skilfully brought to mind. In the following extract from the wonderful "Story of Jesus,"[2] which should be in the hands of every parent and teacher, we find a type of picture-work which illustrates this point, for it quickens and makes many calls upon the imagination: "Imagine traveling through a state no larger than Vermont, and finding not only apples and pears, quinces and plums, waving corn-fields, maples and cedars, but orange-trees fragrant with snowy blossoms, and heavy with golden fruit in January; figs and dates, pomegranates and bananas—all within a day's journey! The fields over which you pass glow like gorgeous Persian carpets…." This is a part of the author's picture of Palestine.

And here is a bit of Archdeacon Farrar's graphic word-picture of Nazareth, where Jesus spent nearly thirty years of his life on the earth:

Who having once read, seen, and felt this picture can ever forget it or fail to feel the atmosphere of this place? It is thus we come to realize that Jesus Christ was really once a boy, a young man, a human being, on the earth. Even here, however, all possible helps in the form of pictures, maps, etc., must be called in as aids to the picturing power of the mind.

The number of "likes" in the two foregoing selections (there are at least eight of them expressed or implied) suggests the remark of a humble woman regarding the parables, "I like best the likes of Scripture." This word lies at the root of all picture-work. Whether in the parables of Jesus, who was the prince of teachers, or in the discourses of great preachers whose sermons teem with "likes," or in the story-teller's skilful comparison of place with place, people with people—Palestine with Vermont as to size, with England, Scotland, and Wales as to its divisions—Galilee, Samaria, and Judæa being "united because they had one government, one ruler; separate because of their peculiar characteristics, their definite boundaries, and jealous claims to special privileges"—in all the notion of likeness is the central point of the thought.

We never can know anything without having something to know it with. A "like" is the key that enables us to unlock and to enter the door of the unknown.

It is through picture-work also—to go a step further—that we come to have revealed to us our own characters. This type of picture-work is at once the most difficult and the most important of all. An example of such picture-making is chosen from an account written by Miss Wiltse, setting forth her method of making stories in order to suit the needs of specific cases among her pupils. Not every one has the love or the genius of Miss Wiltse, and no one can hope to win such success as hers at once; but it may be that by catching some of her spirit, studying her plan, and patiently practicing, we may learn this royal way of reaching the hearts of our children.

"There was in my kindergarten," she writes, "a little boy whose deceit and cruelty were quite abnormal; he would smile in my face with seraphic sweetness while his heavy shoe would be crushing his neighbor's toes…. He seemed incorrigible. At last I wrote a story entitled 'The Fairy True Child,' into which I put my strongest effort to reach this untruthful child. I told it to the class, and before it was concluded this boy's head was low upon his breast, his cheeks aflame with conscious guilt. No direct reference was made to him; no other child thought of him in connection with the story. The next day he asked to have it repeated, and his conduct was noticeably better; the story became his moral tonic, and one glad day he threw his arms about me, saying he wanted to keep his Fairy True Child always.

"Another child who was feeble-minded was helped to be free from his mental inertia and day-dreaming by a story written expressly for him, in which 'I am that which wills' was pictured as a fairy, coming softly to the little boy whose power to try was lost, kissing his eyes, breathing softly upon his lips, putting her finger softly upon his ears—making each more ready and attentive—and finally enthroning the little boy's own fairy in its place in his brain, where the fairy grows more and more princely, and the little boy more and more manly, trying hard, so very hard, to keep the dear little fairy on his throne."

Here, then, we have some of the types of picture-work: the picture and the story, the parable in its various forms, and the word-picture—whether of things or actions; illustrations or side-lights, the "likes" with which a skilful teacher illumines his teaching, and the objects, models, maps, and sketches on pad or blackboard, with which he re-enforces the lagging imaginations of his hearers.

What, then, is a picture? A picture is anything that helps us to see more clearly, feel more heartily, and act upon more faithfully the truth which is not or cannot be immediately present to our senses. The truth to be pictured may be the truth of people, places, and actions—external things; it may be the truth of character and of inner life—the things that are unseen, which we could never see at all except by the aid of real things or pictures of real things; just as, for example, our idea of God is built out of our experience of mountains, flowers, thunder-storms, our mother's tenderness, and our father's strength. These pictures may be drawn or painted; they may be expressed in words or in deeds, with pen or brush, with actions, with things.

Where to find our materials and how to use these tools with economy and effectiveness are the questions that next claim our attention.

  [1]

See Chapter VIII., last heading.

  [2]

See Chapter VIII.

III.

A PICTURE-BOOK, AND HOW TO USE IT.

The Bible is a picture-book. It is history, literature, logic, philosophy; but, more than all these, for children and all who have the heart of childhood, it is a store-house of pictures.

The first thing needful for a teacher, if he would touch his pupils, is to see these pictures himself. This, we must admit, is seldom done. For it is one of the sad things about the human mind that it possesses the power to read the words that set the picture forth without seeing the picture, and without being touched by the emotion which only the picture can arouse. We can seem to pray the Lord's Prayer, for example, while in reality we are merely making