290 GENERAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



reverence of man toward man is found in the tendency to place 

 Jesus Christ quite apart from his fellow men, and to regard him as 

 being a man. in some special and, as it often seems, unreal sense. 

 If Jesus Christ was a man in precisely the same sense as you and I 

 are men, then that not only helps us to understand him better, but 

 helps us better to understand each other and all mankind, and to 

 reverence all men as brothers of Jesus Christ. It is essential to 

 the development of reverence that we follow the order laid down 

 by Frederick W. Robertson: that belief in the human character 

 of Christ's humanity must be antecedent to belief in his divine 

 origin. 



Reverting now to the expression " the sentiment of reverence," let 

 us this time place the emphasis upon the word sentiment. There is 

 no other word in the teacher's vocabulary which can take its place. 

 For the word sentiment does not signify feeling, and still less idea, 

 but a happy and fruitful welding of the two. Sentiment is emotion 

 permeated with insight; it is an ideal on fire with feeling. When 

 you effectively appeal to a man's reason, you convince his reason; 

 when you effectively appeal to his moral sentiments, you move him. 

 " The world," as President Eliot has said, " is still governed by 

 sentiments, and not by observation, acquisition, and reasoning; and 

 national greatness and righteousness depend more on the cultiva- 

 tion of right sentiments in the children than on anything else." If 

 all this be true regarding sentiment, it becomes of the highest im- 

 portance to know how to cultivate it in the young. I shall briefly 

 enumerate some points which seem to me of value to this end, 

 especially to the teacher of religion: 



(1) Sentiment is produced by subject-matter of instruction that 

 contains the elements of nobility, sublimity, greatness. The selection 

 of Biblical passages for study should be governed by this principle. 

 The palpable fact that all passages are not of equal value has some- 

 times been overlooked by the makers of lessons. The plagues of 

 Egypt, the interesting but comparatively innutritious stories of the 

 Judges, the spectacular splendor of Solomon's court, have too often 

 crowded out the noble and elevated messages of Hosea, Amos, and 

 the Isaiahs. 



(2) Sentiment is engendered by methods of teaching which recog- 

 nize the truth of Herbart's dictum: " Moral power is the result of 

 masses of thought; in them only can an abiding and many-sided 

 interest be aroused." What Herbart means by interest is something 

 very like sentiment. Moral power comes from masses, it would 

 be well for lesson-makers to remember that. 



(3) There can also be no sentiment without the sense of reality. 



(4) Since sentiment is primarily emotion, and not definition or 

 reasoning, the means of producing it are those which are adapted 



