BIBLE-SCHOOL DAY, pp. 523-584.
• "The Junior Conference" by J. Walter Carpenter, pp. 523-529.
  • "The Characteristics of the Juniors" by W. F. Smith, pp. 523-525.
  • "Practical Junior Results" by J. Walter Carpenter, pp. 525-527.
  • The Bible and the Junior by Mrs. Dickey, pp. 527-529.
• "Intermediate Conference" by Myron C. Settle, pp. 530-532.
• "Adult Conference" by W. C. Pearce, pp. 532-540.
• "The Training-class Work a Preparation and a Conserving Force in Evangelism" by Stephen
  E. Fisher, pp. 540-541.
• "Building Up a Teacher-training Class" by Geo. O. Foster, p. 542.
• "Methods of Working Up a Teacher-training Class" by Clifford S. Weaver, p. 543.
• "Methods of Working Up a Teacher-training Class" by Adam K. Adcock, pp. 544-545.
• "Methods of Teaching a Training-class" by F. M. Rogers, pp. 546-547.
• "Where the Training-class Has Helped; or, Teacher-training the Panacea for Church Ills"
  by H. A. Pearce, pp. 547-548.
• "Teacher-training as a Panacea for Church Ills" by Homer W. Carpenter, pp. 548-549.
• "Training-class Work a Revival of the Century-old Call, 'To the Law and to the Testimony'"
  by B. S. Ferrall, pp. 549-551.
• "Training-class Work a Revival of the Century-old Call, 'To the Law and to the Testimony'"
  by George A. Miller, pp. 551-552.
• "How to Make the Most of Graduation" by J. A. Barnett, pp. 552-553.
• "Teacher-training-class a Revival of the Century-old Call, 'To the Law and to the Testimony'"
  by Grant W. Speer, pp. 553-554.
• "Why Make teacher-Training Unanimous" by Clifford A. Cole, pp. 555-556.
• "Make It Unanimous" by Wm. Grant Smith, pp. 556-558.
• "Bible-trained Men in Places of Power" by Walter Scott Priest, pp. 558-560.
• "Bible-trained Men in Places of Power" by David H. Shields, pp. 560-562.
• "Bible-trained Men in Places of Power" by S. M. Perkins, pp. 562-563.
• "The Future of Training-Class Work" by E. J. Meacham, pp. 563-565.
• "Men's Bible-school Parade," p. 565.
• "Men's Classes" by R. P. Shepherd, p. 565.
• "Bible Study and the Nation" by R. H. Crossfield, pp. 566-570.
• "Men's Class Work," pp. 570-572.
• "The Essentials of Success in Adult Bible-class Work" by W. C. Pearce, pp. 573-575.
• "Women's Classes" by I. W. Gill, p. 575.
• "Bible Study and the Home" by Mrs. T. W. Grafton, pp. 576-580.
• "Mixed Classes" by W. H. Logan, pp. 580-584.

      Devotional exercises led by Charles M. Watson.

      Mr. Carpenter: I count it very fortunate in having with us this morning one of the few men in the United States who hold professorships in chairs of Bible-school Pedagogy, W. F. Smith, connected with the College of the Bible at Lexington, Ky., who is to speak for us on "The Characteristics of the Juniors."

      W. F. Smith: Mr. Chairman and Fellow-workers: I appreciate the gravity of my position, because just twenty years ago I undertook, for the first time, to train Sunday-school teachers. And I very speedily did one or two of them more harm than good. And now I am guessing that, in a few years, professors of Sunday-school pedagogy will be as numerous as rabbits in Old Virginia. Already we are having very much talk about psychology and pedagogy in various departments, and there is danger that good, earnest people will become so confused with the multitude of voices, so distracted by the combination of councils of impractical persons, that there will be more discouragement than otherwise in it. Now, you must defend yourselves against me and the others. Just hold fast to good common sense and your own experience, and do not throw it all overboard in the hot pursuit of novelty. It is said, you know, that

      We can do many things just by good, natural ability and out of a depth of interest, that we sometimes do less perfectly when we fall in love with red tape and are greatly given over to doing our work by rule. I would have every one of you to be known in the community, and especially by your pupils, chiefly for your common sense, your knowledge of God in your daily lives, your love for them rather than for your psychological lore and your pedagogical remarks, or even for the technique of your teaching. These matters are important, but not supremely important.

      A large number of business men in the city of New York were recently interviewed as to their early rearing, especially in the Sunday-school. Those conspicuous men, successful in business, testified that the chief contribution received by them from their Sunday-school teachers, was the godly living of those people.

      We really need to know something quite definitely about juniors. It is my function in this program to beget in your minds a sense of the importance of that work, rather than to tell you just what to do with those peculiarities. I am enacting a kind of John the Baptist for one coming after me in that respect.

      One of the chief teachers before the public says that the development of the various powers of the mind may be likened to people starting in a race. All of those powers are present at first, but they are not equally active to begin with. And, as we stand watching the line, we see that some are scarcely [523] moving, and others are going on very rapidly. And as they advance, the teacher should know the natural order of their appearance, and direct his efforts toward those powers which are especially active and which prepare the way for those that are to come afterward. Now, you know that a little child reasons, but reasoning is not one of its characteristics. That is not dominant, that comes much later.

      When we have reached the juniors, we have come to a very interesting period in the activity of the child in certain ways. The child is restless. Nature intended it to be restless, in mind as well as in body. What are you and I to do about it? I am here chiefly this morning to preach to you the doctrine of reverence for it, that you should be told that children shall be restless, that their minds shall move rapidly, and that they shall not settle down into the humdrum taxing lines of thought. I hope your boys and girls never will be interested in you, if you deliver them long, tedious lectures. I don't want them to be, God doesn't want them to be, nature doesn't intend them to be, and we had better let God and nature have their way to some extent.

      What does that mean in your attitude of reverence? It means that you should never be very long in getting to a point. When I was a boy, I was much taken with Washington Irving's description of the green Dutchman who wished to leap over a mountain, something after the manner that I had seen men in a circus leap over horses and elephants. Mr. Irving said that that same Dutch tumbler, in order to get a good start, got back three miles from the mountain, and by the time he reached the, mountain he was exhausted, and had to sit down and get his breath. Now, children do not like that, and children are right. Children want us to come to the point, and children are correct.

      You are to furnish food for the imagination, food for the judgment by and by, food for a taste for literature, for a taste for the Bible. You are to furnish food for the feelings, and I hope you take very seriously to the feeling-life of your child. People who conceive of their functions as teachers being limited entirely to the condition of a recitation and the purpose of the illustration, as being entirely to cram certain dates and facts into the heads of the children, and to try to have them to know just how many miles Cæsarea was from Jerusalem, as I heard a teacher only a few days ago, have entirely misconceived their function and their opportunities. I do not care whether a student knows how many miles it is from Jerusalem to Cæsarea or not. I do not see that that is really going to enrich his imagination or his feelings.

      And we are to understand and take seriously the child's love of a story. The Religious Educational Association recently advised that it was their opinion that teachers should not be permitted to teach children of any grade unless they could tell a story well. We are coming to that, we must come to that. Everybody loves a story, and every good thing under heaven nearly, by way of enlightenment and inspiration and interest appealing to the feelings and imagination and the judgment, can be put into a story. Use the story very largely in your work. Why? The children like it; it is interesting to them; you can make the story instructive; you can make it for their training in judgment; you can put everything good into the story.

      You say you can not tell a story? How do you know you can not? Not everybody can tell stories. The children's superintendent of Carnegie Library of this city is doing a great work by training people to tell stories to children. I hold here a leaflet entitled "A List of Good Stories to be Told Children under Twelve Years of Age," and it contains a brief statement upon the subject of telling stories, how to tell them--the best which I have seen. That pamphlet is worth its weight in gold, and only costs five cents. If you want them in considerable numbers, you can get them for three cents, down here at the children's department of the Carnegie Library. Learn to tell stories, and tell them just the best you can.

      There are two things chiefly to be kept in mind in telling Bible stories to children. One is to bring out the divine activity. Most Sunday-school teachers exaggerate that, and make the little [524] folks feel as if human beings were just sticks and stumps and stones, and didn't amount to anything; that they are entirely passive. The next thing is to bring out the human side so that they understand it, know it, feel it. I was telling a little mountain girl a story last year in the mountains of Kentucky. She was interested in the story, a bright little girl of this same period we were talking about. And her mother sat by listening. Her mother had read the Bible a great deal, but it was in an exceedingly dry way. And when I had finished the story, the mother said: "Well, well, I declare. You talk about that just like it happened. It seems like those people were alive." Why, certainly, human nature has not changed. Let children get into the reality of things. We can not fool them; they do realize, if we will let them, how close akin they are to the world.

      I have occupied my time, and I did not expect to talk as long as this. Love God, love humanity, love childhood. Be content to let children be as God and nature have made them, and if they are restless, work with them, and take it into account. And if they want stories, tell them stories. Get by their side and move with them as they advance. Be in touch with them. Many of the people think they are ahead of the children, when they are behind them, and they look back and expect to find the children, and they are looking the wrong direction.

      After singing by the congregation and a few sentence prayers by various persons, the leader (Mr. Carpenter) addressed the meeting as follows:

      Mr. Carpenter: I want to speak to you in this hour on the subject of "Practical Junior Results," believing as I do that the junior superintendent of our Bible school has a definite work to do and definite results to attain which do not belong to any other department of the school; believing also that there is a junior religion which ought to, be enjoyed and possessed by every junior child in our school, a religion suited to this boy and girl in this period of life.

      To use an illustration this morning, it will be my aim as I speak to you to set the target at which the junior teachers and officers of our schools shall aim. I am reminded of the old firearms used by our fathers in the early settlement of our country, and known as the old "Blunderbuss," which shot almost anywhere and hit almost nothing.

      Now, in the Sunday-school we have got beyond the day of the blunderbuss and we have come to the day of the modern rifle. And so my purpose this morning shall be to set this target for us that we may see where we are going to shoot, what results we are seeking to attain, that our efforts shall not be

J. W. CARPENTER.

scattered broadcast everywhere, but shall be definite and effective.

      As I shall speak to you this morning, I wish to discuss for you five of the predominant characteristics and seek to show the results which we ought to secure in our work as junior teachers, results directly related to these predominant characteristics of the junior child.

      One of the predominant characteristics in this period is that it is the memory age. The things, friends, that you remember this morning most clearly are not the things you have learned most recently, but are the things which you learned in this junior period of your lives. Passages of Scripture you would quote most correctly and most easily this morning, would be the passages learned then. What result ought we to get, since this is the memory age of life? As junior teachers, we ought to see to it to fill the minds of the children with numbers of choice passages of Scripture. Not only Scripture passages, but also choice hymns, ought to find lodgment at this time, so that we might sing by day and by night those songs of sweetest melody and highest inspiration.

      But, in addition to these, we ought to have given us at this time numerous facts about the Bible, the names and divisions of the books, until this book, in which we are all so vividly interested, would be a, book that would be a [525] sharpened and ready tool in the hands of every one. It is a pathetic sight, friends, to go into an audience of adults in a prayer-meeting and call out the location of a lesson as Second Timothy, third chapter, verses 6 to 10, and observe that audience of adults trying to find the passage in the Bibles.

      The junior age is the heroic age in life. It is the time when every boy has some man as his ideal, when every girl has some woman as her ideal. There is perhaps no time in all human life when the Christ can be held up as a life ideal better than right at this time of which we speak. But the children as yet know not very much about the Lord, and it is the place of the teacher to so teach Him that He will be fair to the junior children and will be taken instead of even father or mother as life's ideal.

      In the next place, the junior age is the habit-forming age of life. I want to mention a few of these habits that ought to be formed at this period. The habit of daily Bible reading ought to be formed here, for, as well as being the habit-forming age, this is also the reading age in life. Almost every child of the Junior Department has been to school long enough to read the newspapers and books and his Bible. He can read almost anything with intelligence and with joy. Since it is the reading age, we ought to form the habit of daily Bible reading. But this is a problem.

      If the teacher is wise, and willing to read her Bible with her children in mind, and choose for herself the junior passages and then cultivate daily Bible reading in this period by use of appropriate Scriptures, not the dry portions they will not read, but the part suited to their abilities and interest, she can develop in their lives one of the most blessed habits it is possible for any human soul to possess, the habit of daily reading of the word of God.

      The habit of church attendance ought to be formed here also. But you say, "How is that to be done? How can that splendid result be attained?" I think I can give you a recipe which I believe will help us. The Junior Department in its program of exercises ought to have some order that should prepare the children for the enjoyment of the services of the church. Let the superintendent in charge of the Junior Department arrange her program, the manner of collecting the offering, the songs that shall be sung, the spirit of religious devotion and reverence that shall be found in the department over which she presides, until the very atmosphere of the church shall be found in this department.

      There is another habit that ought to be secured in this period, and that is the habit of reverence. It seems that a boy or a girl, unless they are taught, do not understand the difference between the secular and sacred things. It is our duty as teachers in this department of our schools to see to it that the habit of reverence claims a place in all the lives of our boys and girls: reverence in the first place for the Lord's house, so that they may understand when they come into its sacred courts that the Lord is in his holy temple, and all the earth shall keep silence before him.

      There ought to be a reverence also for the Bible. It is God's book, friends, and ought to be touched by hands more reverent than books written by others.

      There ought to be a reverence also for prayer. I have seen junior boys that did not know any better, whistling one to the other when prayer was being offered, but the teacher had been at fault in not instructing those boys to be reverent in those sacred services in the Lord's house.

      There ought to be a reverence for songs as well, for songs, friends, are praises of the Most High. There ought to be no whistling, no conversation, no moving about.

      Another habit that ought to be formed at this time is the habit of giving. It is said that you can not teach an old dog new tricks. Certainly you can not. A man or woman who has never been in the habit of giving as a child, will never learn to give as a man or a woman, but if we begin when boys have nickels and have dimes to teach them that it is "more blessed to give than to receive," it will become a joy so sweet that they will never, never relinquish it as long as they live.

      There is another habit, the habit of prayer. There are three kinds of prayer that ought to be taught. One is the [526] emergency prayer, which every one is very ready to participate in. The emergency prayer--when a man gets in trouble he prays. They ought to be taught to depend on God in the hours of crises of their lives. There is another prayer which is more in use than this, and that is the prayer that comes daily to us, that when we get down on our knees by our bedsides at night, or when we rise up in the morning, or, like Daniel, three times a day, with our faces turned towards Jerusalem, that habit of daily, prayer is important, as the habit of opening the book of God is important. And the third kind of prayer is the prayer which has no petition in it, a prayer of gratitude, a prayer of thanksgiving. I believe we ought to say prayers to God that do not have a single petition in them. And I should not wonder if that is the sweetest hour God knows, when his children, instead of beseeching favors, are thanking him for blessings given. Let us teach this kind of prayer to our children, and when they are forming their prayer habits, let them pray thanksgiving prayers.

      I want to say two things more before my time shall expire. The junior age is the time when sins first consciously come into the experience of the children. Before this, wrong, so far as the children were concerned, consisted in disobedience to commands given, either by parents or teachers. The wrong consisted not in the doing, but in the disobedience to the father's instructions or the teacher's directions. But now there comes into the consciousness of the child a knowledge of sin. There is a burst of conscience that distinguishes right from wrong. What result ought we to get from it if this is the age of conscious sin? We ought to teach the Bible view of sin, and we ought to teach the consequences of sin and its remedy as the word of God points it out.

      And this leads me to the last of the two things I wanted to say before I closed. This is also the age of spiritual awakening.

      I was talking with a mother about three weeks ago, whose little girl was in our Junior Department, and I said to her, "Little Annie will very soon, if not already, make known her desire to serve the Master." "Oh," said the mother, "Annie has been talking about it for six months." It is the age of spiritual awakening. And the result, friends, that we ought to attain because of this being true, is that the child ought to be led to a personal confession of his Christ.

      This brings us to the decision day, which every school ought to have, which every worker in the Junior Department ought to seek to make as profitable as it is possible to do. For a decision day is a time very favorable indeed to bring about this personal decision which this Junior Department should see registered everywhere.

      After the singing of a hymn by the congregation, an address was delivered by Mrs. Dickey, as follows:

      Mrs. Dickey: I want to tell you a little story this morning. Once upon a time there were two children who were born the same day. We call them twins. And as they grew up they began to be very fond of books, and their friends gave them a great many such presents, year after year. After awhile they began to read for themselves and did not have to ask mother to read the stories to them, and their mother thought she would make a place for their books so that they could keep them together. And so one day she said to them, "Children, I am going to give you a bookcase to keep your own books in." So they got their books and put them in, but they could not always find just exactly the ones they wanted, so they said, "Let us put all the fairy tales on one shelf and all the other stories on another shelf; then take all these stories that were written before we were born and put them on the other side, and all the books that were written after our birthday over here."

      Do you know that this Book Mr. Carpenter has been talking to us about is just arranged that way? It is God's book, and we can just imagine this morning that we see a bookcase here, and there are different kinds of stories in this book; we have history, very early history, and then we have later history, and we have poetry and we have prophecy and we have a birthday, and then on the other side we have some books of biography and one book of history and fourteen letters, special letters [527] to people, and seven general letters, and another book of prophecy on the other side, and the birthday in between, and all the books in one side of the bookcase were written before that birthday, and all the books on the other side of the bookcase were written after that birthday; and that is the way our Bible is arranged, God's bookcase. We want to interest juniors in this bookcase.

      Now, we want to make the Book just as attractive as possible to children, and one of the ways we use to make this Book attractive is by the use of the rainbow book-mark. God gave us this Book and it is just full of beautiful promises, and why can not we use God's colors to help us find them?

      So we take this rainbow book-mark, which is just a simple device made of ribbon. There are nine ribbons in it. We add two to the rainbow colors, and we take this first one, the red ribbon, and have that placed just after the five books of early history and law. And the second, the orange, is placed after the twelve books of history. The yellow stands for the five books of poetry, and the green for the major prophets' five books, and the light blue is for the minor prophets. And that brings us to the division between the Old and the New Testaments. The white stands for the four Gospels, because everything else centers right there, and white light is all the other colors blended. The indigo is for the one book of history, and the violet for the fourteen special letters, and the purple for the seven general letters; and that brings us up to the Book of Revelation, and we do not need another mark for that. Your child will just be delighted with a book-mark of this kind.

      Then, there is some hand-work that one may do in connection with this rainbow book-mark, right at the beginning of the school. Here is a little book, and on the outside of it we have the rainbow colors put together just to make it a little bit more attractive. On the inside they have written here, first the name of the school, then the name of the person who made it, and then on the first page is the strip of red paper pasted there in the center of the book, with the names of the first five books written there. On the second page is the orange strip with the names of the twelve books written there. Then the third page has the five books of poetry, and has the yellow strip. And so on right down through the books of the Old Testament.

      That is first-year work for nine-year-old children, and at the end of the year you will find that the children have a knowledge of all the books of the Old Testament, their correct names; they can say them backwards or forwards; they can bound them--that is, give the book before and the book after--and can tell you a good deal about these books in our year's work.

      In the second year we have to do something about the contents of the book. You can do that in various ways. This is a second-year junior book. There are five little booklets of the books of the early history and law. And I want to tell you just what is written on the inside of these. This one is Genesis. If I were to ask you what is the first thing you would think about in Genesis, you would answer the creation. Then the flood would be the second story, that would stand out most prominently, even in the mind of a grown person. And they are the things that interest children. Genesis is the book of beginning; that is what is written on this first page, and it contains two stories, and that is enough for the children to remember--the creation and the flood. Next are the characters. Who are some of the people? There is Abraham and there is Joseph; these are two people the children are very much interested in, and that is all that is written on this first book, and that is probably enough for a junior child to remember.

      The next book is Exodus, and we do the same thing with that. Here is the book of the minor prophets. The name is written on the outside there, then two of the different writers' names are written on the inside of the book. It warns the people against sin, and there you have the two books one after the other written to warn people against sin.

      I know one little boy said to me once, "Why didn't these Israelites, when they had so many warnings, quit sinning?" That is the effect it had on him. He thought that when they had had all [528] these warnings they ought to remember, and then it was quite easy to go on after that and tell him that we have warnings just as well as the Israelites, and that perhaps we do not quit sinning either.

      Then, perhaps you can take up a map of the Old Testament world. You can have the children outline the maps in the second year, the second junior year, because they are ten years old by that time, and I think it is better to have something of that work more or less in the schools. And then there are the different stories after that which will come in the different books for the third-year juniors. You get eleven-year-old children then. They are much more interested in the work and will begin to do that themselves.

      Then we come up to the New Testament times, and so we can make a book just as we made in the Old Testament series, using the New Testament. Start out with the white books, and we have the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and with some simple things written on the inside. We have here written to the Jews, or written to the Romans, or written to the Christians, or written to the Greeks, etc.

      And then take the one book of history, the Acts, and just write, "From the leaders to the different classes of the people." And then we come up a little further, and then the life of Christ is taken up. That makes a wonderful book. In that way they will get the life of Christ as they never could get it otherwise. They can make a simple outline map of Palestine. This is the Christmas story that is written out and illustrated with pictures. One can get the Wilde pictures, or the Brown pictures, or the Perry pictures, or you can find an abundance of pictures in the different magazines. And then, using large initial letters that the children will find in the different places and color them a little, make the books a little more attractive. I want you to look at these things after we are through.

      And then we have the life of Christ illustrated, and there are always such beautiful maps and pictures that we can get. We can get a good many of the maps from our old quarterlies that these children will not do anything else with, and write up these incidents and different places and watch for the pictures. They are all so helpful and so beautiful. Here is one that was made by a child; it was quite a thick book when it was finished. It was a scrap-book, and the child has the full life of Christ written out in this in her own handwriting. And there are pictures here and there that illustrate these things.

      Here is something in the way of a pulp map. Anybody can make pulp by tearing up old newspapers just as fine as you can tear them and put them on the stove where they will keep about the boiling point until they get into pulp. Anybody can make a pulp map. And then, perhaps, you can have some access to a map where you can get the outline. This is one that shows the mountains and the valleys. That is work boys like to do. You can not get them to do as much pasting and cutting as girls, but they will do this work every time.

      Then, we have hymn illustrations, and that can be done in this hand-work. I have some hymns here illustrated. One is, "My Faith Looks Up to Thee." You can make these just as beautiful as you want to make them. Here is "There is a Green Hill Far Away," and the verses are written and then the pictures throughout the verses and the pictures are colored. Children like to color them. The bright colors interest them.

      You can always find plenty to do with this supplemental work. Are there any questions?

      "Are those maps and things to be taught during the Sunday-school hour? We in our school meet Sunday afternoon."

      Mrs. Dickey: Some do it during the hour and some at other times. Almost every school I know of in our county and outside takes ten minutes only for that work.

      On motion, a very hearty vote of thanks was extended to Mrs. Dickey and to the people who have assisted her by furnishing her the material for the work that she has presented this morning.

      After prayer by Mr. Watson, the meeting was dismissed with the benediction. [529]

[CCR 523-529]