For a final word: Take pains that your word-pictures keep pace with your chalk. Don't _ask_ your class what you have drawn--that might lead to embarrassing results! _Tell_ them. Put in all sorts of graphic little touches, even though you cannot draw a tenth of what you are talking about. The man on the Jericho road--how full of fear he was as he walked; how he whistled to keep up his courage; how one robber peeped from behind a rock, and another whispered, "He's coming!" how they sprang out, and he ran, and a third rascal sprang out in front and knocked him down; how he shouted, "Help! Thieves! Help!" and how only the echo answered him in that lonely place--all this must have happened many a time on that Jericho road, and you have a perfect right to stimulate with such natural and inevitable details the imagination of the children. That is what they are for--both our word-picturing and our chalk-picturing: not to exhibit our nimbleness of wit or of finger, but to quicken the minds of the children,--that alone,--and make them more eager in the pursuit of truth. Chapter XXXI Foundation Work The work of the primary department lies at the foundation of all Sunday-school work. This does not mean that there is no chance of a child's becoming a good Bible scholar and a noble Christian if he misses the primary training, but it does mean that without a flourishing primary department a school can scarcely be called successful, while with it half the success of the school is assured. The primary teacher molds the soft clay; her successor with the child must cut the hard marble. Teaching that thus lies at the foundation must deal with fundamental matters, with the greatest lives of the Bible, the great outlines of history, the great essentials of doctrine, the root principles of morality. Details are to be filled in later. The danger is that the teacher will attempt to teach too much, will expect the little ones to know about Hagar when it is enough for them to know about Isaac; or about Jeremiah, when Daniel would be sufficient; or about the order in which Paul wrote his letters, when it might well suffice for them to know that Paul wrote them. But though many questions are too hard to ask, no question is too easy, and no point is so simple that in these first days you may safely take it for granted. Laugh if you please, but I do not think that even these days of sand-maps and pricked cards have produced a method much more helpful for the primary teacher than the old questioning of my boyhood, over and over repeated: "Who was the first man?" "Who was the strongest man?" "Who was the oldest man?" and the like.