Sunday-School Success

ng At

hem in any direction. No teacher need spend much force on his introduction. Merely appear and begin to talk-that is enough. A fresh voice and presence and a new theme will draw all eyes and all hearts. If grown peo

rown of the children's interest already attained. But alas! soon here a little tot wriggles, and there another whispers, and yonder

he attention given at the beginning that toward the close, dismayed at the listlessness, they forget ungratefully their initial capital of bright eyes and eager ears! There are many ways of squa

its vanishing in drooping eyelids, wandering gaze, jerking in the seat, uncertain answers. The teacher

and presto! a fresh teacher before the wide-eyed children. If he has been sitting, he rises; if erect, he leans eagerly forward. His utterance becomes rapid from slow, impetuous from drawling. He darts from general

everting to them. Slight impression on a wall by holding a battering-ram against it! Nor can you

fashion, but only while the sun of interest is shining. With the first mist of indifference the wise teacher

ng to formulating principles and illustrating them, from Bible quotations to personal experiences and exhortations, he will hold his audience delighted, though a single method would have wearied it. Note how a skilled cook presents the Thank

ot teachers? Never forget that the slightest inanimate object wins attention better than the greatest animation of the teacher. A pencil-tablet will rivet all eyes. A finger laid upon a map is cynosure for the most fidgety scholars. If you have a picture which can be brought into connection with the lesson, it is a pedagogical sin to

with his audience as a bulldog would. His nerves are tense. His voice is imperative. His eye glares. He is rapid, impetuous, strategic. This is power, he thinks, and this is skill; but his audience astonishes him by going to sleep. A

teneo, "I hold, I stretch," ad, "toward"; and it is not by any means applied to the speaker, but to the listener. To get your audience, w

hing is because it cries "Go on" instead of "Come on." The speaker that you follow with most difficulty is the speaker who has

saddles. Off we go, over upland and vale, swamp and rock, fence and ditch, our leader far in the van, pointing here, waving there, and hallooing the huntsman o

ld win others to seek truth with him. What Edward Everett Hale once said of a sermon applies to this. Every Sunday-school less

is about. Have you not caught yourselves, teachers, talking as if in your sleep? Have you not sometimes waked up at the end of a sentence, a question, or a harangue, and wondered what you had been tal

tion left goes to the theme. Not unnaturally, the attention of the class is divided in the same way-much to themselves, less to the teacher, and least of all to wh

acher is to rest satisfied while a single one of his pupils remains inattentive. If your chicks are average chicks they are gregarious, and one stray-away is enough to carry the whole flock with him into foreign parts. While you have a single inattentive scholar you should conduct your lesson with a view to holding him. You will hold the rest then, as a matter o