By Lucy H. M. Soulsby, of the Manor House School, Brondesbury Park. N.W., late Head Mistress of Oxford High School.

Many girls leave college with a vague idea that they had better take up teaching, because it is the only way of earning a livelihood for which they are in the least prepared. Unfortunately their preparation, too often, consists merely in having been taught themselves. Having eaten dinners is some preparation for the career of a cook, but not much; and these young teachers may perhaps find an educational cookery-book useful! The comparison does not hold good altogether, for almost every woman has the instinct of motherhood in her, which makes her more or less a born teacher, while it is only a few who are born cooks. Still, every young woman finds help in talking to an older one, who has had the same work, made probably the same mistakes, and has found a practical way out of them. We all value practical experience; what else is training but practical experience systematised? But it is not every young teacher who has an experienced friend at hand, or who can afford to be regularly trained. It is hoped that this book may be, in printed form, such talk as she would welcome had she an experienced friend at hand.

The self-education of the teacher should include (a) Mental leisure.The high pressure at which most people live is not favourable to much individual thought. A girl at college may well feel that her three years there are the great opportunity of her life for taking in the ideas of living leaders of thought, and for making friends with her equals. She is hardly to be blamed if every moment of her day is occupied with hard work, anxiety about her schools, and with the social amusements which are part of the education of college life. Still, this full and happy life involves a danger that should be guarded against, a danger lest the girl should be so much occupied in living her own life, that she has no leisure to stop and think out what should be the principles and the aim to guide her in moulding—as every teacher does—the lives of others.

(b) Knowledge of the world.The moral thoughtfulness, which Dr. Arnold demanded of his VI. Form, is the main requisite for a true teacher: no dexterity in imparting knowledge will make her an educator if this is lacking. The study of character and practical casuistry, though not on the list of “final schools” at any university, is yet the most indispensable of all “schools” for a teacher. It may well be that her opportunities of gaining knowledge of the world are restricted by her circumstances. College is her furthest flight, and this is a world of its own with the disadvantage of being disproportionately peopled by too many of one generation. Under ordinary conditions of family life, the rising generation is kept in touch with maturer ideas by a fair proportion of uncles and aunts, as well as by fathers and mothers; but, at college, the niece’s world is narrowed (though this is not usually the light in which it strikes them) by the exclusion of aunts! College undoubtedly gives much knowledge of character to a thoughtful student, but its experiences need to be brought into true proportion by comparison with the larger world beyond.

There are many novels, essays and biographies which afford a good substitute for knowledge of the world to the girl who has a quiet home, besides the many books bearing directly on the study and formation of character, which every teacher and mother and elder sister should read. Such are: Sir Henry Taylor’s autobiography and letters, The Memorials of Miss Charlotte Williams Wynne; all Sir Arthur Helps’ works and Mr. Hutton’s essays. Miss Mozley has written two volumes of essays which are full of delicate insight into character: one, Social Essays, reprinted from The Saturday Review, can only be obtained second-hand, but her Essays from Blackwood are still in print. Sir Henry Taylor’s Notes on Life, and Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (selections) will also be found very useful. Among the more directly educational books, attention should be directed to L’Education Progressive, by Madame Neckar de Saussure; La Famille, by the Comte de Gasparin; L’Education des Filles, by Fénélon; L’Education des Mères de Familles, by Aimée Martin; Principles of Education, Notebook of an Elderly Lady, Youth and Age (all three by Miss Elizabeth Sewell); Miss Yonge’s Womankind, Miss Mason’s Home Education, Miss Shirreff’s Intellectual Education, Mrs. William Grey’s Thoughts for Girls on Leaving School, and Mr. Sidgwick’s Form Discipline.

Nothing can replace in a teacher the study of individual peculiarities of character: the motives, the special hindrances, the growth of each child in her class must be studied and individually met, if she is to rise to the true level of her work.

(c) Insight into character.This is assuming that the teacher feels the full responsibility of being put in a position where, by the way in which she teaches French, or mathematics, she can help or hinder the spiritual growth of each of her pupils. But even supposing that this overruling underlying motive of every true educator be put aside for the moment, and we consider only the smaller question of more or less success in imparting knowledge—still, this very success (other things being equal) will lie with that teacher who has the insight into the peculiar disposition of each child, who can bring to bear on each nature the motives which appeal to it and who can foresee and obviate the difficulties, which vary in each child, according to its mental, moral and physical equipment. In all ways scholastic success is furthered by seeking first something higher still. A great educator used to say: “If you teach one boy arithmetic only and another boy arithmetic and religion, other things being equal, the second boy will beat the first in arithmetic, because his nature is more widely developed”.

Moral responsibility of the teacher.But it may be thought that this is asking more of teachers than can be fairly expected. A girl who has taken life from the outside, with a comfortable, one might almost say, “wholesome” disregard of motives and such-like complications, who looks forward to giving her lesson in a special subject, and to then being free to be as untouched by the “malady of thought,” as absorbed in games and the amusements of life, as was rightfully her state at fifteen, may well feel that she is not prepared to enter on teaching as a career combining the responsibility of doctor and clergyman. If so, let her consider carefully before she adopts the teaching profession.

A teacher is as much morally bound as any mother to consider the principles of the inner life, to think out a clear conception of her moral and intellectual aims for her children, and as such bound to feel constant moral responsibility for what she does, and is, and for how she improves herself.

It is true we see both mothers and teachers take up their responsible positions in life without this moral thoughtfulness, and we sometimes see the children turning out well in spite of it. But the fact that Nature has wonderful curative and educative powers, does not lessen the personal responsibility of those who should have used art to improve nature. Children have been known to recover from illness in spite of a doctor’s mistakes or neglect, but we do not therefore condone the doctor’s carelessness.

If a girl is not prepared to take up the teaching profession from its deepest, i.e., its only true side; if she wishes to remain thoughtless, then let her choose some other form of livelihood—millinery, clerkship, gardening—where outward diligence will fairly meet all demands, so far as mere honesty to her employer is concerned.

But let the teacher who shrinks from moral responsibility remember that, in this side of her work alone, is to be found permanent interest. All mechanical work must pall sooner or later, and teaching is little better than mechanical, if it is of the external kind. Elementary teaching is often called mechanical, because its subjects and their extent are very limited, but Latin grammar in the high school is, after a time, capable of becoming quite as dull as English Grammar in the elementary school. Or, rather, both are equally capable of being interesting if, and only if, the teacher cares supremely for what is more important than any grammar, the development of each child who learns from her.

The teacher needs
(a) Knowledge of the circumstances and character of each pupil.For, no matter how large the class, the true teacher must study and respect the individuality of each member of it. Though her class may pass a most successful examination, yet, in examining herself, she must mark down (against herself), as a failure, the name of each child who has remained to her merely one of the crowd. The eyesight, the hearing, the spine, the headaches, the home surrounding of each child, should be known to its teacher, and should modify the demands made upon that child.

Curvature of the mind is far more common than curvature of the spine, and the teacher must have keen intellectual sympathy with each child’s individual mental tangles. She must clear the ground of harmful stumbling-blocks, and yet leave enough to exercise the mental muscles. Surely if the difficulty of a task can fire enthusiasm, the teacher should burn with zeal.

(b) A right judgment and presence of mind.The moral temperament of each child is an even more complex study than the mental peculiarities; praise, for instance, is a tonic for one and poison for another. The teacher must have presence of mind to criticise on the spur of the moment, with due regard to the child’s moral digestion, to the abstract question of justice in the class as a whole, and to maintaining a high, and yet not depressing, standard of work. One child requires to be repressed and one to be encouraged to do itself justice. One child has thoughtful difficulties which need sympathetic unravelling; another suffers from mere inattention, and requires decisive pulling together.

It stands to reason that, to appreciate all these shades of character and to satisfy the needs of each, in such a manner as not to waste the time of the class (and not to sin against the code of rough and ready justice, to which the childish mind, quite rightly, owns allegiance), is a very delicate task, and involves much of that moral thoughtfulness which is the foundation of a good teacher.

(c) Self-mastery.One reason for the supreme importance of this quality is that it not only means insight into others, but also involves self-mastery without which no educative control of others is possible. Forcible control is quite possible to a severe or hot-tempered nature: children are easily cowed, but they do not learn to control themselves if they are subject to this martial law. If a mistress finds that her children are good with her and tiresome with other people, she may rely on it that her own discipline is defective. Probably she has allowed personal affection for herself to be an admissible motive for good conduct, whereas insubordination would be almost better for the child! This last would be repented of, in time, as a fault, whereas many a girl goes through life mistaking impulse for principle, because at school, obedience “to please Miss So-and-so” was accepted, as equivalent to obedience to duty. It may be that the teacher has mastered the children’s tempers by dint of having a worse one herself; if so, the children will recoup themselves, for the enforced restraint of her presence, by licence in her absence; whereas the control exercised by a serene, equable nature develops the element of self-control in the child, and also a sense of self-respect which tends towards good behaviour when with other teachers.

The teacher must avoid
(a) Overstrain.This is one great reason why teachers should make it a matter of principle, as well as of worldly prudence, to avoid overstrain. You sometimes hear a young teacher boasting of the tax which she lays on her constitution; she tells it, half as a grievance that she should have so much to do, half in triumph that she is so peculiarly constituted—just as poor people exult in ailments that mark them out from the common herd! But these excesses of work (whether caused by bravado, or by bad management, or by an ill-informed conscience) are not a luxury of which she herself can defray the expense; the cost is really borne by her home people, by her fellow-teachers, and, worst of all, by her class, who all suffer from her overwrought nerves—in plain English, from her temper. I say, worst of all her class, because she may be a means of wholesome discipline to the other sufferers, but she does distinct moral harm to the children. And do not let her imagine that heroic efforts to control outward signs of temper will qualify her to be a teacher: children are acutely sensitive to atmosphere, and suffer even more under one who is elaborately controlling her temper, than under one who frankly loses it and then is serene again. If a teacher is to be worth her salt, she must have no temper! She must be of a serene, sunny temperament which enjoys the children’s presence, and her anger, when needed, must be of the impersonal kind which Fuller describes as one of “the sinews of the soul”.

(b) Injudicious reproofs.Of course scolding has to be done, but there should be no connection of ideas in the child’s mind between a merited scolding and the teacher’s temper. Mr. Arthur Sidgwick’s essay on Form Discipline gives the whole principle of the matter, but there are three suggestions I would like to add for the use of women teachers. One I take from Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s book on Little Foxes. She there describes two households in each of which a young servant is being trained. In one, the mistress looks at the dinner table and remarks that the salt is not what it should be: in the other, the mistress, on coming to inspect the table, exclaims, “Why, Sally, how bright your silver is, and you have remembered everything to-day; the only thing that is not perfect is the salt, and I am sure you will always look specially at that in future”. There was no comparison between those mistresses as to success in servant-training, and probably the teacher who blends praise and blame will cultivate a hopeful energy of self-improvement in her children, unknown in the class taught by one who coldly points out faults and passes over merits.

My second suggestion is, as the Spanish proverb says to authors: “Leave something in your inkstand”; underscold rather than overscold. A woman usually has a power of statement that makes her take an artistic pleasure in putting her case completely and convincingly. But children have a fine sense of justice (until it is blunted by contact with the world), and the culprit who undergoes one of these comprehensive scoldings is apt to feel that full measure for the crime has been meted out and so she thinks no more of it. Understate your case and that same sense of justice will make her say to herself all that you leave unsaid, and this self-condemnation will probably be the most effectual part of the scolding. At all events, very little harm comes from scolding too little, and irreparable harm often comes from scolding too much. When the nail of reproof is once in, every additional blow of the hammer tends to loosen it.

My third suggestion is, avoid scolding as much as possible when you have reasonable cause for supposing your own nerves likely to be on edge. There are times, e.g., the end of the summer term, when you are not likely to see things in true proportion: at such seasons distrust your own power of judging, and look the other way as often as possible, for blunders are liable to be more severely dealt with in July, than crimes in the fresher air of September!

Let us now pass on from the question of the state of mind desirable in a teacher, to consider the aim and possibilities of her work with the child.

The teacher’s aim should be health—physical, mental and moral.During the whole of school life, a girl’s physical frame is so entirely in the making that considerations of health should outweigh everything else. She is building the house in which she is to live all the rest of her life, and it is far more important what sort of house she builds than how much she employs herself with the various occupations that she can pursue at leisure, throughout her tenure of this “house”. Any study can be followed up in later life, if health demand its cessation during these growing years, but no after-study can repair early impoverishment or damage of the physical frame.

Of course it stands to reason that the object of this house-building is that the householder may be unhampered in after years and able to lead a large and noble life. We should have small value for the physical frame if it were tenanted by an imbecile mind, or a nature without moral sense. Therefore, when we say that the body is the main consideration in youth, we do so because soundness of body is the surest means of securing moral and mental soundness. Fortunately, body, mind and spirit are so intertwined that what is good for one is usually good for all. We can hygienically insist on good hard mental work, because it is essential to bodily health that there should be routine and effort and concentration of mind. We can insist on self-denial and self-control, for these are as essential to bodily health as to spiritual. The teacher who believes herself to be an educator, not merely an instructor, finds all the apparently conflicting elements of a peculiar case, wonderfully harmonised by giving predominance to the moral aim. If your first object in life is to increase a child’s chance of becoming an even-tempered Christian woman, you will not let considerations of examination successes tempt you to allow overstrain; while, at the same time, you will be inexorable in demanding, as moral training, the steady effort and the willing work, which will probably bring the successes.

The power of the teacher in moulding character.Do not let the day school teacher feel as if undue burden were being laid on her, when we speak of the whole future of the child as thus depending on the teacher’s breadth of aim. It is difficult to place any limit to the possibilities of the teacher’s influence, even at a day school, where she only has the child for four hours out of the twenty-four. It is true that the mother and the home, during the first six or seven years of the child’s life, have determined the main elements of its nature; but in dealing with these elements, at a later stage, there are endless possibilities of combination, of encouraging some and repressing others. Though we teachers do not, as a rule, get children at the early stage when most can be done with them, yet in schoolroom days we find their brains still plastic enough for us to work cheerfully and hopefully, in the teeth of the many hereditary evils which would crush our efforts, were it not that we believe education to be able to cope on fairly equal terms with heredity. Every time we induce children to make an effort for the right, or to think accurately, we make a groove in their brain which serves as a railway line along which thoughts of the same kind will pass more easily next time. Every time we excite a wrong feeling—irritation, obstinacy, irreverence, or allow a deviation from some acknowledged standard of duty—we lay cross lines of rail in the wrong direction, which will hinder their progress in the right path, now and in the future.[28]

Bracing influence of school
(a) resulting from uniformity of treatment.The art of concealing art is nowhere more necessary than in this incessant watchfulness required of the teacher, as it is very bad for the child to feel that its little world turns on its own moral and physical well-being. The chief good of school lies in the uniformity of the routine, in the absence of special exemptions; it rests and braces the child to feel under inexorable Laws of Nature which know no favourites.

At the same time, while we in our larger world feel under fixed laws, we yet believe in a special providence which arranges for our welfare, even though we are unconscious of its action; the teacher should play the part of unseen providence to the child.

It is perfectly possible in a high school to consider each individual girl, and to arrange matters more or less for her interests, though this possibility rests on the fact that exceptional cases are not proper subjects for high school education. Even an ordinary child has her peculiarities, which should be allowed for, but, in the main, it is the regularity and uniformity of the school routine which make the most valuable part of her education.

(b) Wholesome competition.The child learns at school to be unself conscious, to appreciate others; to bear being surpassed without depression, and to stand success without undue exultation; and she learns these valuable lessons mainly through standing on the same platform with her companions, and having to fight on equal terms. When parents beg that some of the subjects taken by the rest of the class may be excused to their child, they do not realise that, by interfering with the equal terms of contest, they destroy half the value of school life. The value of a high school lies not merely in its instruction (though this is probably given by a trained specialist in each subject), but even more, in “the give and take” on equal terms which teaches a child to know her own powers and her own weaknesses. A child subject to undue self-appreciation, or self-depreciation, would probably gain much from going into the miniature world of a high school, as would also the dreamy child; in the latter case particularly the value of the school lessons lies in their difficulty, and children suffer if they are excused or helped with a lesson because they have failed to understand the teaching in class. (c) Concentration of faculties.Instant concentration of the faculties on the matter in hand is one of the most valuable lessons learnt in school, and to repeat information, or explanations, to the absent-minded child, is to encourage a fatal weakness. Of course the blank in the child’s mind (which makes a pitying mother beg that the lesson may be excused) may be caused by irrelevancy or indistinctness of voice, or of mind, on the teacher’s part. But if three-quarters of the class have followed the lesson, it may be safely taken for granted that effort and practice will bring success to the remaining quarter; a success which will mean not merely the knowledge of the Euclid or geography in question, but victory over a habit of mind that, if unchecked, will neutralise any talent the child may possess.

Dangers of school worldliness.The child’s efforts after concentration of mind need careful co-operation on the part of the teacher (who, from her own carelessness, is apt to indulge the child’s carelessness), whereas the equally valuable qualities of diligence and perseverance are almost evolved of themselves by the competition of any school which has a good working spirit. The teacher needs to be even more alert in counteracting the mistaken forms which school diligence is apt to take, than in rousing the spirit itself. Emulation, eagerness for marks, putting school opinion before those of home—all these are very real dangers. The better the school, the more acute the danger, and the more need is there that the authorities should act as a drag on the coach. Emulation is a natural quality in the child and a very useful one to the teacher; but there is great danger in its degenerating into personal rivalry. Something may be done to soften this spirit of competition by setting before the children a fence which all may leap, not a throne which only one can occupy. The fence can be as high as you will, but if the opportunity of clearing it be open to all, the class will exult in the number of successes, without any feeling in the many of personal loss involved in the gain of the few. Marks do not necessitate rivalry.“Marks” can be so arranged as to obviate the temptation to personal rivalry which is often supposed to be inseparable from them. When the weekly marks are added up, letters are in some schools assigned, according to the percentage of marks gained, arranged in decades. The exact number of marks is not brought before the child, but only the question to which decade she belongs. A red A denotes 90 per cent., a black A 80 per cent.; B means 70 per cent., and so on through the alphabet. Every member of the class who deserves it can attain the “red A”. The same system can be pursued in prizes; all who reach a certain standard of marks in term work or in examinations, or in both combined, can gain one. Thus esprit de corps to some extent takes the place of personal triumph—the whole class is proud of its number of “red A” members and prize-winners, instead of suffering from the temptation to feel a little bitter, which must exist when there is only one place of honour to be had.

Advantages of religious lessons in school.The value of moral and religious lessons in school is especially great because of the almost universal disposition on the part of girls to consider home exhortation as nagging. What is said in a school lesson goes home to the conscience with no friction, because the teacher cannot have known of that last peccadillo at home, and the mother is not at hand to look the fatal phrase, “I told you so!”

(a) They re-enforce home teaching.Mothers need not feel that the school lesson displaces theirs—rather it enforces what they say, since the child probably listens with increased interest to what they say when it is unconsciously echoed by an outside authority.

(b) Avoid the danger of personalities.It is very difficult at home not to omit certain sore points in these moral lessons, for fear of seeming to aim at special children. In a series of lessons at school, this difficulty is obviated and the victim can feel that the arrow has hit home, without the indignity of being watched by home eyes to see if it has taken effect.

(c) Give large views of duty.It is easier, also, in speaking to a number to take larger views of life and its duties, than might seem suitable in any individual family. Social duties, good citizenship, high ideals of future usefulness can be held up to elder girls at school as a part of religion; while such faults as partisanship, political or otherwise, narrow-mindedness, family selfishness can be discouraged without any danger of personality.

These moral lessons should serve a distinct purpose in the school by imbuing the girls with high ideals; the fact of belonging to a large public body such as a high school should assist them in assimilating wider ideas of life. But it must not be forgotten that moral lessons in no way supersede the necessity for definite religious instruction; abstract ideals will have little power against future temptations unless they are supported by sound Biblical knowledge and religious belief.

(d) Put school discipline on the true basis.From one point of view, it may be said that parents should feel responsible for this instruction, but surely the teacher would not be content to give up such a hold on the child as is furnished by the religious lessons. It must be almost impossible to maintain real control over the tone of the school, if the deepest part of the child’s nature is left outside the school’s jurisdiction.

(e) Give religion its right position in the curriculum.Besides, though the responsibility and the pleasure of this branch of education do belong primarily to the parent, yet, when the claims of school eat up so much of the day, it is very hard for the mother to get enough time to deal fully with the subject. Also, the better the school and the more fully it employs the mental faculties of the child, and wins its allegiance, the more important it is that such a great authority in the child’s world should proclaim itself supremely interested in this branch of learning. Children often have to learn music at school, merely because they only attend to their practising when it is done for a school authority. Much as we may wish home to be supreme in all cases, we must recognise that children often go through a phase in which they yield more unquestioning submission to school rules than to home wishes, and give keener energy to school lessons than to the extra ones devised by the mother, and secretly resented by the child as an unjust addition to its burden.

Besides, it is possible there may be homes, we will hope they are rare, where religious teaching is not sufficiently attended to; certainly our better-class children are often more ignorant of their Bibles than those who have been to a good Sunday school.

Let us assume, therefore, that the school must have a definite and fairly complete course of religious instruction, including Biblical and moral lessons; church schools would of course add doctrinal and prayer-book lessons.

(f) Leaven the school life.But the Bible lesson is not only a subject in the curriculum, it should be a leaven in the school. This can only be the case if the children feel that, in spite of all imperfections and shortcomings, the Bible lesson really is the truest outcome of the teacher’s own nature, that it is to her the most interesting lesson of the week, bearing on the whole of life, instead of being an isolated subject in one pigeon-hole of her mind.

Let us take it as a principle that these lessons should have the first and freshest hour of the morning given to them, that they may be felt as a continuation of school prayers, as a further consecration of the day, not as a mere lesson to be sandwiched in with French and algebra, as if all were of equal importance.[29] Let the children realise that religion comes first in arranging a time-table, and that no pressure of examination work can be taken as a valid excuse for curtailing these lessons. Children sometimes think that because no marks are given for divinity it will pay to get an excuse for this, and to devote the time to lessons which tell in their weekly class-list. This is only a crude force of a temptation common to every stage of life, and it would be one of the most valuable of all school lessons could such a child be taught that religion, if real, must come first in Monday’s lessons as well as in Sunday’s services.

Subjects for Bible lessons.It is easy enough to find matter for the Bible lessons;[30] the life of our Lord, a three years’ course of Old Testament history, as arranged in Mr. Glazebrook’s three volumes; the life of St. Paul, considered as the setting of his Epistles, and including a general survey of each of those Epistles; a special study of any one of the Prophets, giving the gist of his message, viewed first in the light of his own times and local surroundings, and then considered in its relation to our own times; the women of the Bible; the Jewish feasts and ritual; any one of these courses will provide interesting matter for a year’s lessons.

A very useful book has recently been written called Ad Lucem,[31] which gives Old Testament history, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and Church history up to the present day. Its object is to show the history of the world as bearing on the Incarnation, and it is enabled to cover so much ground by selecting and emphasising such facts as bring out this point of view. It would be interesting to children of about fifteen, and useful to any teacher, by helping her to focus her own teaching.

Requisites of a Bible lesson.Probably all teachers will say the difficulty lies rather in how to treat this vast stock of material. There should be no difficulty in making the children feel that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world, quite apart from its religious importance.

So many books on Eastern manners and places are within the reach of teachers that they should not be content till their own conceptions of the Bible scenes and characters are as vivid as Tinworth’s terra cottas.

(a) Vividness.Children have much in common with the old Scotch woman who was so shocked at what seemed to her irreverence in Dean Stanley when he tried to persuade her that Jerusalem was a real place which he had visited; it is a new light to them to be made to realise that Bible heroes and places are as real as those in English history. Doing this arrests their attention, and they go on to perceive that the temptations and virtues of those days were also like our own, that even the minor Prophets, whom they have avoided as utterly alien to their world, speak straight to ourselves in their warnings about wealth and labour and luxury.

(b) Practicality.Until we make Bible lessons practical for ourselves and for our children, we must not be content: in old days the Bible was used only as a storehouse of isolated texts for personal application; we realise now that due reverence for the Word of God requires that we should study it, and teach it, as exactly and reasonably and vividly as we do any other history and literature, but we must not forget that if we stop here, the old-fashioned unintellectual method of study infinitely surpassed in wisdom our modern cleverness. Unless our lessons make the Bible more profitable for doctrine and reproof, for amendment of life and instruction of manners, they are failures, no matter how much critical and geographical learning has been brought to bear on them. (c) Devoutness.Perhaps each lesson need not have a special ethical or spiritual bearing (though it is a pity if it has not), and we should beware against overdoing our moral instruction. A child’s mind is like a narrow-necked bottle, and we often pour in too much at once.

(d) Simplicity.Especially is this the case with illustrations; the teacher has had their use so inculcated that a Bible lesson is too often a string of anecdotes and pictures in which the central idea is hopelessly lost; one truth, one picture, and one illustration are as much as any young child can grasp in one lesson, and children of a larger growth would often gain more if teachers were more economical in their explanations.

(e) Careful treatment of difficulties.Keeping the spiritual aim in view would assist in dealing with some of the critical difficulties which beset a thoughtful teacher. It is most important not to give mature food to an immature mind, or to bring before the child, who has not realised any difficulties, the critic’s suspension of judgment, which is such a comfort to the teacher. But though we should avoid giving an impression that facts and authorship are moot points, still we can avoid putting up stones of stumbling which will afterwards have to be cleared away. Children need the old stories told in all simplicity, the stories of the childhood of the race, but if we keep before them “the one far-off Divine event,” towards which all those stories pointed, if we teach them Jewish history in the light of the Divine education of the human race, instead of treating the Flood and Jael and Joshua’s wars, etc., as finished episodes which stand on their own merits, so to speak, surely then there will be little or nothing in the best modern lines of thought to upset their faith, and much to enrich it.

Summary.To sum up shortly, the following are the main points I would seek to impress on a young teacher, in considering the moral side of education. First and foremost the heavy responsibility attached to the teacher’s office—an office which combines the functions of clergyman, doctor and instructor. Next, the personal qualifications required of the teacher, holiness, serenity, insight into character, knowledge of the world; then the aims of the teacher’s work, the building up a sound mind in a sound body, by the help of the good habits arising from right conditions of school life, most of all by the help of the Bible lesson, which must be the inspiration of the whole school course.

I should like to end by quoting some words of William Law, the great mystic of the last century, which put before us the true ends of education. In his Treatise on Christian Perfection he says: “Show me a learning that makes man truly sensible of his duty: that fills the mind with true light: that makes us more reasonable in all our actions: that inspires us with fortitude, humility and devotion”.