A Dangerous Method

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 22, 1882

A Dangerous Method.

", 'THERE is a method of Sabbath-school instruction largely practiced and most pertinaciously adhered to, which, in a great measure, lacks the catechetical. It consists more of the exhortatory and illustrative. It is common among young teachers, in the ardor of their first love and awakened zeal, and among females, from the nature of their minds. The earnest and the lukewarm both practice it,—the one from excess, and the other from a defect of zeal. The former is anxious to impress, and is impatient under the slow process of catechizing; the latter does not wish annoyance, or the trouble of preparing. Hence both practice declamation and telling stories, for the purpose of awakening and keeping alive the interest of their scholars. This practice is much easier than the catechetical, requires less knowledge and study, less skill and seriousness. It is much easier to give good advice to children than to break down truth by way of question and answer. It is much easier to relate exciting stories than to interest them by questions for illustration from Scripture. And many teachers, by such means, secure attention and esteem from their scholars. But we shrewdly suspect that the exercise and its result are not wholesome, or calculated to do the good desired. It is misdirected effort; it tends to dissipate the mind.

" Constant exhortation and story-telling have the same effect upon young minds as novel-reading upon older persons. It makes the mind impulsive. It feeds by excitement. It seeks to secure and keep up attention by impulsive efforts. Without them the class or school, it is imagined, would fail to attend, and hence their frequent introduction. It prevents sober thought. There is no patience for anything but the exciting. The mind wanders, and does not fix upon truth presented. Can an habitual novel-reader peruse any work of solid matter? How often do we hear the humiliating confession that such exciting reading has dissipated the mind, and prevented sober thought! In like manner, though under the garb of sanctity, and in the Sabbath-school, the practice of teaching by impassioned exhortation and light story-telling is operating very injuriously upon the minds of youth, and training up a generation of novel-readers. They will not find in sermons or good books the excitement that interests their minds. Hence, if mercy prevent not, they seek to satisfy their hunger by perusing novels, and these by no means the best."