CHAPTER XVIII.

USE OF FAMILIAR ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE teacher, or preacher, or trainer, who uses appropriate familiar illustrations is generally the most successful. In teaching, they are not used except in rare instances, and only by a few persons whose natural constitution of mind almost forces them to use them. The use is not pursued as a principle or system in teaching, hence the general'dryness' of school illustration.

In the pulpit-preaching of olden times, familiar illustrations were almost universal-sometimes they descended into vulgarity but still they left an impression on the audience, and although they might forget or not follow the arguments, yet the illustrations were uniformly remembered. The fashion has changed now-a-days, and we have, perhaps, decidedly too few; consequently, little is remembered or apprehended of a highly-finished discourse by the great mass of hearers.

The public taste is in error in this respect. If familiar illustrations are presented in order to picture out the premises on which the lesson rests by any minister of the gospel, it is immediately said, 'O, he speaks too plainly!' and that which may be in perfect accordance with our Saviour's example, which must be the most perfect standard of preaching, is apt to be termed low and vulgar-too simple, by far. We lately received a letter from India, from a former student, in which he says: It is admitted on all hands, that the reason why that most truly-devoted missionary, failed in his

pulpit discourses, was, that he used no similes, without which no Indian's attention can be secured.'

The scriptural example we desire to follow in school training-lessons is, not attempting to preach, or to enforce doctrine, but to picture out, and simply apply, the lesson in hand. The trainer who does not illustrate every point of his lesson familiarly, must fail; and he who does so, like the preacher, is, assuredly, not only the most popular, but the most successful.

Precisely the same principle is pursued in conducting a training lesson in natural science or the arts, and very much the same in the ordinary elementary branches. We would advise, whenever the trainer can present an illustration from ordinary life-the articles or construction of the schoolroom, or play-ground-their own dwellings, or the fields and woods around them-that he should do so, in preference to objects at a distance, or the use of complex and abstract literary terms, in fact, till children are advanced in technical and abstract knowledge, that familiar illustrations from objects at hand be the rule in the process of conducting a gallery lesson.

The Bible from beginning to end is full of illustrations taken from ordinary life, and this forms one proof of its divine authorship; and when we find it announce as a shadow, so the life of man,' and 'as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings,' so our Saviour would have taken all Jerusalem under his wings in the hour of danger, we have a standard which we desire to copy in every secular as well as Bible lesson. We have thus,-As the air is rarified or lightened, so falls the mercury of the barometer: As the duck's feet are webbed, so they are better fitted for swimming than the hen's, which are open: As heat causes the juices of a plant to flow by a certain attraction (which must first be pictured out in order to be understood), so the circulation of blood in our veins: As an apple from a tree falls towards the ground, so earth, moon,

and planets are kept in their orbits (the centrifugal and centripetal forces may be illustrated by the circular swings in the play-ground). The pupils, in every case, give the So in their own terms, after the trainer has assisted and proceeded with them, step by step, in picturing out the As.

Many teachers say, 'This is just the way I always give my lessons.' Be it so. We may inquire first,-'Do they give such oral lessons at all?' 'Do their pupils do more than read a short extract from a school-book, on any point of science, subject to a few questions; and does the master or the pupils draw the lesson?' Some persons are not undeceived until they try to conduct a lesson on the training principle. It may indeed be taken as an axiom, that whatever we see clearly with our bodily or mental eye in youth, is either remembered or easily recalled in mature years. Hence the value of a clear picturing out, by illustrations, etc., of the As or premises in the first instance, so that the natural lesson, involved in the term So, be apparent to the mind of your pupils.

Objects, and pictures, and the black-board, ought to be freely used in every system of education. These present to the observation of the pupil at least one condition of the subject which is to be brought under consideration. This is particularly the case with young or very ignorant persons, whose powers of observation require to be cultivated. An initiatory or infant school, of course, would fail without these. Even where there is the most thorough picturing out in words, objects and the black-board are highly useful for pupils of any age. It must be borne in mind, however, that by an object or a print, only one condition is brought into view. The colour, and size, and form of an animal, for example, are presented, but not its disposition, or uses, or habits, or any quality but what is merely external. These must be pictured out in words; and this, as systematised under our plan, by comparison, illustration, and analogy of

things within and not beyond the experience and sympathy of the scholars. To be understood, not merely must the terms used be simple and natural, but so must the illustrations, whether the lesson under review be given to a class consisting of children of three, or eight, or fifteen years of age.

Objects and pictures have always been in use more or less in home and in public education. Milton's mother used the Dutch tiles of her parlour fireside to teach her son natural history; and every mother knows how highly pictures and objects are valued by her interesting offspring. The most systematic mode of teaching by objects in the public school was that presented by the celebrated Pestalozzi. It was an important step in education; but it was but one step towards a thorough understanding of the mode of picturing out in words, which, in the ascending scale, includes every possible variety of condition that language can convey. The object or picture, as we have already said, represents only one condition of the subject, all else is left to be pictured out to the mind's eye in words. Under our system, were we to confine the scientific gallery training lessons to such objects as can be presented to the bodily eye, a waggon-load of objects at the least would be required every day for the model schools of the Normal Seminary; and even then we would be restricted in our lessons. We cannot always present, for example, a cedar of Lebanon, or a piece of silver ore; or a lion, alive or stuffed ; but the children, in the play-ground or elsewhere, have seen some cedar, or plants of a similar description-they have seen a cat or dog, if not a lion, and with which it may in some measure be compared; although they may not have seen an eagle, alive or stuffed, yet they may have seen a sparrow or swallow, and it is easy from these, by comparison, to picture out in words the size and habits of the eagle. Real silver they have seen, as well as sand, clay, etc., with which the native ore is found mixed, and they may be made to understand what its appearance is when found in a natural state, without having the real object before them.

By the master stating facts, and drawing from his class consequences and reasons deducible from these facts, both in their combinations and decompositions, etc., the whole is rendered visible to the mind's eye, without the objects themselves being presented.

As a starting point, however, or to arrest the attention, or to present one condition of the subject to be analysed, objects ought certainly to be used when within our reach. Whenever, for the sake of comparison, we can fix on an object in the school, in the family dwelling, in the play-ground, or in the fields, never seek for these at a distance. But as suitable objects are not always to be procured, and as the human voice is always ready at hand with both master and scholars, and also as such words ought only to be used as are within the comprehension of the pupils, with illustrations and comparisons of an equally simple form, there is no object or combination of objects which a master may not thus PICTURE OUT and progressively render as visible to the mind of his pupils, as if not merely the objects, but the varied changes and combinations of these objects, were actually before the bodily eye. Objects, therefore, are useful; but picturing out in words is infinitely more so. To the use of objects there is a limit-to picturing out in words there is no limit.