“And now behold, my beloved brethren, I say unto you, do not suppose that this is all; for after ye have done all these things, if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need; I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is vain, and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith;

   “Therefore, if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross,
   which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth), and is
   trodden underfoot of men.” (Alma 34:18-29.)

* * * * *

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS—­CHAPTER XVI

1.  Why need we illustrate general truths?

2.  Discuss the value of having pupils draw up their own maps.

3.  Give out of your own experience illustrations of the force of pictures.

4.  Point out the value in teaching of appealing to more than one of the senses.

5.  Discuss the importance of good stories in teaching.

6.  What are the characteristics of a good illustrative story?

7.  Take an ordinarily commonplace subject and show how to illustrate it.

HELPFUL REFERENCES

Those listed in Chapter XIV.

Also Pictures in Religious Education, by Frederica Beard.

CHAPTER XVII

THE AIM

     OUTLINE—­CHAPTER XVII

Two illustrations of the value of an aim.—­Significance of the aim in religious training.—­Inadequacy of eleventh-hour preparation.—­The teacher’s obligation to see through facts to truths that lie beyond.

     What an aim is.—­Illustration.—­How to determine the aim.—­How to
     express it.

The late Jacob Riis, noted author and lecturer, used to tell a very inspirational story on the force of having something to focus attention upon.  According to his story, certain men who lived just outside of Chicago, in its early history, had great difficulty walking to and from work during stormy weather, because of the almost impassably muddy conditions of the sidewalks.  After trudging through mud and slush for a long time, they conceived the idea of laying a plank walk through the worst sections.  And so they laid two six-inch planks side by side.  The scheme helped wonderfully, except on short winter days when the men had to go to work in the darkness of early morning and return in the darkness of evening.  It often was so dark that they would step off the planks, and once off they were about as muddy as if there had been no walk at all.  Finally someone suggested the idea that if a lantern were hung up at each end of the walk it would then be easy to fix the eye upon the lantern and keep on the walk.  The suggestion was acted upon, and thereafter the light of the lantern did hold them to the plank.  Jacob Riis argued that the lantern of an ideal held aloft would similarly hold young men in life’s path of righteousness.