The writer recalls two teachers and two methods of religious instruction in his childhood. One who taught him the catechism and one who told him Bible stories. The catechism bored and wearied him, and so far as he can see today was time wasted, while the stories charmed and uplifted, and remain even today a pleasant memory. This is not arguing that the child should not memorize some things. There are many selections from Scripture and other sources that he can memorize both with great pleasure and profit to himself.
“The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters,”
is full of beautiful imagery that appeals to the child. But theological definitions of sin, justification and the like, have neither feeling nor imagery and make no appeal to the child. The child is interested in the deeds of man and not in his doctrines. Tell him connectedly the life-story of Moses, Buddha, Jesus, St. Augustine, Luther or Wesley, and you have given him the spirit and life of the great religious leaders and the institutions which grew out of their work. No catechism could do that. Gladly he would hear the life story of a great religious hero and teacher, but his doctrines do not interest him now. Give him the life-story now, and when he has reached later the philosophic period he will himself raise the theological and philosophical questions, and knowing the lives of the great religious leaders he will have the historical background whereon to build his faith. Anyone can take a catechism and have a class memorize and repeat the answers, but it takes a teacher to so read the Bible that he can tell in a creative way the story of its great heroes. That is what we must do if we base our methods on true psychology. And the story should be studied connectedly to the close and not by piecemeal, beginning as some do with one character and before the life-story is done dropping him and skipping to another, in order to conform to a certain doctrinal theme which may interest the adult but not the child. That method may account for the fact that Bible heroes have not always been as popular with children as some others. If the story of Ulysses and Hiawatha were taught in a similar way they would lose much of their charm and interest for the child.