4.  That which seems to me the best text-book for Chinese schools is “Jacobs’ Reader.”  It was prepared originally for the deaf and dumb; and thus suits well those who are to us—­as we to them—­virtually deaf and dumb.  Its object words are all represented in pictures.  Its lessons are so arranged that the advance involves a perpetual review, and thus fastens in the memory what has been acquired.  This is particularly desirable in the case of the Chinese, because the methods of teaching in China are so utterly diverse from ours.  Teaching that turns back is in no favor with the average Chinaman.  He wants you to pronounce the words and let him pronounce them after you as fast as possible.  Go over it two or three times, very much as if you were teaching a parrot to speak, and then let him try himself.  He is impatient of protracted explanations.  What he wants is sounds; the more of them the better.  After he has got the sounds, he will be willing to take the meaning they convey.  One beauty of this book is, that it conveys the meaning through the eye, and keeps pupils reviewing without their knowing it.  The teacher is in danger of becoming impatient with this Chinese method, for we know that our way of teaching is better.  But remember that the end you have in view is not the most effective instruction in English, but the leading of the soul to Christ; and you can be content with a poorer method of doing the former, if thereby you can keep within reach that lost, but blood-bought soul.  Another good point in this little book is, that there is just about enough in it concerning God and Christ to give the teacher an occasional opportunity to preach Jesus, without frightening the pupil away by too abrupt a “setting forth of strange gods.”  And, finally, this one Reader well studied will place the pupil where you can safely commend to him the New Testament as the cheapest and the best book to take next.

5.  Instead of opening exercises have closing ones, as extended and as interesting as possible.  Have pictures selected from the Sunday-school rolls, and, at each session, make one of these the subject of a little gospel-talk.  Ask the pupil best versed in English to be your interpreter, and use such English as he can understand.  And, even though you have no interpreter, five minutes given to a Bible story will not be lost, if you have a picture that is apt and suggestive.

Then sing the gospel to them, asking them to read the verse after you, word by word, and then sing it with you.  I will gladly supply, at bare cost, Song Rolls in Chinese, containing familiar gospel hymns translated into Chinese and so conformed in metre to the English original that the time remains unchanged, and the teachers can sing the English words, if desirable, while the Chinese use their own.  There is no more effective preaching of the gospel than that in song.