Teachers' Meetings by F. N. Peloubet, D. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 23, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 17.

Teachers' Meetings.

By F. N. Peloubet, D. D.

Not from the great centers where there are popular and gifted leaders, but from the average Sunday-schools, there comes a frequent complaint over the difficulty of keeping up the teachers' meeting. Teachers are so driven with their own business, have so much other work for the Lord and his church, have so many meetings to attend, so many duties, and so many calls, that it is hard for them to find time for the teachers' meeting. The best teachers are also best for many other things, and they are in demand in many directions; and they seem compelled to study their lessons at odd moments, at such hours as other meetings are not held, and not to use a whole evening for this purpose.

Now, is there anything that can be done to make the average teachers' meeting a success?

In the first place, whatever plan may be adopted, we may lay it down as a principle as unchangeable as "the laws of the Medes and Persians," that the teachers' meeting, to be successful, must furnish the teachers something worth going for, and which cannot be so well gained, if at all, by private study. Why should we spend the time and trouble, and occupy a whole evening, for what we can gain as well sitting in our pleasant study, or around the open family fire?

Two French proverbs well apply here: "The goods which please are already half sold," "No one has a good market for bad merchandise."

There is no use of begging people to come for what they do not want, or to entreat people to gather for warmth around a stove with no fire in it. We must prepare the feast, and then call men to come, if we wish others with us, "To eat and drink, and in communion sweet Quaff immortality and joy." Ellesmere, in Friends in Council, writes an essay on "Success in Life," in which he lays down as the business principle, that out of every one hundred parts, the man who would succeed must put seventy-three parts into the trumpet, and the other twenty-seven parts may well be devoted to the thing to be trumpeted. But no successful teachers' meeting was ever conducted on that principle. Appeals and entreaties to come may fill the meeting for a few times; but only something worth coming for, the main stress being on the good to be gained there, and not on the trumpet of appeal, can bring long-continued success.

In the second place, the teachers' meeting must be conducted, not by an address, but by questions and answers as the lesson is to be taught in the class. A mere address is too nearly like a spoken commentary, which one can read at home; and in many cases is likely to suggest Mr. Spurgeon's description of a certain commentator: "Some men toil not, but they spin; this man both toils and spins."

The teachers' meeting should not only instruct in the lesson itself, but should be an example of how to question. It is ten times as easy to state certain truths as it is to draw them out by questions. Almost any teacher can state the facts; but they wish to learn at the meeting how to do the best work by means of questions. Then an address is a bad example to teachers. If they follow the example set at the teachers' meeting, they become poor teachers; if they do not, every truth of the address must be translated into the question form. Besides this, one of the most helpful elements of a teachers' meeting is the kindling of mind by contact with mind, and the varied suggestions which come from many minds looking at the subject from different standpoints.

In the third place, a teachers' meeting will not be successful if it is a mere week-night Bible-class, and the members discuss the questions interesting to themselves, but without reference to their work in the class. The whole service should have a direct reference to the short but most important half-hour with the scholars. All the rays from the teachers' meeting should be concentrated upon that one focus.

I heard a story, not long ago, of a party of young men who were planning for a picnic, for which it was proposed that each one should bring a bottle of wine, to be poured into a common receptacle for the use of all. One of the party thought he would save something by carrying a bottle of water instead of wine, and when it was poured into the common dish, it would not be perceived, but simply dilate a little the wine the others brought. But it so happened that every other person in the company did the same thing, and, when all had emptied their bottles, there was only water in the dish.

The application is plain. Each one has as good a right as any other to bring an empty mind and heart to the teachers' meeting. But if all do so, there will be only emptiness in the exercises; and absence of mind will soon lead to absence of bodies.