(it being of no worth), and is
trodden underfoot of men." (Alma 34:18-29.)

* * * * *

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS--CHAPTER XVI

1. Why need we illustrate general truths?

2. Discuss the value of having pupils draw up their own maps.

3. Give out of your own experience illustrations of the force of
pictures.

4. Point out the value in teaching of appealing to more than one of the
senses.

5. Discuss the importance of good stories in teaching.

6. What are the characteristics of a good illustrative story?

7. Take an ordinarily commonplace subject and show how to illustrate it.

HELPFUL REFERENCES

Those listed in Chapter XIV.

Also _Pictures in Religious Education_, by Frederica Beard.

CHAPTER XVII

THE AIM

OUTLINE--CHAPTER XVII

Two illustrations of the value of an aim.--Significance of the aim
in religious training.--Inadequacy of eleventh-hour
preparation.--The teacher's obligation to see through facts to
truths that lie beyond.

What an aim is.--Illustration.--How to determine the aim.--How to
express it.

The late Jacob Riis, noted author and lecturer, used to tell a very
inspirational story on the force of having something to focus attention
upon. According to his story, certain men who lived just outside of
Chicago, in its early history, had great difficulty walking to and from
work during stormy weather, because of the almost impassably muddy
conditions of the sidewalks. After trudging through mud and slush for a
long time, they conceived the idea of laying a plank walk through the
worst sections. And so they laid two six-inch planks side by side. The
scheme helped wonderfully, except on short winter days when the men had
to go to work in the darkness of early morning and return in the
darkness of evening. It often was so dark that they would step off the
planks, and once off they were about as muddy as if there had been no
walk at all. Finally someone suggested the idea that if a lantern were
hung up at each end of the walk it would then be easy to fix the eye
upon the lantern and keep on the walk. The suggestion was acted upon,
and thereafter the light of the lantern did hold them to the plank.
Jacob Riis argued that the lantern of an ideal held aloft would
similarly hold young men in life's path of righteousness.

A similar story is told of a farmer who experienced great difficulty in
keeping a particular