Modern methods of teaching have revolutionized our public school system in recent years. Whereas little tots once struggled laboriously, almost hopelessly, through a dark labyrinth of abstractions to get learning, to-day, by shorter and easier and more natural methods, they attain the desired goal. No longer do they drone for months over a dry spelling-book before they learn to read, nor copy meaningless figures by the hour before they learn to handle numbers. By an improved system of deduction and experimentation, taking for a basis the things most tangible and real to the child mind,— pictures and objects,— children advance naturally and rapidly from the realm of the known into the more abstract comprehensions of number and expression. As a result, it is possible for them to read before they know their letters, and to handle fractions before they are familiar with the digits. So essential indeed to the development of the child's faculties have object-lessons become, that the paraphernalia required to teach elementary branches is about as much as that required in a college laboratory.
Judging from the predominance of type and symbol throughout the ecclesiastical history of the race, we may well conclude that in the divine economy also man was meant to "come naturally into Spirit" (Science and Health, p. 485). For the early Jews, with scarcely any idea of Spirit or metaphysical logic, there were provided the tangible manifestations of deity,— a burning Sinai, a tabernacle, a holy place, and an ark of the covenant. Until the race should advance to the conception of sacrifice as a denial of the claims of the senses, the best of the flocks and herds must be given. Later the Saviour taught on a higher plane. He spiritualized the law somewhat, and urged the worship of deity "in spirit and in truth." Yet his parables and his significant "Suffer it to be so now," show that the race was not ready to receive a scientific statement of Truth. Nevertheless, he who said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now," also said, "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." And as there is a time when the child must cease to count with objects or read from pictures, so the race must ultimately abandon the material in its effort to worship aright Spirit, God.
The progress may indeed be slow. It certainly has been slow, to mortal sense. But "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." After centuries of almost uninterrupted retrogression following the deluge, the deep-toned thunderings of a burning Sinai were scarcely able to arouse the dormant sensibilities of the race steeped in materialism. Then centuries more rolled by before the race was educated up to the point where the Beatitudes could be added to the Decalogue. Yet throughout this later period there has been hardly less of ritualism and ceremonial than in the old dispensation, and an anthropomorphic god in a far-off heaven, differing but slightly from the Jewish tribal Jehovah in the holy of holies, has played a vital part. But God says, "All shall know me. from the least to the greatest." and finally, after centuries more in the hard school of experience, this age at last seems "ready to approach this subject, to ponder somewhat the supremacy of Spirit, and at least touch the hem of its garment" (Science and Health, p. 170).
