If we cannot take advantage of such a linking which our scholars discover for themselves, we can always bind lessons together by our own knowledge of our scholars' needs. If you have a young man in your class to whom the skepticism of the times is alluring, let him find something faith-inspiring and confirmatory of belief in every lesson. If you have a young girl burdened with sick-room duties and home cares beyond her strength, let her know that each lesson will bring her fresh energy and comfort. You need not tell your scholars that you know their struggles. Enough that you do know them, and link lesson to lesson for them in sweet chains of love and helpfulness. When, by any of the four methods I have outlined, you thus establish a bond between your lessons, you have gained two great advantages besides the serial interest which you have aroused. In the first place, you study the Bible as a whole, not by extracts. You learn to interpret one portion by another. You find out the fallacy of fragments. You perceive that Christianity is a system, and not an anthology. In the second place, you have solved the review problem, for every lesson is now a review. If you were required to remember, in order, twelve words chosen at random, you would find it somewhat difficult; but it would be easy enough if those twelve words were arranged in a sentence. Serial teaching is building up a sentence, and the review is merely repeating that sentence. A serial teacher has no fear of review day. The short-story teacher is compelled to find for that day a new short story. Now, have I not reserved mention of the one great tie of all our teaching? Whether Old Testament or New, history, prophecy, proverbs, or psalms, it is all one continued story, and the hero is Christ. By whatever unifying principle we group our lessons together, Christ unifies the groups. Year in, year out, if Christ is at the heart of our teaching, that teaching is consecutive, serial, solid. Without him, it is disjointed, fragmentary, frail. Not retracting a word I have written about the value of these other methods of arousing continued interest, yet it must be said that they are all worthless without Christ. In him each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord. Chapter XVI Teaching the Psalms The Lesson Committee often assigns us two or three lessons in a book, and from these few lessons the scholars must get some comprehensive knowledge of the entire book. A book study, therefore, will not be out of place in this series of suggestions to teachers, and I have chosen the Psalms, since they are likely to be most fruitful of hints as to the teaching of other books. A systematic knowledge of the Psalms is rarely sought after. Only one book of the Bible is more loved: the Gospel of John; only one is read less methodically: the Book of Proverbs.