inciple.--For whatever age or stage of the child's
development we are responsible, we will follow the same principle.
Because we want to cultivate in the child a deep and continuing interest
in the Bible and the things for which it stands, we will seek always to
bring to him such material as will appeal to his interest, stir his
imagination, and quicken his sense of spiritual values. Since we desire
to influence the learner's deeds and shape his conduct through our
teaching, we will present to him those lessons from the Bible which are
most naturally and inevitably translated into daily living. First we
will know what impression we seek to make or what application we hope to
secure, and then wisely choose from the rich Bible sources the material
which will most surely accomplish this end.

STORY MATERIAL

The story is the chief and most effective means of teaching the younger
child religion, nor does the appeal of the story form of expressing
truth lose its charm for those of older years. Lessons incomprehensible
if put into formal precept can be readily understood by the child if
made a part of life and action, and the story does just this. It shows
virtue being lived; goodness proving itself; strength, courage, and
gentleness expressing themselves in practice; and selfishness, ugliness,
and wrong revealing their unlovely quality. Taught in the story way, the
lesson is so plain that even the child cannot miss it.

The story also appeals to the child's imagination, which is so ready for
use and so vivid, and which it is so necessary to employ upon good
material in order to safeguard its possessor from using it in harmful
ways. Long before the child has come to the age of understanding
reasoned truth, therefore, he may well have implanted in his mind many
of the deepest and most beautiful religious truths which will ever come
to him.

The Old Testament rich in story material.--The wonderful religious and
ethical teachings of the Old Testament belong to a child-nation, and
were written by men who were in freshness of heart and in
picturesqueness and simplicity of thought essentially child-men; hence
these teachings are in large part written in the form of story, of
legend, of allegory, of myth, of vivid picture and of unrimed poetry. It
is this quality which makes the material so suitable to the child. The
deeper meanings of the story do not have to be explained, even to the
young child; he grasps them, not all at o