Principles of Teaching eBook

Print

Word

PDF

Then, too, the teacher may well bring into his class by way of inspiration someone well established in the faith whose experiences are full of the spirit of conversion. There are in every ward in the Church those men and women who know of a surety that the gospel is true. Why not bring them in occasionally to stimulate testimony bearing? Might it not be well, also, to take the class as a class to our Fast Day Sacrament service, there to let them enjoy the wonderful spirit of testimony that is so characteristic of these meetings? There is a feeling of conversion that attends these meetings that all boys and girls must feel—must feel so keenly that they in turn will want to give expression to their own convictions.

And finally, as teachers, let us remind ourselves that in this matter of promoting the bearing of testimonies we should exercise a patience that is full of tolerance and forbearance. Some few individuals are converted suddenly; others respond to the truth gradually; and there are those who do well if they really respond to the feeling of conversion at the end of a lifetime. As one of our leaders has so beautifully pointed out, the Master, Himself, did not convert the world in a day, nor a year—He has not converted it in all these centuries. His plan seems to be to teach the truth and wait patiently until the divinity in man asserts itself—until man walks by his own light into eternal truth. Under the inspiration of such example may teachers well labor on in earnestness, happy in the thought that He will hasten in His own due time what to them may seem a long, slow process.

    “Perchance, in heaven, one day to me
      Some blessed Saint will come and say,
    ’All hail, beloved; but for thee
      My soul to death had fallen a prey’;
    And oh! what rapture in the thought,
      One soul to glory to have brought.”

* * * * *