300 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. CHAPTER XVIII. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION HOW MADE REAL-BY CHARACTER OF TEACHER-DR. ARNOLD-VANITY OF HUMAN EFFORT WITHOUT DIVINE AID-YET DUTY TO LABOUR-OPENING DEVOTIONS— SINGING SCRIPTURE-PRAYER-BENEFICIAL INFLUENCE-RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF YOUNG-BIBLE NOT TO BE MADE A TECHNICAL EXERCISE SHORT LESSONS PREPARATION BY TEACHER-BY PUPILS-SUITABLE DISPOSITION AND MANNERSIMPLICITY-REGARD TO FACTS IRRESPECTIVELY OF MORAL BEARING-TEACHING PERFUNCTORY AND SUPERFICIAL-EVERY PUPIL SHOULD TAKE PART COMPREHENSIVE SCOPE CON NEXION BETWEEN READING AND KNOWLEDGE-UNSUITABLE READING MEMORY STORED WITH SCRIPTURE-SHORTER CATECHISM INITIATORY CATECHISM-SACRED GEOGRAPHY-ROMAN CATHOLIC PUPILS-REVIEW OF THIS DEPARTMENT-GENERALLY BEST THING IN SCHOOL-EXAMPLES. "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."—2 Cor. iii. 6. It has already been noticed how much the efficacy of Religious Instruction depends upon SINCERITY in the Teacher. In a subsequent Chapter there will be occasion to notice a failure to impart to ordinary secular instruction the character of reality. There is a strong tendency in the mind to rest in the word, or other symbol by which a thing is represented, without penetrating through the symbol, or being conducted by it to the thing itself. And if such a tendency exists with respect to objects which are patent to sense, and can be seen and handled, how much more powerfully must it operate in religious teaching, where the symbol is the only thing visible, and the reality, impalpable to any bodily organ, can be perceived only by an act of faith. Here then is an important question, How shall the pupil be carried beyond the symbol in religious instruction? how shall the truth and doctrine, with the awe and reverence and love and humility inseparable from them, be made to him matters of reality and experience? It is of course only the instrumentality of the Teacher that we have here to do with, and how that will be most efficacious in awakening, nurturing, and strengthening the faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The questions have again and again been proposed to the Reporter by parties connected with the Schools in the three Counties, How can religious instruction be improved as regards the manner of communicating it? How can it be rendered more conducive to its true design? It appears to him that only one answer at all satisfactory can be given, viz., that the desired effects can be produced only from the religious character of the Teacher. Passing along the street you can tell that some tale of horror, of which you know and hear nothing, is believed, from the expression and gestures of the hearer. The narrator is confided in, and the agitation of the listener is the echo of the feeling with which the fact has been 302 TEACHER'S CHARACTER-DR. ARNOLD communicated. In like manner is the child affected by the reception of religious truth from the lips of a believer. The solemnity, the pathos, the profound earnestness with which it is conveyed, are all to his mind consistent testimonies to its reality, and as the spirit of the instructor is moved, so is that of the pupil. This, blessed by the quickening influence of God's Spirit, may prove the birth of faith, and such instrumentality is the most efficient earthly means of its nourishment. He therefore must be the best religious instructor, who dwells most in the presence of God, holding habitual communion with Him, and whose life and conversation, therefore, directly and indirectly give forth infallible tokens of the reality and power of that hidden life. Nothing can be more useful and encouraging to a Teacher, than to see the actual exhibition of a truly religious Teacher's views and feelings; and no apology is needed, therefore, for citing the following passages regarding Dr. Arnold, whose whole life, as well as his dying hours, bore evidence that he was in truth what has just been described. "The spirit in which he entered on the instruc"tion of the School, constituting as it did the main "business of the place, may perhaps be best under- • "stood from a particular exemplification of it in the "circumstances under which he introduced a prayer "before the first lesson in the sixth form, over and "above the general prayers read before the whole "School. On the morning on which he first used it, "he said that he had been much troubled to find the 66 change from attendance on the death-bed of one 66 66 66 66 AS A RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTOR. 303 of the boys in his house to his school work had been very great. He thought that there ought "not to be that contrast, and that it was probably owing to the school work not being sufficiently "sanctified to God's glory; that if it was made really a religious work, the transition to it from a "death-bed would be slight, and therefore he intend"ed for the future to offer a prayer before the first lesson, that the day's work might be undertaken "and carried on solely to the glory of God and "their improvement-that he might be the better "enabled to do his work."-Vol. i. pp. 116, 117. 66 66 66 "lar. 66 But more important than any details was the "union of reverence and reality in his whole manner of treating the Scriptures, which so distinguished these lessons from such as may in them"selves almost as little deserve the name of religious "instruction as many lessons commonly called secuThe same searching questions, the same vividness which marked his historical lessons-the "same anxiety to bring all that he said home to "their own feelings, which made him, in preparing them for confirmation, endeavour to make them say, Christ died for me,' instead of the general phrase, Christ died for us,'-must often, when applied to the natural vagueness of boys' notions on religious subjects, have dispelled it for ever. He appeared to me,' writes a pupil, whose intercourse with him never extended beyond these lessons, to be remarkable for realizing everything we are told in Scripture. You know how frequently we can ourselves, and how constantly we 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 6 "hear others go, prosing on in a sort of religious "cant or slang which is as easy to learn as any other technical jargon, without seeing, as it were, 66 66 by that faculty, which all possess, of picturing to the mind, and acting as if we really saw things "unseen belonging to another world. Now he "seemed to have the freshest view of our Lord's 66 66 life and death that I ever knew a man to possess. His rich mind filled up the naked outline of the gospel history;-it was to him the most interesting fact that ever happened--as real, as exciting, (if I may use the expression,) as any recent event "in modern history of which the actual effects are visible.' And all his comments on whatever view of inspiration they were given, were always made "in a tone and manner that left an impression that "from the book which lay before him he was really 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 seeking to draw his rule of life, and that whilst he examined it in earnest to find what its meaning was, when he had found it he intended to abide by it."-Vol. i., pp 138, 139. The few words spoken with his own deep conviction of their reality—the simple repe"tition, for example, of the promise made to prayer, 6. with his earnest assurance that if that was "not true nothing was true; if anything in the 66 Bible could be relied upon, it was that-have "become the turning point of a boy's character, and have been graven on his memory for life."Vol. i. p. 159. 66 66 "Of my success in introducing a religious principle into education, I must be doubtful: it is my |