The Sabbath School Teacher Author:John Todd Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. QUALIFICATIONS OF A GOOD TEACHER. Irr the enumeration of the qualities desirable in a Sabbath School teacher, it is not to be supposed that ev... more »ery teacher will possess them all in due proportion. Few characters are perfectly symmetrical; and where there are great excellencies, there are usually great defects. The latter must be overlooked for the sake of the former. The success of men in doing good to the souls of men, from the apostle down to the distributor of tracts, depends greatly upon the state of the heart. Indeed, without a right state of heart, all other qualities will for the most part be useless. I begin to describe the Sabbath School teacher, then, by saying, that 1. He should be a devotedly pious man. The office of a teacher is, and must be, one of self-denial; the labor necessary to acquire the lesson to be taught, to understand the best way of communicating truth, the stupidity, restlessness, listlessness, Testimony of experience. and trying appearance of the class from week to week, the want of government at home, and the utter indifference of most of the parents, the return of the same routine of duties, the obscurity of the station, the amount of labor bestowed unknown and unappreciated, and the entire loss of so much labor, all unite to make the office of a teacher a drudgery and a burden. I cannot express my own views on this point better than to give an extract of a letter addressed to me by a Superintendent,—a lady,—and one of great experience and character. " My own opinion is, that the Sabbath School teacher sustains the same relation to the children of his charge, that a Pastoi does to his flock. He is emphatically the spiritual guide of the little ones committed to him, and his responsibility as touching the eternal interests...« less