BIBLE TRAINING:

A MANUAL

FOR

SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHERS

AND PARENTS.

BY

DAVID STOW, Esq.,

Author of "The Training System," "Moral School Training for Large
Towns," &c.; Hon. Secretary to the Glasgow Free Normal Seminary.

NINTH EDITION ENLARGED,

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.

MDCCCLIX.

101. d. 495.

PREFACE.

It is no longer necessary to argue in favour of Sabbath schools, as was the case forty or fifty years ago. Their influence and success, as nurseries for the church of Christ, have silenced nearly every objector, and now entitle them to be placed in one of the foremost ranks in the great field of Christian Home Missions. The recent Conference on Town and City Missions, held at Birmingham, acknowledged their comparative inefficiency without such an auxiliary-the influence of the visits of missionaries being principally confined to the women whom they find at home in the families. Almost universally, the children of the poorer classes are out of doors, and engaged in active employment during the day.

The great and paramount object in regard to Sabbath schools now is

FIRST-To improve the teacher's method of communicating instruction, and thus to render it more influential, by the establishment of Normal Classes for preparing young persons to undertake this truly Christian work.

SECOND-To bring out and secure the regular attendance of the great masses in our towns and rural districts who are still uncared for, and are entirely neglected

by their parents at home, and whom no pastoral, missionary, or other Christian agency can reach, except in a mere fractional degree,-who are, in fact, growing up without God, and without hope in Christ, and even. adding to our great public calendar of crime.

Our object in this small publication is to lend a helping hand in remedying these evils, and supplying these wants.

The aggressive machinery of the gospel of Christ, to be efficient, must consist of many combinations, in order to reach the young, the middle aged, and the old, in all their varied circumstances and conditions of life. The work must not entirely be thrown upon the shoulders of the pastor, or the services of the pulpit, or the missionary, for that is a work which cannot, by any possibility, be executed by them. We therefore rejoice in the existence of Sabbath schools-the good, under God, they are the means of doing, and the still higher and more extensive good they may be made the means of accomplishing.

In carrying out the objects of this little work, we have endeavoured, in Chapters IV., V., and VIII., to develop the great outlines of Scripture, in their adaptation to Training Lessons. The mode of communication and of training is partially exhibited by short hints under the lessons throughout the work, but more particularly and summarily in Chapter IX.

Chapter III. presents the method by which the sunken and sinking masses of the community may be brought out and retained under religious instruction in Sabbath schools.

In Chapter IV. there are Hints on Normal Classes for preparing Sabbath school teachers for their important labour of love, and thereby enabling each teacher, male or female, to conduct a LOCAL School with double the usual number of pupils, with equal ease, and more efficiency; in consequence, clergymen and directors might more easily keep up the staff of efficient teachers.

Chapter VI. exhibits a selection of Bible Emblems, with a few hints to teachers under each, which they may extend according to the age and attainments of their pupils. EMBLEMS are seldom selected as the basis of a Bible lesson by parents or teachers. They are so highly valuable, however, at every stage of the Christian life, that we should strongly recommend that at every meeting of a class for religious instruction 10 or 15 minutes at least be spent in "picturing out" one of them.

Chapter VII., or PRACTICAL EXAMPLES, exhibits something like the mode of picturing out a lesson orally, by illustrations, and questions and ellipses mixed-put and answered sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes individually. These examples, to the eye of a stranger, may present a superabundance of words, though in reality not one-half of what must pass between every Bible trainer and his class in thoroughly picturing out a training lesson. The whole, to the reader also, must appear tame, being destitute of the visible manner, eye, and living voice, which the mutual sympathy of trainer and pupils naturally and irresistibly produce.

Should the following great objects be accomplished in