the Bible regards them. It does not tell us that Moses was sent by God, it does not know anything of the covenant with Abraham of which these events are the fulfillment, it does not therefore see in the Exodus one link in a chain of events having its beginning in the election of Abraham and its consummation in the revelation at Sinai. In the Biblical narrative what is most conspicuous is the Eẓba Elohim, "the finger of God," in the merely historic account this may altogether be omitted.

Must give Biblical moral to Jewish history. Very few teachers in our Jewish schools, if any, would make the mistake of teaching the events narrated in the Bible merely as cold facts without any attempt at giving them religious significance, though frequent efforts at rationalization tend in this direction. For the most part, the aim in teaching the early history of our people is felt to be a religious one and to call for a religious interpretation of the events recorded. We are not loath to attach a moral to the stories we tell our children, but where we fail is that we imagine any moral which we can read into the story is satisfactory. We have already shown how the consideration of the aim of instruction in Biblical history, from the point of view of traditional Judaism, opposes this method and limits the moral which should be taught in connection with any given story, but the consideration of the subject-matter to be taught limits it still further. We must not only give a Jewish moral to each episode in the Biblical narrative but we must give the child the specific moral that the Bible itself attaches to that episode. If we take our Bible seriously, if we regard its interpretation of the events of our history as essentially true, as indeed part of the Torah, a divine revelation, then it becomes our duty to give this interpretation of events and not another to our children. We sometimes excuse to ourselves the perversion of the Biblical moral on the ground that because children are children they frequently cannot grasp what is really the Biblical lesson. If in any given instance this is the case, it is better not to teach that story at all to the child than to falsify it. But usually the ideas of the Bible can be brought home to the child if we but take the trouble to translate them into the language of childhood and illustrate them out of the child's own experience. It is largely due to indolence on the part of the teacher that we so frequently sin against the Biblical sense of a story. I have heard the story of Abraham's divorce of Hagar told as if it were a mere family squabble in which Sarah, by shrewish persistence finally prevails upon the meek and submissive Abraham somewhat reluctantly to send away Hagar, who had aroused her jealousy. Abraham was made a rather doubtful hero who represented the virtue of loving peace—peace at any price as the narrative showed—and Sarah was regarded as acting in a mean and ungodly capacity. Had that teacher read her Bible carefully and intelligently before coming to class she could not have been guilty of such grotesque distortion of the Biblical story, by which it is made not only trivial but ludicrous. She would then have realized that Ishmael had to be separated from Isaac for the same reason that Lot had to be separated from Abraham and Esau from Jacob, because they were not of the seed from which Israel was destined to spring; that even before the birth of Ishmael we have the prophecy told to Hagar, "And he shall be a wild ass of a man; his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him" (Genesis 16. 12). She would have observed that in the words of the Rabbis "Abraham was subordinate to Sarah in prophecy", that just as Isaac showed a mistaken preference for Esau so Abraham when the birth of Isaac is predicted to him pleaded, "Oh that Ishmael might live before thee!", and that the Bible recognizes the superior prophetic insight of Sarah by telling us that God commanded Abraham explicitly, "Let it not be grievous in thy eyes because of the lad and because of thy bond-woman; in all that Sarah may say unto thee, hearken to her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called." Surely, though the story undoubtedly presents difficulties of a pedagogic nature, it is not impossible to teach a child that God foresaw that Ishmael would be a "pere adam" (a wild ass of a man), that he did not wish the chosen people, who were to inherit the promised land, to be possessed of such traits, and that therefore Ishmael had to be sent away so that Isaac and his descendants might become the great people he had promised Abraham they would become. In this way the Bible speaks for itself and tells a story that is quite as intelligible to the child as the one that the teacher I have mentioned told, quite as intelligible and infinitely more edifying. I have given this instance at some length because it seems to me typical of the mischief that can be done by reading into the Biblical narrative any moral that may come to hand instead of the moral that the Bible itself intended.

Need of Bible study for teacher. This manual will endeavor in each lesson to point out to the best of its author's understanding what the Biblical moral of the lesson is. But, as interpretations are always subject to differences of opinion, a study of the suggestions contained in its chapters cannot relieve the teacher of the responsibility of a careful independent study, before entering the class-room, of the Biblical passages whose story he wishes to teach.

The child as determining method. And after he has mastered for himself the meaning of the Biblical narrative, he must study how to impart this to the child in a way that shall make it not only comprehensible but interesting, and all this without sacrifice of the aim of instruction. An adequate treatment of method in teaching Biblical history from the point of view of the interests and capacities of the Jewish child is at present impossible. We need years of study and experimentation in this direction before we can do it complete justice, but a few universally recognized pedagogic principles may briefly be considered here in their bearing upon our subject. We have spoken of the need of effort on the part of the teacher to make the lesson comprehensible and interesting, and we shall therefore give some attention to two questions: (1) How can the lesson be made comprehensible? (2) How can it be made interesting? We shall treat the questions separately for the sake of convenience, though, as a matter of fact, they are inseparable; for neither can a child be expected to interest himself in what he cannot understand nor can he be made to understand anything that involves the least difficulty without giving that sustained attention which only interest can elicit from him.

How to make lesson comprehensible. Proceed from known to unknown. The most important rule to bear in mind in order to make the teaching comprehensible is the familiar truism that one must proceed from the known to the unknown and keep constantly defining the unknown in terms of what is already known to the child. As is the case with most truisms, the truth of this statement is more frequently recognized than applied. Take for instance the very first sentence in one of the Biblical histories intended for the use of children. It reads, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, that is the whole visible world." Was there ever a human being who did not know what heaven and earth meant and yet knew what the whole visible world meant? Contrast with this the following from another text-book:

"Once a long, long time ago there was no one living on this earth that is now so full of people.

"There were no living things at all here: no cattle, no wild beasts, no birds, no butterflies or insects of