The Sunday-School Teacher as a Soul-Winner

I am very sure, dear friends, that with me you have been singing the doxology in your hearts as we have been listening to these wonderful testimonies of Mr. Hadley and Mr. Monroe and Mr. Reed, and I have a fear that what I shall say may sound somewhat tame after these words to-night; but it is just for the purpose of making that sort of testimony less frequent that we are so interested in the Sunday School.

The government has two ways of saving life on the ocean. It takes a number of men and plants them in this place and says: “You are to conduct a live-saving station.” They have all the apparatus for that sort of work, but they must wait imtil the ships are on the rocks, until the men are struggling in the water for their lives before they can send men out to save them. Then the government has another way — the lighthouse. It plants this house and says: “You live in this house, and before the ships get onto the rocks you warn them off, and show them from the place of danger into a place of safety.” The rescue-mission work that these dear brothers are giving their lives for is the life-saving station, but the Sunday School is trying to save life by the light-house plan rather than the life-boat plan. We are trying to keep these boys and girls off the rocks,

I was in Pacific Garden Mission not long ago, and saw a blear-eyed, drunken man come staggering in, and I knew that that man had once been an innocent little boy; in the Jerry McAuley Mission, where I spent an evening a while ago, I saw a woman in the same condition. I knew she had once been an innocent little girl. Our work is for the boys and girls, and your hearts are all interested in these. I was sitting one day with Mr. Wannamaker, and he said: “We have the best end of it. When you save a man or a woman, you save a unit; but when you save a boy or a girl you save a whole multiplication table.” It is a great thing to save a soul at any age, but it is the greatest thing to save a soul plus a life. The child is the center of the world. That little child Jesus put in the midst has been in the midst ever since, and the world revolves around it. The little child is king and queen. We are glad to do the bidding of the baby. I have known of people walking the floor all night because the baby wanted it that way. Some time ago there was a little child lost in New York City in Central Park, and the papers were full of it. A short time after that the child was found, and the papers came out in great headlines announcing the finding. In a few months there was a great battle, the battle of Santiago, where many precious lives were lost, and the papers again came out in great headlines announcing that; but there were more newspapers sold in New York because they announced the finding of that child than there were at the time of the battle of Santiago. Everyone is not interested m war, but everyone is interested in a little child.

6S THE TEACHER AS A SOUL-WINNER

There are 25,000,000 in the Sunday School army, and it is a wonderful power. Out of all the people that join our churches by conversion, S^ percent come out of the Sunday School. Dr. John Watson was being dined in this country once, and was asked: “What is it, in your judgment as a foreigner, that does most to make America great among the nations of the earth?” He said: “It is the Sunday School.”

I am to talk to you about the teacher. I know you are all either teachers or interested in Sunday School work. I want to talk practically along the line of the teacher’s work. The office of teacher is a divine office. Jesus chose to be a teacher because He thought it the most important business in the world. His last command, in Mark 16: 15, was a command to you and to me to go and teach, and that command is on every man and woman, everyone that has the ability to teach and the opportunity to teach. I believe, as a superintendent, that the teacher is the most important factor in any Sunday School. The teachers really do the work for which the Sunday School is held. 1 know of no place on the footstool so fraught with opportunity and responsibility as to stand with the open Bible before a class of children and try to bring them to the Savior. Dan. 12:3 reads: “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. * ‘If you will take a reference Bible, you will see that the word translated “wise” may with equal correctness be translated *’teachers. “In Prov. 11: 30 we read: “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.” Knowledge is how much we know, wisdom is the use we make of it. The purpose of all teaching is primarily instruction; in Christian work it is primarily for edification and salvation.

I want to speak very briefly of the use of the Bible. This is a very much neglected part of our work. We try to teach too much without the Word of God. The Word of God has its mission and place, and should be used. Ps. 119:130 reads: “The entrance of thy words giveth light. * ‘God wants the darkness of the world driven away, and there is only one way to get darkness out, and that is the very way the janitor drove the darkness out of this room to-night — by putting in the light — and this is the only way to drive sin out of the world. The Word of God is the light. Ps. 119: 105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” When God wants anything done, He has an agency to do it. Isa. 53: lo-ii: “For as the rain Cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” If God wants the earth watered He has a way. If He wants the earth saved He has a way. Take the Bible into your Sunday School work, into the teaching of your lesson.

Let us look a little further at the teacher’s work, and what kind of work we do as teachers. We need the teacher; the teacher must be a living teacher; we want the living teacher. That was what God meant when He took Philip away from the promising work in

o THE TEACHER AS A SOUL-WINNER

Samaria and led him away down that desert road and pointed out to him the eunuch. The eunuch was reading the Word, but he needed the touch of the living heart. We need the teacher, and so we must have some qualifications and some helps for our teachers. First of all, I would like to name some of these. We must prepare. It is not a general preparation that is needed, but specific study. Prepare early. If you begin in the early part of the week to prepare your lesson for the coming Sunday, then all through the week you are looking at everything through your Sunday School spectacles. The very best illustrations are those that come from your own observation and reading and intercourse with your friends. I heard one the other day that I thought was real good. It was not intended as an illustration, but I used it. One time a young lady was presented with a book by an older lady friend. The young lady took the book home and tried to read it, but found it so dry she gave it up. She said to herself: “I wonder why my friend gave me such a dry book. * ‘The next day she saw this friend, and was so afraid that she would ask her if she had read the book that she was very uncomfortable while in her presence, and made up her mind she would go home and read that book even if it was dry. So she tried again, and again she was compelled to give it up. Three times she tried, and then laid the book away. Some time after she met a young man in whom she became very much interested. He became interested in her, too, and in due time they became engaged. Shortly after this she happened to pick up this book and noticed that the name of the author was the same as that of her lover. The next time he came to see her she said: “I have a book here which has your name in it, initials and all.” He blushingly acknowledged himself to be the author. That night she sat up all night to read it, and wondered why she had ever seen a dry line in it. What was the difference? Why she was in love with the author. It is the save way with the Bible. Who loves God’s book and who does not? When do we love God’s book and when do we not?

Prepare more than you expect to teach. You cannot teach all you know and teach with power. Another thought: Prepare from the Bible. I think the Bible is the best commentary in the whole world. I have seen some commentaries of late-day manufacture upon which I think the Bible would throw a great deal of light. We want more of the Scripture in our Sunday School teaching.

I believe in lesson helps, but I do not believe they ought to take the place of original Bible study. At the world’s Sunday School Convention in London I heard Rev. Richard Glover give three rules for the use of helps: (i) Use lesson helps, but don’t depend solely on lesson helps; (2) use them with the Bible, and not apart from the Bible; (3) those lesson helps are the best helps which set you thinking and not save you thinking.

We need to study methods of presenting the lessons, and we need to study the scholars. I am so glad of this convention! It pays to stop and get the tools in order. This illustration was once given me: A man was shoveling sticky clay. Beside him he had a pail of water. He would dip his shovel into the water, and then into the clay, then go back and dip it into the water, and then into the clay, and it took him just as long to keep his shovel in condition to do the work as it did to do the work. But did the man who hired him complain? No, indeed! for if he had not taken the time to keep his shovel in the proper condition, it would soon have been so covered with the clay as to be useless for the work which he was hired to perform. It is always best to take time to keep the tools in order; so we need to study methods and principles of teaching.

The essential conditions of a good teacher are regularity of attendance, punctuality, cheerfulness. There is mighty little religion in a whine. We need more of the gospel of a shining face and an open hand. Mr. Reynolds once told me of a man in his Sunday School who did not have the ability to teach, but he used to stand in the door and shake hands with every one who went in or out, and Mr. Reynolds said that man shook more boys and girls into the kingdom of heaven than any of his teachers taught in. There is power in a smile. A little boy once said: “Please, Mister Superintendent, let me go over to that class where the teacher smiles so much.”

In the twenty-second verse of the ninth chapter of i Corinthians, Paul said: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” The successful teacher adapts himself to the situation. That is tact. This business takes tact. It does not do to ask a man if he is saved when he is running to make a train. You must know the persons in your class, and adapt yourself to the disposition and need of each.

A teacher, to be a success, must have beyond his teaching the spiritual life. For, after all, it is what the teacher is that really tells. Emerson said: “How can I hear the words you say, when what you are is thundering in my ears. “One boy said to another: “I don’t take any stock in my teacher any more.” “Why?” said the other. “Because when you add him up there is nothing to carry.” Teachers, you are more than instructors. You want to be what you seek to have your scholar become, and a good lesson is absolutely spoiled by a bad life. The Gospel gets into a man’s heart not so much by words as by wedges. A man told this story of his conversion. He said: “I was a gambler, and I went into Pacific Garden Mission one night and heard a man testify who said: ‘Jesus Christ saved me, and I was a gambler. ‘The next night I went again, the same man got up and said: ‘Jesus Christ saved me, and I was a gambler.’ I listened to that testimony for six straight weeks, forty-two nights in succession, and I made up my mind if that story was true for six weeks it was true for me, and I was saved.” It is what we are that tells the story.

Look for results. Would it be a surprise to you if a dozen of your scholars should come to you and say: “What shall I do to be saved?” One of Mr. Spurgeon’s students went to him and said: “I am discouraged, I don’t see any results from my work.” Mr. Spurgeon said: “You don’t expect to see results coming along all the time, do you?” “Why, certainly not.” “Well, that is the reason you don’t have them.”

But do not be discouraged if you do not see results. Some will say: “I have taught and I have not seen my girls saved.” It does not say, “Be thou successful,” but, “Be thou faithful.” Some folks seem to be such good seed-sowers that God lets them do the sowing and someone else do the reaping. A dear Christian man who had been teaching a class of boys for some time was about to go out into the next world. He called his wife to him, and spoke of his boys, and said: “Oh, not one of my boys has been saved!” She comforted him by telling him that he had been faithful. When that man’s body was laying in the casket those boys came and dropped bitter tears upon it, and shortly after every one of them gave his heart to Christ.

The Christian world had prayed and prayed for a single woman to go away to the cannibal islands to be a missionary. Finally Harriet Newell volunteered to go. Much money was spent on her training. They had a great jubilee meeting in New York City when she started. There was great rejoicing. But before the ship landed on those islands she died. The letter that came back with the sad news brought sorrow and disappointment to the Christian world. But that letter had not been on American soil three months when fifty young women were ready to go. Harriet Newell’ s was a magnificent success, though she never did one moment’s work in her chosen field. Fidelity is success.

Do personal work if you want to be successful. I have had teachers come to me and say: “I have only one scholar in my class to-day; don’t you think I had better let him go in some other class, and I will go home?” On nineteen different occasions Jesus sat down and taught one scholar. Our scholars are not won by classes, but one by one. It is hand-picked fruit we want. Andrew is only mentioned separately three times in the Bible, but one time it is said he brought in his brother Peter, and do you know, it seems to me that Andrew will get a whole lot of stars

In his crown for the three thousand souls Peter won on the day of Pentecost. One time in Toledo there came a knock at my door, just as we were sitting down to breakfast. I opened the door, and there stood a young man seventeen years of age. He said: “You did not feel very much encouraged over the work in Sunday School yesterday. I want to tell you that it was your words that led me to Christ.” That boy is Tracy McGregor, now superintendent of the McGregor Helping Hand Mission in Detroit. I believe it was the best day’s work I ever did, and I don’t know when I spoke the word.

Love is the hammer that breaks the heart. Our scholars are drawn by the power of love. Love will do what nothing else will do. These boys and girls want to know right away that we love them and are interested in them. My daughter teaches a class of little girls. One morning there was a knock at the door, and when Louise went to the door there stood one of the little girls in her class crying most piteously. When Louise put her arms around her and asked her what the trouble was, she said: “My little baby brother died last night, and I wanted to tell you and have you cry with me.” That scholar knew the teacher loved her. Love is the hammer that breaks the stony heart.