stories, myths and parables, we have the
marvelous treasure house of religious literary wealth found in the
writings of Tennyson, Whittier, Bryant, Phillips Brooks, and many other
writers.

Material to be drawn from many sources.--The material for religious
teaching lying ready to our hand is measureless in amount, and must be
wisely chosen. In addition to material from the Bible, which always must
be the center and foundation of the religious curriculum, should be
taken other material from nature; from biography, history, and life
itself; from literature and story; from science and the great world of
objects about us; from music, and from art. All of this multiform
subject matter must be welded together with a common purpose, and so
permeated with the religious motive and application that it will touch
the child's spiritual thought and feeling at many points of his
experience.

At no moment, however, must we forget that our primary purpose is not
simply to teach the child stories, literature, history, or science, but
_religion_. By the proper use of this broader field of material religion
may be given a new and more practical significance, and the Bible itself
take on a deeper meaning from finding its setting among realities
closely related to the child's daily life.

MATERIAL FROM THE BIBLE

The very nature of the Bible requires that we make the most careful
selections from it in choosing the material for religious instruction of
children. Not all parts of the Bible are of equal value as educational
material, and some parts of it have no place in the course of study
before full mental development has been reached.

How we came by the Bible.--It will help us to understand and apply
these principles if we remember how we came by the Bible. First of all
is the fact that the Bible grew out of religion and the life of the
church, and not religion and the church out of the Bible. The Bible is
not one book, as many think of it, but a collection of sixty-six books,
which happen to be bound together. In fact, all sixty-six of these books
are now printed and bound separately by the American Bible Society, and
sold at a penny each. These sixty-six books were centuries in the
making, and they came from widely separated regions. Different ones of
them were originally written in different tongues--Hebrew, Greek, and
Aramaic.

The earlier Christians had, of course, only the scriptures of the Old
Testament. It was nearly fo