OBJECT TEACHING IN THE BIBLE THE Bible is the teacher's best handbook of object training. This is true because the Bible is an oriental book, and the orientals received truth through symbols and visual instruction. Their mannerisms were symbolical, their holy writings radiant with visualized truth. So the Bible weaves into its cloth of truth this gorgeous method of appeal. Hence the Bible is something to look at as well as to read through. The oriental mind grasped truth and the human mind elsewhere is cast in the same mould. The universal mind follows the same program. The perfect art of the religious teacher is to teach Bible truth in the Bible method, and that method is "through the eye-gate into the kingdom of the soul." Let us wander through the wonderland of the Bible that we may learn the perfect art of great teaching. The prophet Ezekiel was commanded to go out and set his face toward Jerusalem, and there, in the presence of the people hold aloft his sword and drop it to the ground and say "A sword is also sharpened" meaning that war was soon to come down upon them, and the sword of battle was sharpened for the fray. God was against them, and because of their sins they were to be punished. Jeremiah also was an object teacher for God and this was one of the lessons he taught the people. He saw a potter shaping a vessel and it was marred in his hands. It was defective in substance. Too much earth, and not enough of clay. He broke the marred vessel and made another of better stuff; by this object lesson, the prophet declared, Israel was defective; it had in its composition too much earth; it was marred with idol dust and earthly parts and so God would break Israel and make it over again. Jeremiah at another time produced two baskets of figs and set them before the Lord in the temple. One basket contained good figs, and the other basket spoiled figs. The prophet explained this object lesson by saying the-basket of good figs were God's good people. God will keep them and save them. The bad figs represented the unfaithful people, and they shall be scattered over the earth. This same prophet once took a girdle and hid it from sight in a dark damp place where it finally became mouldy and worthless. Then he brought it forth before the people and holding it up said, "This girdle represents God's people who have left the true fold, and joined themselves to idols of the heathen races. They are no longer a fit girdle to wrap around His loins as His peculiar and holy peoples." The prophet explains "Cleave unto your God, as the girdle clings to the body, so shall ye be kept close to him." Once more, this same prophet took a parchment and before all the people wrote thereon the sins of the people. He then read it once to them, rolled it up and bound a stone about it and cast it into the river saying, "So shall Babylon be destroyed and pass away."