Picture hymns

While engaged in Sunday-school leadership some years ago the author was in search of material to use in the school to lend variety and stimulate interest, and having had some training in drawing, decided to use chalk and the easel to illustrate some character talk as a climax to the Sunday's lesson. While searching for the proper illustrations to use to put into practice the new idea, books on blackboard and chalk talking were studied, and the best and most suitable sketches and illustrations were used, with success. It was very noticeable that the moment the artist picked up a piece of chalk the children became very attentive. Curiosity as to what would be done filled the youthful minds, and as one mark of the crayon followed the other the attention and interest increased until the picture was completed and the artist stood back so that all could get a complete view of the finished piece of work. Curiosity, attention, and interest open the memory cells of the brain and the picture is there to stay -- so the work of chalk talking and illustrating poems, songs, hymns, and Bible scenes, when properly done, is like sowing good seed in fertile soil and is bound to bring lasting results. To the author, the field of chalk illustration in Sunday- and church-school work seems unlimited, and the scope hardly touched. To the teacher and church worker who can use chalk even in a very limited degree, there is a wide field of usefulness ahead, and the impressions he is able to make on the minds of his students is a decided factor in shaping the lives of boys and girls through this medium. - Introduction.