Religious teacher

“ Perhaps no teacher in a given school attains that ideal. But some teachers come nearer it than others. If our pupils are to hear the Good News so that their minds are enlightened and their hearts respond to the love of God and His Christ, if they are to be formed into vital, twentieth-century Christians, they should receive their religious instructions only from the very best teachers.
C. Inasmuch as the textbooks employed in religious instruction above the fifth grade require a high degree of catechetical preparation, religion should be a departmentalized subject in grade six through twelve. ”

“ Some say religious instruction should be given in the home. This is usually done, in the intelligent christian home; but there are many homes, where it is impossible, and others indisposed. The fact that the church has seen, as if with a new vision, the method of Jesus, the Great Teacher of all men, reveals itself more clearly in the Sunday school, than in any other department of its work. There it attempts the task of religious education by instruction from the Bible, and endeavors to inspire the child, youth and man with the purest and greatest motives for action. ”

“ And yet, notwithstanding this feeling planted in our very nature, that a spiritual ministry must have a spiritual origin, it is astonishing to see the facility with which almost any professed teacher is received. Just as mere ignorance inclines the most illiterate, so the better classes are induced, by indolence or habit, to receive almost any man as a religious instructor. ”

“ The teacher is always greater than his lesson, and what he is, is greater than what he says. The religious education of the young depends more on the gift of persons, on contact with lives, than on anything else. ”

“ We mean, so far as the apostle is concerned, a greater or less approach to what really characterises him and gives his teaching its originality and power. We mean, so far as truth is concerned, a greater or less agreement with facts which can be verified, and a greater or less power of explaining them. What essentially characterises a religious teacher, and gives him his permanent worth and vitality, is, after all, just the scientific value of his teaching, its correspondence with important facts, and the light it throws on them. ”

“ The teacher will, therefore, say to himself, The religious knowledge I am putting into the minds of my pupils is of supreme importance—if it makes them live better and act more nobly; the religious attitudes and emotions I am cultivating in my class are full of value and significance—if they cause their possessors to live more broadly, sympathetically, usefully, and happily. ”

“ The higher education which he shares with all others furnishes ample intellectual equipment, while the abundant leisure for personal pursuits with which our life is interfused, and the entire exemption from public duty after forty-five, give abundant opportunity for the exercise of his vocation. In a word, the modern religious teacher is a prophet, not a priest. ”

“ But the great mass of the fathers and mothers, of every name and denomination through all the ranks of society, look up to the Saviour of sinners, with something at least of the feeling, that he is the object of extraordinary affection and reverence. I am aware however, that I am approaching the limit, which, in many parts of our country, ought to bound the religious influence of the teacher in a public school ”

“ Do not be eager to draw from your pupils an expression of their personal interest in religious truth. Lay before them, and enforce, by all the means in your power, the principles of Christian duty, but do not converse with them for the purpose of gratifying your curiosity in regard to their piety, or your spiritual pride by counting up the numbers of those who have been led to piety by your influence. Beginning to act from Christian principle is the beginning of a new life, and it may be an interesting subject of inquiry to you to ascertain how many of your pupils have experienced the change ”

“ Some teacher may perhaps say that he can not perform it because he is not a religious man—he makes no pretensions to piety. But this can surely be no reason. He ought to be a religious man, and his first prayer offered in school may be the first act by which he becomes so. Entering the service of Jehovah is a work which requires no preliminary steps. ”

“ Having no regular religious instruction, seldom hearing the voice of a living teacher, with scarce a Bible to be found within their gloomy houses, they were but little in advance of the heathen as to religious knowledge, and far too near allied to them in many of their vicious habits. ”

“ Our Sunday-schools, therefore, urgently demand the aid of "religious" teachers; we mean teachers who are practical Christians themselves, and carry out in their lives the lessons they are desirous of teaching others. ”

“ One great purpose, then, in religious instruction is to attach the stimulus and appeal of religion to the common round of daily life and experience of the child. As Christ came that we might have life, not a future life alone, but a full, happy, and worthy life in the present as well, so we come to the child as a teacher to help him in his life here and now. ”

“ And then when we reflect upon the influence which would be exerted upon the future religious character of this nation, by having the millions of children training up in the schools, accustomed, through all the years of early life, to being brought daily into the presence of the Supreme, with thanksgiving, confession, and prayer, it can hardly seem possible that the teacher who wishes to be faithful in his duties, should hesitate in regard to this. ”

“ By the various teaching communities of religious priests, brothers, and sisters, thousands are saved; for in youth their pupils acquire a love and a practical knowledge of faith; they are nurtured in purity and piety, and they are enlightened and encouraged in habits of industry and sobriety. The good that religious teachers accomplish is not confined to one class or to a life's work ”

“ These controls are not lessened by the fact that most of the lay teachers are of the Catholic faith. Inevitably, some of a teacher's responsibilities hover on the border between secular and religious orientation. ”

“ By whose authority do some religious teachers now lead the suffering through such a round-about, intricate, or arid path of things to be done and doctrines to be accepted before bringing them to Christ? ”

“ Parents pass off the responsibility on to the Sunday-school teacher, and suppose, of course, if they send their children to Sunday-school, they do the best they can for them. Now, I am satisfied, from my experience as a Sabbath-school teacher, that the best religious instruction imparted abroad still stands in need of the coöperation of a systematic plan of religious discipline and instruction at home; for, after all, God gives a power to the efforts of a parent that can never be transferred to other hands. ”

“ They need religious teachers who can portray, both by word and by example, the great personalities of the tradition, the heroes and saints; teachers who are clear about what their contribution really is, who can make clear to youth the heroism of a man of faith and let it stand forth without all the confusions of superstitious veneration. ”

“ Teachers of Christian Science must have the necessary moral and spiritual qualifications to elucidate the Principle and rule of Christian Science, through the higher meaning of the Scriptures. “The less the teacher personally controls other minds, and the more he trusts them to the divine Truth and Love, the better it will be for both teacher and student.” ”

“ And though we would deem it eminently right and proper that our child should read his daily Scripture lesson to some respectable schoolmaster, a believer in the divine authority of revelation, and should repeat to him his weekly tale of questions from the National Catechism, yet to the extempore religious teaching of no merely respectable schoolmaster would we subject our child’s heart and conscience. For we hold that the religious lessons of the unregenerate lack regenerating life ”

“ In a country in which there was more importance attached than in perhaps any other in the world to the religious teaching of the minister, there was so little importance attached to the religious teaching of the schoolmaster, that, when weighed against even a slight modicum of secular qualification, it was found to have no sensible weight. ”

“ Should it be said, the apostle, in giving the qualifications of a bishop, "nowhere insists on human learning," it may be answered in general, that no ignorant person in those times could have possibly got admittance into the Church as a teacher of Christianity. Every person, acknowledged as a teacher, was himself well taught in the word of God, and well taught by the Spirit of God ”

“ It is the teacher's task not only to impart to his scholars valuable information about the Bible, about God, about Christ, and about salvation; but, far more than imparting an intellectual knowledge, to bring the living word into relation with living souls, to inspire a fellowship of his pupils with God, to have Christ founded within them, to make salvation through Christ their joyous possession. Nor is his work as a working disciple accomplished when all his scholars have become Christians in possession and profession, and members of Christ's Church. ”

“ I. The work of the teacher is for the gospel of Christ, hence, first of all, the teacher should be a Christian.—No person can properly instruct others in the Gospel unless he be devoted to the service of Christ.
1. He should be a Christian in belief.—No one can speak confidently and earnestly in behalf of a cause unless he believes in it. One can teach mythology, but not Christianity, without a firm conviction that the Bible is God’s book, and the Gospel the declaration of the divine plan for saving men. ”

“ A great majority of the teachers of our common schools are professing Christians. Very many of them are among our most active Sabbath-school teachers. Now a truly godly man or woman, at the head of a school, though never speaking a word directly on the subject of religion, yet by the power of a silent, consistent example, exerts a continual Christian influence. In the second place, as a matter of fact, direct religious teaching is not entirely excluded from our public schools. I think, it by no means holds that prominent position in the course of study which it should hold. ”

“ In more recent times Ellen Key remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her Century of the Child: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion is in human nature than the fact that 'religious education' has not been able to tear it out." ”

“ In the Christian schools, while the carefully-selected American teachers insure good schools and good teaching of the ordinary branches, there is a place for moral education, for simple religious exercises and for Bible study. ”

“ They should be thoroughly trained and disciplined teachers, but not this alone. Every teacher should be a careful and intelligent Bible student, able to instruct from the word of God, practical and earnest, self-sacrificing and co-operative, ready to do what seems most necessary, even though it should not call into action her finest mental qualities. ”

“ On the Sabbath, her opportunity to read and explain it to all the people of the community, as superintendent of the Sunday school, has been even greater than that of some of the ministers in charge, when the latter was only a monthly visitor, while she served faithfully every Sabbath.
The world is needing the light of Bible truth. It is life giving. "Go teach," is as urgent as the commission, "Go preach." The opportunity to supply the world's great need, with the life giving Word of God, is an inspiration to the consecrated christian teacher. ”

“ There is a passage in the Holy Gospel that can be applied, directly, to those teaching doctrines contrary to those of Jesus Christ, that should make tremble with fear those who work or cooperate to establish secular or neutral schools, which are more or less the same. The most sweet Jesus, the sweetest among the sons of the human lineage, threw at them a terrible sentence, that We would not dare to pronounce if not done before by the divine Teacher, full of mercy and love, but also infinite justice. ”

“ As the acquaintance of young people with religious is frequently limited to their teachers, they are sometimes inclined to identify in their minds the profession of teaching with religious life. And since some feel a diffidence or repugnance in committing themselves to a teaching career, they extend this aversion to the religious state itself. ”

“ Every teacher I know is an ardent and an earnest worker for Christ, and all your attempt is to make the way to education, the way to the cross of Christ; but, besides that, there is the preaching of the Gospel, and the gathering of churches, and the opening of Sunday-schools. ”

“ To have Him for his Guide makes the human guide gentle and tender among his disciples 'as a nurse among her children,' for he remembers 'the gentleness of Christ,' and he dare not be other than an imitator of Him. A Christian teacher's spirit will always be, 'not for that we have dominion over your faith, but we are helpers of your joy' ”

“ A serious sense of God within, and of responsibilities which transcend this life as they do the adolescent's power of comprehension; a feeling for duties deepened by a realization and experience of their conflict such as some have thought to be the origin of religion itself in the soul—these, too, are elements of the "theology of the heart" revealed at this age to every serious youth, but to the judicious emphasis and utilization of which, the teacher should lend his consummate skill. ”