Do you now
understand the principle of the arrangement of the epistles?"
"Yes, sir."
"I should like to have any of you who are interested in it to try to
express this principle in a few sentences, on paper, and lay it on my
desk to-morrow, and I will read what you write. You will find it very
difficult to express it. Now you may lay aside your books. It will be
pleasanter for you if you do it silently."
Intelligent children will be interested even in so simple a point as
this--much more interested than a maturer mind, unacquainted with the
peculiarities of children, would suppose. By bringing up from time to
time some such literary inquiry as this, they will be led insensibly to
regard the Bible as opening a field for interesting intellectual
research, and will more easily be led to study it.
At another time the teacher spends his five minutes in aiming to
accomplish a very different object. I will suppose it to be one of those
afternoons when all has gone smoothly and pleasantly in school. There
has been nothing to excite strong interest or emotion; and there has
been (as every teacher knows there sometimes will be), without any
assignable cause which he can perceive, a calm, and quiet, and happy
spirit diffused over the minds and countenances of the little assembly.
His evening communication should accord with this feeling, and he should
make it the occasion to promote those pure and hallowed emotions in
which every immortal mind must find its happiness, if it is to enjoy any
worth possessing.
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