of the church met in 
 Dallas in 1902, a year after the movement was ten- 
 tatively begun, the episcopal address strongly urged 
 the permanent adoption of the movement, and of the 
 hundreds of votes taken upon the question not one 
 was negative. The teacher-training plans were per- 
 manently included in the book of Discipline, the 
 quadrennial appointment of a superintendent of train- 
 ing work was authorized, and upon all pastors it was 
 made mandatory "as far as practicable to organize 
 the Bible Teachers' Study Circle in their respective 
 charges. ' ' 
 
 Partly, perhaps, because I was born into this church, 
 but chiefly for the reason that my life work had been 
 along the lines of teacher-training, I was called to 
 the newly created office, and put in charge of a 
 movement without precedent or landmark, so far 
 as I could ascertain. I wrote to the heads of most 
 of the American Sunday-school departments before 
 entering upon my office, in the hope that I might 
 be guided by their teacher - training experiences. 
 Their prompt and kindly replies assured me that in 
 name only, but not in actual achievement, did such 
 departments here and there exist. I make special 
 note of this information as I gathered it early in 1901, 
 for the reason that it became plain to me at the time 
 that Southern Methodism was fairly entitled to what- 
 ever honor belongs to the real pioneer in the field of 
 denominational teacher - training, as the first great 
 church in America or in the world to erect and main- 
 
W/iai Sonther7i Methodism is Doing 87 
 
 tain an exclusive teacher-training department, for- 
 mally enacted by its law-makers, directed by a 
 specialist, and conducted after approved modern 
 educational principles and methods. I think this 
 claim is already allowed by those who know the 
 facts of Sunday-school history, but I remember the 
 story of Columbus and the egg, and I beg pardon 
 for saying that this particular egg was the first to 
 stand on end. 
 
 PLAN OF WORK 
 
 The office of the Superintendent of Training Work 
 is in the Nashville publishing house of the church, 
 along with its other general departments. The de- 
 partment of training is a part of, and under the gene- 
 ral administration of, the Sunday-school Board. The 
 superintendent of training is accorded rank with the 
 connectional or general officers of the church, and, 
 whether by bishops, pastors, or the church in general, 
 is in no wise made to suffer in honor or privilege. 
 Indeed, from the first, carte bhmche has been given 
 to the training superintendent to formulate his own 
 plans, provide all proper hterature, construct his own 
 itineraries, and in all matters pertaining to his depart- 
 ment to plan according to his own judgment. Left 
 free to invent and follow out his own plans, he is 
 held responsible for results only. I take pains to 
 state this explicitly to the credit of the church, and as 
 a hint to the leaders of other denominations. Only 
 when teacher-training is given high place in the legis- 
 lation and administration of a church will it be rightly 
 esteemed by ministry and laity. 
 
88 Ho%v to Become a Traijied Teacher 
 
 Two general duties are assigned by our book of 
 Discipline to the office of superintendent of training 
 work, — to ' ' conduct the Bible Teachers' Study Circle ' ' 
 and to "hold institutes or conventions" auxiliary 
 thereto. The latter duty is a vital one. It means 
 practically the spending of three-fourths of the year 
 in the field among the forty-six Conferences of the 
 church, and the holding of very many meetings of 
 Sunday-school officers and teachers in the larger 
 cities and towns. While the programs of these meet- 
 ings include all current Sunday-school questions, 
 their chief purpose is to plant and cultivate the 
 "Teachers' Study Circle." At one such meeting in 
 Texas, for instance, I had five hundred delegates 
 from a large Conference at the opening session. In 
 many of my Conferences these institutes have already 
 become annual events, provided and paid for by 
 Conference Sunday-school Boards, and conducted by 
 the Superintendent of Training Work. In the greater 
 cities I am organizing permanent Methodist Sunday- 
 school unions, which center upon the new training 
 movement. Louisville, St. Louis, Dallas^ Nashville, 
 Atlanta, are among these cities. In one of these 
 cities 1 have just closed an annual "Workers' 
 Conference," which filled to overtlowing a large 
 auditorium for five consecutive nights, in which 
 the "Circle" training plans were illustrated and 
 enforced. 
 
 Not only among the laity, but before all ministerial 
 gatherings, is the work presented. In Annual and 
 District Conferences, in stated and special meetings of 
 pastors, the training work is given prominence by 
 
What SoutJieni Methodism is Doing 89 
 
 bishops, Conference boards, and presiding elders, by 
 way of Conference anniversaries and "pastors' insti- 
 tutes." While here and there I find a few of these 
 men of the cloth who hold under suspicion a depar- 
 ture from traditional Sunday-school ways, or who so 
 magnify the preaching function as to neglect other 
 ministerial responsibilities, I think I can say truly 
 that ninety per cent of our more than five thousand 
 effective pastors are in accord with the training work 
 of the church. I fully realize that its success de- 
 pends largely, if not wholly, upon this ministerial 
 co-operation ; and I therefore never fail to set my 
 cause before a meeting of preachers, and to urge 
 their support in organizing and caring for the local 
 Circles. It has been my chief encouragement during 
 the two years of my service that pastors are always 
 strongly in evidence at my institutes, and many of 
 them are, in fact, leaders of their local Circles. I 
 have been further encouraged by the significant 
 fact that our one theological school, the Vanderbilt 
 University Theological Department, by which hun- 
 dreds of our young pastors are being equipped, re- 
 cently unanimously elected me as its Sunday-school 
 lecturer. 
 
 THE TRAINING COURSE 
 
 The "Bible Teachers' Study Circle" comprises 
 seven little books, averaging one hundred and fifty 
 pages, six of these books constituting the course for 
 teachers and seven for officers. I cannot do better 
 than to give here, in form, the pith of a little leaflet 
 which issues from my office in tens of thousands. 
 
90 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 BIBLE TEACHERS' STUDY CIRCLE 
 
 First Course 
 The books of the first course, in cloth, three in number, at 
 ^i per set, postpaid, or 50 cents each, are as follows : 
 
 "Sunday-School History and Method," Cunnyngham. 
 History and method brought down to date. 
 
 " Sunday-School Teacher," HamilL 
 A practical book on teaching. 
 
 " Bible Studies," Dunning. 
 A masterpiece of Bible study. 
 
 Final Course 
 The three books of the second, or final, course, in cloth, at 
 ^i per set, or 50 cents each, are as follows : 
 
 " History of Methodism " (revised), Boswell. 
 The very pith and essence of general Methodist history 
 
 " Our Doctrine and Polity," Atkins and Tillett. 
 A most timely and helpful book. 
 
 "The Bible and its Books," HamiU. 
 A brief story of our Bible, and study of its several books. 
 
 Special for Sunday-School Officers 
 The seventh and last book of the course, for officers only^ is 
 
 "The Organized Sunday-School," Axtell. 
 The best book on Sunday-school management that has yet appeared. 
 
 Price, 40 cents, postpaid. 
 
 It is worth noting, as to the above list of books, 
 that they are all small in volume and condensed in 
 matter, and are sold to our students at a minimum 
 profit ; that they include five lines of Sunday-school 
 training, — namely, Sunday-school history and method, 
 teaching, Bible study. Church history and doctrine, 
 and Sunday-school management. Five of the seven 
 books were specially written for the Circle. The 
 omission of a book on child study in the regular 
 
9i 
 
 teachers' course above is provided for by allowing 
 optional study oi Black's " Practical Primary Plans" 
 to all primary teachers. Provision is also made by 
 the General Board for constant and exclusive ser- 
 vice, in all institutes and conventions, ot an expert 
 primary instructor. 
 
 HONORING OUR GRADUATES 
 
 The first books were issued two years ago. Ten 
 thousand students are now enrolled in my office, 
 constituting six hundred and fifty local Circles, which 
 range in membership from three or four to fifty stu- 
 dents, in every part of our church territory. I have 
 Circles at work in Mexico and Japan, and the books 
 are beginning to be translated into other languages 
 for use of foreign students. Each local Circle has one 
 officer only, the "Circle leader," who is the inter- 
 mediary between my office and his Circle, and who 
 directs the student, applies to my office for examina- 
 tion questions when his Circle is ready, conducts the 
 examinations, forwards the papers to me to be graded, 
 and receives in return the diplomas of the church. 
 
 This leader is often the superintendent or pastor. 
 No time limit is set for completing the course, though 
 the Board advises two years as a minimum. The 
 examinations are not '* upon honor," but under care- 
 ful local supervision, and must be attested as "fair 
 and honest" by leader and student. As soon as a 
 Circle completes a book, and is examined upon it, 
 the study of the next book in prescribed order is en- 
 tered upon. Whenever a Circle graduates from the 
 full course, a special local graduating or " recognition 
 
92 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 service" is enjoined, and is becoming adopted. At 
 the annual conferences, in all institutes, in the teach- 
 
 ers' magazine of our church, the names and records 
 of all Circle students who graduate are given honor. 
 
What Southern Methodism is Doing 93 
 
 At the Holston Conference Sunday-school anniversary 
 recently, all graduates of the previous year were given 
 place upon the platform, and were the subjects of a 
 fine address by one of the chief officers of the church. 
 Already several hundred partial and full-course diplo- 
 mas have been issued to graduates, and the movement 
 is quietly but surely rooting itself deeply in the minds 
 and hearts of the ministry and laity of the church. 
 Our bishops heartily favor it, many presiding elders 
 zealously seek to promote it, most of our pastors are 
 becoming sincerely interested in it, and our teachers 
 and young people are steadily falling into line. I 
 think this is a fair statement of the case, without 
 •* colour of rose." I can see unmistakable signs of a 
 yet wider and deeper movement, which will extend, 
 through specialists now in training and yet to be 
 trained, into each Conference territory, what I am now, 
 to the full measure of my strength, trying to do for the 
 entire church. Within a few years our training work 
 will demand a score or more of our best young men, 
 equipped and appointed to serve as training superin- 
 tendents within the several Conferences. Incidentally 
 I may say, for the encouragement of other denomi- 
 nations, that the demand upon our church pubhsh- 
 ing houses for Sunday-school literature, books, ap- 
 pliances, etc., has greatly increased, and that the 
 training movement in Southern Methodism, from a 
 financial point of view, is more than paying its way. 
 
A SPECIMEN TEACHER-TRAINING COURSE 
 
VIII 
 
 A SPECIMEN TEACHER-TRAINING COURSE 
 Blackboard Outline 
 
 THE LESSON 
 
 HALF-HOUR. 
 
 I. Getting Ready : 
 
 O. T 
 
 .. C. G.. C. S.. A. B. C. 
 
 , II. Testing. 
 
 
 III. Teaching. 
 
 Attention. 
 Home study. 
 Thought. 
 
 
 Plan. 
 
 Matter. 
 
 Method. 
 
 IV. Reviewing. 
 
 
 V. Applying. 
 
 Every Sunday. 
 By the scholar. 
 Orderly and accurate 
 
 Knowledge. 
 
 Prayer. 
 
 The Holy Spirit, 
 
 DRIVING A NAIL 
 
 TEACHING is like driving a nail. You have often 
 heard of "driving the truth home," which is a 
 figure of the carpenter and his work. One can 
 learn to drive a nail, and any one can learn to teach. 
 Teaching is an art, and can be mastered like stenog- 
 raphy, or bookbinding, or housekeeping, or any one 
 of the industrial arts. It takes time and patience, 
 but final success is as sure as in other arts. There 
 are few "born" teachers. They are as rare as the 
 born musicians and artists and poets. Most of those 
 who have become eminent as teachers in secular and 
 religious education are self-made teachers. They 
 learned how, — by observation, by practice, by hard 
 
 97 
 
98 How to Becojne a Trained Teacher 
 
 study. They were bunglers at beginning, and came 
 to success by finding out their blunders and making 
 them stepping-stones to higher success. Shake- 
 speare's words might be paraphrased to fit the case : 
 "Some are born to teach ; some have teaching thrust 
 upon them ; but most teachers achieve teaching." 
 
 The ' ' lesson half-hour ' ' is the crux of the Sunday- 
 school teacher. It is the supreme test of his work. 
 Out of a whole week he has thirty golden minutes in 
 which to teach the greatest and hardest of all books, 
 often to boys and girls who never hear of it outside 
 the Sunday-school class. Every minute of the thirty, 
 every step of the teacher in that half-hour, is weighty 
 with responsibility. There is a right way to begin it, 
 there are right methods to use in putting the lesson 
 before the class, and there is a right way to bring that 
 half-hour to an end. If teaching is indeed an art, 
 and if any one of you can learn it, you have the right 
 to ask me : " How should I begin, and continue, and 
 close ? How can I use the short half-hour to best 
 advantage ? What are the points that a teacher must 
 steadily keep in mind while teaching ? What steps, 
 and in what order, must I take in setting forth a Sun- 
 day-school lesson ?" I shall try to make answer. I 
 have put in outline on my blackboard five steps. No 
 lesson can be truly taught without taking these five 
 distinct steps. No step of the five can be omitted, if the 
 lesson half-hour is to be effective and complete. 
 Leave out a bone or artery of the body, and it is like 
 the teacher who omits any one of the steps I indicate. 
 Read with me these successive steps of the lesson 
 half-hour: "Getting Ready," "Testing," "Teach- 
 
A specimen Teacher -Traini7ig Course 99 
 
 ing, " " Reviewing, " " Applying. ' ' Let us take them 
 in order. 
 
 GETTING READY 
 
 The one who gets ready to do a thing is likely to do 
 it. The one who "gets ready" for business is in 
 demand among business men. The engineer who 
 gets ready his engine — every bolt, valve, and flue in 
 order — is the man I like to ride behind on a journey. 
 The lesson half-hour means only confusion and waste 
 to the teacher who is not ready for it. I have given 
 four points that the teacher viiist make ready if he is 
 to make good use of his half-hour. They come before 
 that half-hour begins. What is the first? (O. T.) 
 That is old-fashioned and commonplace, but I assure 
 you no teacher ever did, or ever will, succeed who dis- 
 regards it. It stands for " On Time," which means, 
 to the teacher, full ten minutes ahead of time. It is 
 useless for a teacher to expect success who neglects 
 the things that make success. The promptness of a 
 teacher, I have noted for many years, is the sure 
 prophecy of his success. The teacher who comes at 
 the last minute comes mentally and spiritually out of 
 sorts, irritable and irritating. His battle is lost in 
 the first five minutes. He might have preoccupied 
 the mischievous spirits of his class, and made an 
 orderly beginning, but his late coming has lost the 
 day's victory. Coming O. T., he should give to his 
 scholars that " C-ordial G-reeting" which every 
 teacher owes to his boys and girls, some of whom, I 
 am sorry to say, know little of cordial greetings in the 
 home. What a strange forgetfulness is that of the 
 
loo How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 teacher who fails to give a hearty hand-shake and word 
 of welcome to the little fellows who would be so glad 
 to get it, and who would be disarmed of mischief by 
 it? You cannot always control the " C. S.," which 
 stands for "comfortable surroundings," but under 
 the worst physical conditions you can mass the class 
 about you, putting them where they can hear you and 
 see you face to face. I believe in the hypnotic 
 power of the eye, and I always keep my eyes busy in 
 teaching. I believe also in teaching at short range, 
 and I make the radii between me and the class as 
 short as possible. If I have one boy more mischievous 
 than another, I take pains to place him closest to me, 
 so that I can rest my hand — lovingly — upon him. 
 
 What is the "A. B. C." of the Sunday-school 
 teacher ? It is simply this : Putting all lesson- 
 leaves aside, laying down in the pew everything but 
 the one book, the Bible, and then throughout the 
 half-hour teaching eye to eye, face to face, heart to 
 heart,— A. B. C, "All Books Closed." It is the 
 beginning of the alphabet of teaching, and until you 
 are willing to do this, or at least patiently to attempt 
 it, you might as well give over the hope of success. 
 Learn to "shoot without a rest," if you expect ever 
 to become an expert marksman. 
 
 TESTING 
 
 The second step is testing. You are ready now to 
 take up the day's lesson. Your coming on time, 
 your kindly welcome to your scholars, your plans for 
 a comfortable hour, your thorough knowledge of what 
 you are to teach, put you at ease, and make you 
 
A Specimen Teacher -Training Course loi 
 
 master of the situation. What am I to test ? First, 
 attention. I might say first and last, as the test of 
 attention must run throughout every moment of the 
 lesson, you cannot begin or continue or conclude a 
 lesson without it. The teacher's knowledge is only 
 one-half the circle. The other half is the scholar's 
 attention. Resolve that you will not teach without it. 
 Do everything possible to secure it. Make any sacri- 
 fice to get it. Hold every member of your class re- 
 sponsible for every part of the lesson. Never begin 
 teaching in the least disorder. Never continue a 
 moment after inattention sets in. Give the scholar 
 who is wandering something to do. Ply him with 
 questions. Be ready to spring a surprise upon any 
 one who turns away his mind or face. Don' t fret or 
 worry or scold. Never ask for attention. Determine, 
 by God's help, that you will have it, and methods 
 will rise up when needed. 
 
 Test the home study. Remember that most schol- 
 ars are lacking in parental help at home, and that 
 thirty minutes a week is all too little for their Bible 
 study. Plan for home study. Take every lesson to 
 pieces a week in advance, and give out the parts to 
 scholars. Show them precisely what you wish them 
 to do in the home. Pledge them to read the lesson 
 over in the home. Show them how to use lesson-leaf 
 and Bible together in learning a lesson. Let them 
 understand that you expect home study. Begin by 
 questioning upon it in the lesson half-hour. No 
 matter how often the reply comes, " I don't know," 
 or " I have not studied it," keep up your opening 
 fire of questions every Sunday, and assume that they 
 
I02 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 have studied. This is what the trained public school 
 teacher does, and this is why " leaves " and "helps*' 
 are never seen in the secular lesson half-hour. Every 
 influence that can be called into use is made to press 
 upon the scholar to secure his study at home. 
 
 Test the thought of your scholars. Plan your 
 questions to make them think. Do not lecture them. 
 The lecture method may do for the college class- 
 room, though I have my doubts about it. Certainly 
 it is not for Sunday-school boys and girls. They need 
 simple thought-provoking questions upon the text of 
 the lesson. Take verse by verse, and draw out from 
 them, each according to his ability, what the text 
 says and what it means. Do not think for them. 
 Give them time to think for themselves. Better let 
 a boy or girl wrestle five minutes over a word or sen- 
 tence of the text, and finally get at it, than for the 
 teacher to fill him with a mass of knowledge he can- 
 not digest. The best teaching in the world is that 
 which compels the learner to do his own thinking. 
 
 TEACHING 
 
 Your opening test of home study, your constant test 
 of attention and thought, open the way for your plan 
 of the day's teaching. I need not urge that there 
 must be a " plan " to every lesson, yet I often come 
 upon aimless, chaotic, disjointed Sunday-school 
 teaching, abounding in knowledge and illustration, 
 but without form, and void. Your danger will be try- 
 ing to use bodily the plans of the great lesson-writers 
 and papers without fitting them to your smaller need. 
 I believe in a home-made plan for every teacher. 
 
A Specimen Teacher -Traming Course 103 
 
 When Saturday night comes, you should have a 
 home-spun plan of what you are to teach, what things 
 in the lesson are of vital account, how the lesson 
 should begin and close, especially how it should be 
 fitted to your scholars. 
 
 As to the matter of your teaching, that must depend 
 upon your class. The less of the abstract and the 
 more of the concrete you can put into your teaching 
 of boys and girls the better. Leave ' ' ologies ' ' and 
 "doctrines" to the seniors, where they will harm least. 
 I have known scarcely a lesson in twenty-five years 
 that did not have in it in plain sight some one 
 great practical truth that I could make the nucleus of 
 my lesson plan, and fit it to my boys or girls. One 
 such truth — and you will usually find the key to it in 
 the Golden Text — is enough for the lesson half-hour. 
 Settle upon that, bend everything to it, go over it again 
 and again, make it the heart of the day' s teaching, 
 and put your whole heart into it. As to a method of 
 teaching I have little to say. Any method that drives 
 the truth home is right. I change methods as I 
 change my clothing. If I see a good method I bor- 
 row it, and use it, and then throw it away. Only do not 
 use adult methods on children, or conversely. I have 
 found nothing so good for boys and girls as the old 
 Socratic method of the question and answer. 
 
 REVIEWING 
 
 So far, your teaching has aimed at imparting, but 
 that is only half your work. You can never know 
 from your own point of view as the teacher whether 
 the scholar' s learning has kept pace with you. You 
 
lo4 How to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 must prove your teaching. No lesson is complete 
 until the teacher knows that what he has taught the 
 scholar has surely learned. If every teacher would 
 apply this test to his work, his teaching would grow 
 in simplicity and power. The old Jesuits understood 
 it. It was "line upon line, precept upon precept," 
 with them. They never let up until what they had 
 set out to teach had been thoroughly learned. There- 
 fore, review every Sunday. Review especially all 
 hard lessons until they become easy. Do not do this 
 reviewing yourself. Let it come from your scholars, 
 one by one. Give each a part in it. Only what a 
 scholar can "tell back" does he know. Take noth- 
 ing for granted. Let the scholar' s review or restate- 
 ment of the lesson, or of some part of it, be as 
 orderly and accurate as he can make it. Truth, in or- 
 der to be retained and used readily and with profit, 
 must be after an orderly plan, and exact in statement. 
 Do not be discouraged if the review by the scholar 
 seems slow and bungling. It is vastly better so as a 
 test of his learning and a proof of your teaching, than 
 any possible re-viewing you could do for him. 
 
 APPLYING 
 
 The last step — not always last in time — is applying 
 the lesson. It is rather applying that which is vital, 
 spiritual, and most profitable in it, to your class. The 
 hardest thing I have to do is finding what and how to 
 apply this one soul-saving truth. I can never come 
 to it until by hard study I have a full knowledge of 
 the lesson. I do not believe one can get at it by any- 
 other way than first by hard study. Certainly God will 
 
A Specimen Teacher- Training Course 105 
 
 not unlock the Bible to laggards and ignoramuses. 
 But I find that I need to know also my boys and girls, 
 or how can I apply the truth, after I have found it, to 
 those whom I do not know or understand ? And 
 when I have studied my lesson the best my conditions 
 as a teacher allowed, and have learned also to know, 
 without and within, my Sunday-school scholars, there 
 is just one thing more I must do — last and greatest 
 and most needy it is — before I can truly and wisely 
 apply the truth of God to human souls. I must go to 
 my closet and pi'ay. God forbid that I go before my 
 boys and girls except from bended knee. "From 
 closet to class." When I have done ail else, then, 
 and not until then, will the Holy Spirit own and bless 
 my lesson half-hour. 
 
 DRIVING A NAIL 
 
 How is this teaching like driving a nail ? I have 
 
 here a good, big, strong (nail). I took pains to 
 
 get ready as fine a nail as the hardware man could 
 give me. Getting ready the nail is the first step, — it 
 is coming on time, making welcome your class, know- 
 ing your lesson so that you can teach (all books closed). 
 
 What is the next thing a carpenter does with his 
 nail ? He sets it. He tests point and position and 
 wood in setting it. He does not try to drive it head 
 down. So the teacher must test the scholar as he 
 drives his teaching nail. 
 
 After getting his nail and setting his nail, the car- 
 penter drives his nail. Driving the nail is the direct 
 teaching of the lesson. I drive one nail, one point, 
 at a time. I drive it blow on blow, which is question 
 
lo6 Hoiv to Become a Trained Teacher 
 
 on question. I do not try to push it to place by main 
 force, — which is the lecture method. 
 
 And when I have driven my teaching nail, I must 
 then prove it. I must turn my board about, and see 
 if the point of the nail has gone home. Do you see 
 the point? 
 
 Last comes the cliiiching of my nail. Get it, set it, 
 drive it, prove it, but do not fail to have it clinched. 
 Some one else must do that for you. Your study and 
 knowledge and prayer will help, but at the last it is 
 only the Holy Ghost who can clinch the truth as you 
 drive it home to the mind and heart of the scholar. 
 
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