The teacher as a story teller.—­The successful teacher of religion must therefore possess the art which will enable him to use the story as one of the chief forms of material in his instruction.  He must know the stories.  He must be able to tell them interestingly.  The story loses half of its effectiveness if it must be read to the child, but it may lose in similar proportion if it is haltingly or ineffectively told.  It is not necessary, at least for the younger children, to use a large number of stories.  In fact, there is positive disadvantage in attempting to employ so many stories that the child does not become wholly familiar with each separate one.  Children do not tire of the stories they like; indeed, their love for a story increases as they come to know it well, and they will demand to have the same story told over and over in preference to a new one.

The use of the story with older children.—­A mistake has been made in not a few of the Sunday school lesson series in sharply reducing the story material for all ages above the primary grades.  It must be remembered that while the older child has more power to grasp and understand abstract lessons than the younger child, there is no age or stage of development at which the story and the concrete illustration are not an attractive and effective mode of teaching.  Surely, all through the junior and intermediate grades the story should be one of the chief forms of material for religious instruction, while for adolescents stories will still be far from negligible.

The principles of story-using, then, are clear in the teaching of religion:  Make the story one of the chief instruments of instruction; see that it is charged with religious and moral value; make sure it is adapted to the age of the learner, and that it is well told; for younger children use few stories frequently repeated until they are well known; do not insist that the child shall at first grasp the deeper meanings of the story, make sure of interest and enjoyment, and the meaning will come later.

MATERIAL FROM NATURE

The child’s spontaneous love of nature and ready response to the world of objects about him open up rich sources of material for religious instruction.  God who creates the beautiful flowers, who causes the breezes to blow, who carpets the earth with green, who paints the autumn hillside with glowing color, who directs the coming and going of the seasons, who tells the buds when to swell and the leaves to unfold, who directs the sparrow in its flight and the bee in its search, who is in the song of the birds and the whisper of the leaves, who sends his rain and makes the thunder roll—­this God can be brought, through the medium of nature’s forms, very near to the child.  And the love and appreciation which the child lavishes on the dear and beautiful things about him will extend naturally and without trouble of comprehension to their Creator.