Readiness to teach is no longer a sufficient credential. The amiable
young girl must now not only be willing to teach, she must also be
willing to learn how to teach. In the earlier time practically any well-
disposed young man of the congregation who would consent to take charge
of a class of boys was eagerly allotted that class without further
parley. This, too, is not now the case. The young man, before beginning
to teach the boys, is obliged to prepare himself somewhat specifically
for such work. In my own parish the boys' classes of the Sunday-school
are taught by young men who are students in the Theological School of
which my parish church is the chapel. In an adjacent parish the "infant
class" is in charge of an accomplished kindergartner. Surely such
persons are well qualified to help to inspire and to encourage the
children to regard churchgoing as a privilege, and to make them wish to
go!
And the minister! I am inclined to think that the minister helps more
than any one else, except the father and mother, to give the children
this inspiration, this encouragement. Children go to church now, when
churchgoing is voluntary, quite as much as they went when it was
compulsory. They learn very early to wish to go; they see with small
difficulty that it is a privilege. Their Sunday-school teachers might
help them, even their parents might help them, but, unless the minister
helped them, would this be so?
There are so many ways in which the minister does his part in this
matter of the child's relation to the church, and to those things for
which the church stands. They are happily familiar to us through our
child friends: the "children's service" at Christmas and at Easter; the
"talks to children" on certain Sundays of the year. These are some of
them. And there are other, more individual, more intimate ways.
The other day a little girl who is a friend of mine asked me to make out
a list of books likely to be found in the "children's room" of the near-
by public library that I thought she would enjoy reading. On the list I
put "The Little Lame Prince," the charming story by Dinah Mulock. Having
completed the list, I read it aloud to the little girl. When I reached
Miss Mulock's book, she interrupted me.
"'The Little Lame Prince,' did you say? Is that in the library? I
thought it was in the Bible."
"The Bible!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," the child said, in some surprise; "don't you remember? He was
Jonathan's little boy--Jonathan, that was David's friend--David, that
killed the giant, you know."
I at once investigated. The little girl was quite correct. "Who told you
about him?" I inquired.
"Our minister," she replied. "He read it to me and some of the other
children."
This, too, a bit later, I investigated. I found that the minister had
not read the story as it is written in the Bible, but a version of it
written by himself especially for this purpose and entitled "The Little
Lame Prince."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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