The cliff-scaler, who lowers his comrade down the precipice, does not take for granted the fastening around the tree or the stoutness of the rope; but the Sunday-school teacher too often throws his young people into the treacherous depths of thought and life with little care for their life-rope's integrity or moorings. More than once or twice or thrice in my own experience, after weeks and months of supposedly thorough intercourse with my scholars, an awkward question, better aimed by Heaven than by myself, has disclosed some fatal doubt, some fundamental misconception. I had been taking for granted that my boy really believed Christ to be divine, or that he had at least the beginnings of a conception of the Saviour's mission to the earth, or that he knew by experience the meaning of prayer, or that he actually had confidence in a future life.

I have in mind a fine, thoughtful fellow, graduate of a famous college and a church-member, whose very thoughtfulness, and the knowledge of his religious activity in former years, led me, when he entered my class, to take for granted his Christianity. After weeks of teaching, it was only a chance question, in private conversation, that led him to the frank admission that skeptical college friends had absolutely destroyed his faith in Christ and the Bible, leaving him with only a sad and bewildered hold on the God of nature. What Sunday-school teacher has not been startled thus with disclosures of his own carelessness in taking things for granted?

It is a mistake constantly to advertise skepticism by warning our scholars against it, but it is no mistake to arm them against it. No teacher has mastered his lesson until he has mastered every doubt regarding it that any of his scholars is likely to entertain. "Will this punishment seem unjust? this event fabulous? this person mythical? this doctrine unreasonable? this miracle unreal? this author apocryphal? these men and women mere creatures of imagination?" Such questions as these are important for the teacher to consider,—to consider, not ask in the class. Because to the teacher the account is more true and vivid than an extract from yesterday's newspaper, he takes it for granted that his scholars so regard it. They may put the lesson story in the same category as Baron Munchausen or "The Ancient Mariner," and such a teacher would be none the wiser.

I know of nothing in the way of study that is so capable of firing a Sunday-school teacher and class as Christian evidences. Remember that this also is a study of the Bible. Why is it ordinarily thought so dull? It is full of snap and point. Professor Fisher's short "Manual of Christian Evidences," published by Charles Scribner's Sons at seventy-five cents, stands next to my Bible as an aid and inspiration in teaching that Bible. I keep several copies, and all of them are usually in the hands of earnest scholars. Often when they are returned the compliment is, "That book helped me so much that I have bought a copy of my own." That means the conversion of a doubting Thomas. "Why!" exclaimed one such reader, "I never knew before that there was anything to prove Christianity but the Bible, or anything but the Bible to prove the Bible."

A teacher that is not in the habit of questioning persistently and searchingly can have no idea of the depth and at the same time the shallowness of the religious thinking of the average scholar. Far too many teachers prove everything by quoting the inspired Bible, taking it for granted that their scholars accept the Bible as inspired; or by referring to our divine Saviour, taking it for granted that their scholars believe Christ to be a divine Saviour. Our scholars are more shrewd than that. Their answers will be proper, but skepticism often lurks beneath, ready to spring up in open infidelity, secret scorn, or fruitless, formal morality.

Skepticism should never be anticipated, but it should never be neglected. It should never be dealt with before the class, if it can be dealt with in private. But it is a teacher's first duty to know the great truths of Christianity, and know why he knows them. It is his second duty to make certain that each of his scholars knows them, and can prove them.

"But we cannot cover the ground without taking things for granted." Cover the ground! Superficial area, and superficial teaching!