A similar story is told of a farmer who experienced great difficulty in keeping a particular hen inside the run which he had built outside the hen house.  He had put up a wire fence high enough, as he thought, to keep in the most ambitious chicken.  In fact, he argued that no hen could fly over it.  One hen persisted in getting out regularly, though the farmer could never discover how she did it.  Finally he decided to lay for her (she laid for him regularly).  To his great surprise, he watched her walk around the run carefully surveying it as she proceeded.  At length she caught sight of a beam running along the top of the wire just above the gate.  With her eye fixed upon it she made one mighty effort and was over.

The moral of the two stories is self-evident.  Both hens and men can “go over” if they have something to aim at.  It is so in life generally, and what is true of life generally is particularly true in the matter of teaching.  The aim is one of the most significant features in the teaching process.

The teacher who knows where he is going can always get followers.

Important as is the aim in all educational endeavor, it is doubly so in religious training.  We teach religiously not merely to build up facts or make for mental power; we teach to mold character.  We should see through facts, therefore, to the fundamental truth lying behind and beyond them.  Such a truth constitutes an aim in religious instruction.

One of the most regrettable facts connected with some of our teaching is that teachers leave the preparation of their lessons until the few minutes just preceding their recitation hour.  They then hurry through a mass of facts, rush into class and mull over these dry husks, unable in the rush even to see the kernel of truth lying within.  Little wonder pupils tire of such rations.  It is the teacher’s obligation to “see through” and discover the gems that really make lessons worth while.

Forty-five minutes once a week is so meagre an allotment of time for the teaching of the greatest principles of life!  Surely every one of those minutes should be sacredly guarded for the consideration of vital truths.  The aim, coupled with careful organization, is one of the best safeguards possible.

The aim is the great focus for a lesson’s thought.  It is the center about which all else revolves.  It specifies what shall be included and what excluded out of the great mass of available material.  A single chapter of scripture may contain truths enough for a dozen lessons, only one of which can be treated in any one recitation.  The aim singles out what can be appropriately grouped under one unified discussion.

If we turn, for instance, to the ninth chapter of Matthew, we find at least eight different major incidents, each one deserving a lesson in itself.  There is the case of: 

  The palsy. 
  The charge of blasphemy. 
  The glorifying of God by the multitude. 
  The calling of Matthew. 
  The statement that only the sick need the physician. 
  The case of new cloth and the old garment. 
  The raising of the daughter of Jairus. 
  The healing of the two blind men.