..,jt.jmii mil MWiMiii iiiiiiiiii-i r — 
 
 THE WORK 
 
 OF XHE 
 
 SUNDAV SGHOOL 
 
 RAY CLARKSON MARKER 
 
MAY 1 1.918 
 
 BV 1520 .H28 1911 
 Harker, Ray Clarkson. 
 The work of the Sunday- 
 school 
 
The Work of the 
 Sunday-School 
 
 A Manual for Teachers ^^^^^^^o] 
 
 AY 1 19] 
 
 By/ 
 RAY CLARKSON HARKER, D. D. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 191 1, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 123 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
To 
 that splendid volunteer ariny of Sunday- 
 school workers who so patiently and per- 
 sistently pray and work for the coming of 
 Christ^ s kingdotn in the earth this volnme 
 is appreciatingly dedicated. 
 
Preface 
 
 No apology is needed for sending" 
 forth another book concerning the 
 work of that institution which is re- 
 ceiving the increasing attention of the Chris- 
 tian world, and which is doing so much for 
 the establishment of Christ's kingdom in the 
 earth. 
 
 This little volume is an attempt to give 
 hint, at least, as to where strategic work may 
 be done for the ushering in of our Lord's 
 kingdom. Most of the chapters deal with 
 the prime factors and forces which have com- 
 manding place in shaping the destiny of the 
 Church. This book does not pretend to 
 touch even a majority of the important 
 themes relative to the Sunday-school. It 
 treats a few of the supremely significant 
 factors. 
 
 The preparation of these chapters has 
 been a work of rare delight amid the press 
 of a busy pastorate. The work has been 
 done with an ever-deepening conviction that 
 the increasing triumphs of the Gospel must 
 be won among the young, and with a grow- 
 7 
 
8 Preface 
 
 ing appreciation of the value of Bible study 
 for both young and old. 
 
 Excerpts from several of the chapters have 
 appeared in the Sunday-School Journal and 
 in The Adult Bible Class. By the courteous 
 consent of the editors of these publications 
 these portions are here reproduced. 
 
 If those who read these pages are inspired 
 to greater appreciation of the Sunday-school, 
 and are led to a deeper consecration of their 
 powers to build the Church of Christ through 
 the Sunday-school, the author will be amply 
 rewarded. 
 
 R. C. H. 
 
 Freeport, III. 
 
Contents 
 
 The Sunday-School ; Its Origin and History ; 
 
 Its Mission and Power . . . .II 
 
 II 
 
 The Teacher ; His Task ; His EguiPMENT ; His 
 
 Power ; and His Reward . . . .5' 
 
 III 
 The Scholar We Teach . . . . • 9' 
 
 IV 
 The Book We Teach 121 
 
 V 
 Decision Day in the Sunday-School . • J53 
 
 VI 
 
 How to Prepare a Sunday-School Lesson . 171 
 
 VII 
 Sunday-School Installation Service . .185 
 
I 
 
 THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL; ITS ORIGIN 
 
 AND HISTORY ; ITS MISSION AND 
 
 POWER 
 
" An enterprise which enlisted the active devotion of Raikes, 
 with his business sagacity, of Hannah More, with her brilliant 
 social charm, of Charles of Bala, with his apostolic zeal, of 
 William Wilberforce, the peer of William Pitt for eloquence, 
 and of John Wesley, the foremost religious leader of the cen- 
 tury, was bound to succeed. Its founders were not fanatics nor 
 visionaries. They were eminently sane and practical, and 
 their intellects were as keen as their affections were warm." 
 
 — T. Ilarwood Fattisoti. 
 
 " An untaught generation — untaught in any form of the di- 
 vinely appointed Bible-school — was a sure result ; and the re- 
 ligious decline of New England was inevitable." 
 
 — H. Clay Trttmbitll. 
 
 " The Apostolic Church made the school the connecting link 
 between herself and the world." — Baron Biinsen. 
 
 " To say that God is in this movement is only to emphasize 
 the fact that the Sunday-school is a part of His organized 
 Church among men. The growth and efficiency of the Sunday- 
 school, especially in its teaching and spiritual power, is a sure 
 test of the presence in the Church of the spirit and law of 
 Christ towards childhood." — Bishop Hartzell. 
 
 " Nearly all in the membership of a church to-day were di- 
 rectly or indirectly helped to decision for Christ through the 
 Sunday-school. ^Ve shall not be far into the twentieth century 
 until all in the church shall have been trained in the Sunday- 
 school." — John Potts. 
 
The Sunday-School ; Its Origin and 
 History; Its Mission and Power 
 
 OME is our first school. This school 
 is as old as the race. It has been 
 estimated that for fifteen hundred 
 years the home was the only agency for the 
 development of character. In the Book of 
 Deuteronomy ^ the parental responsibility is 
 plainly indicated : *' And thou shalt teach 
 them (the commands of God) diligently unto 
 thy children, and shalt talk of them when 
 thou sittest in thy house, and when thou 
 walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
 down, and when thou risest up," 
 
 Moses ^ exhorts collective Israel saying : 
 " Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy 
 soul diligently, lest thou forget the things 
 which thine eyes have seen, and lest they 
 depart from thy heart all the days of thy 
 life ; but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' 
 sons." The word of Paul ^ to Timothy, " that 
 from a child thou hast known the Holy 
 Scriptures," hints of a home training. 
 
 ' Deut. vi. 7 ; xi. 19, 20. ^ Deut. iv. 9. ^ 2 Tim, iii. 15. 
 
 »3 
 
14 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Among the Jews the mother doubtless had 
 her part in the early development of the 
 child, and " the father was bound to teach 
 his son." " There can be no question/' says 
 Edersheim, *' that according to the law of 
 Moses, the early education of a child de- 
 volved upon the father ; of course always 
 bearing in mind that his first training would 
 be the mother's." 
 
 We read in the New Testament, " And 
 they brought young children to Christ." It 
 is well for fathers to remember that the pro- 
 noun, ** they," in that verse is masculine, not 
 feminine, in the original Greek. Edersheim 
 says : " It was, indeed, no idle boast that 
 the Jews 'were from their swaddling-clothes 
 . . . trained to recognize God as their 
 Father, and as the Maker of the world ' ; 
 that, ' having been taught the knowledge 
 (of the laws) from earliest youth, they bore 
 in their souls the image of the command- 
 ments.' " ^ 
 
 The function of the home is not simply to 
 care for the physical body, but to train the 
 mind, to furnish a sanctuary for the heart. 
 If man can be defined as : "A httle lump of 
 flesh, a handful of intellectual germs, a bundle 
 
 • " The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," Vol. I, 
 p. 230. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 15 
 
 of moral roots," ^ then home must be a place 
 for love to grow in, as well as for mind and 
 body. The Greeks were right in calling 
 home, "The Shrine of the gods." And of 
 most children it may be said, " that if they 
 have no church in the home they have no 
 home in the church." 
 
 That little life in your home can be led 
 through the school of temptation safely to the 
 goal of virtue, or it can be neglected as it 
 passes through the years of testing, and arrive 
 at the goal of vice and shipwreck. To one 
 of these it is sure to come. In training the 
 child in the home there is a chance to work 
 with God. 
 
 We have also the public school. It is one 
 of the safeguards of the nation. Many of 
 the truest and manliest qualities are fostered 
 and cultivated in this school. Pupils are 
 here taught the evils of ignorance, the deg- 
 radation of vice, the baneful results of idle- 
 ness. The most uncultured and unkempt 
 here learn the value of regularity, punctual- 
 ity, cleanliness, politeness, industry, attention, 
 and obedience. They catch a glimpse of the 
 hardihood of life, their latent faculties are de- 
 veloped, the folly of their ignorance is shown 
 to them, the wayward are corrected, and the 
 
 ' Hillis, " Place of Christ," p. 5. 
 
l6 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 indifferent are brought to a recognition of 
 their responsibility. The public school is a 
 destroyer of caste, it obliterates distinctions. 
 In it the son of the humblest toiler is 
 on an equality with the son of the million- 
 aire. It is the great educator of equality, 
 and if true democracy is to continue, the 
 public school must continue. This guard- 
 ian of the state must be kept pure, be- 
 cause it is the centre and heart of the na- 
 tion, and through it the nation's life-blood is 
 passing. 
 
 But the institution we are to consider is the 
 Sunday-school, the Bible-school. 
 
 I. Its origin ajtd history. Biblical scholars 
 claim that this school is twenty centuries 
 older than the pulpit. Prophets of the Old 
 Testament days were only occasional spokes- 
 men of the Lord, and a stated pulpit ministry 
 did not begin until the days of John the 
 Baptist. The Bible-school is "an agency 
 which is the junior only of the famil}^ and 
 has a like stamp of God's approval with both 
 family and pulpit." ^ 
 
 So the Sunday-school idea is not a modern 
 one. Wendell Phillips used to have a cele- 
 brated lecture upon " The Lost Arts." The 
 modern Sunday-school is the recovery of a 
 
 1 Trumbull, " Teaching and Teachers," p. 354. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 17 
 
 " lost art." Dr. Trumbull ' has gathered to- 
 gether what some of the rabbis tell us of the 
 early Bible-school among the Jews. Here we 
 learn " that Methuselah was a teacher of the 
 Mishna, before the flood ; that, after the Del- 
 uge, Shem and Eber had a House of In- 
 struction where the Halacha was studied ; 
 that Abraham was a student of the Torah 
 when he was three years old, and that he was 
 afterwards under the teaching of Melchizedek 
 in matters concerning the priesthood ; that 
 young Jacob as a good boy did go to the 
 Bible-school, while Esau as a bad boy did 
 not ; that among the pupils of Moses in his 
 great Bible-school were his father-in-law 
 Jethro, and young Joshua, and that the latter 
 was preferred above the sons of Moses, as his 
 successor, because of his greater zeal and fi- 
 delity in the Bible-school exercises ; that the 
 victory of Deborah and Barak reopened the 
 schools for Bible study, which had been 
 closed by the Canaanites ; that Samuel con- 
 ducted Bible-schools which were continued 
 to the days of Elisha and beyond ; that 
 wicked King Ahaz had the Bible-schools for 
 children closed in order to exterminate the 
 religion of Moses ; that good King Hezekiah, 
 on the other hand, not only fostered the 
 
 1 " Yale Lectures," p, 5. 
 
l8 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Bible-school system, but personally bore his 
 own children to receive instruction in one of 
 these schools." 
 
 " All this," remarks Dr. Trumbull, " is 
 mere fanciful tradition, it is true ; but even 
 as tradition it has an interest through what 
 it shows of the estimation in which the Bible- 
 school was held by the rabbis, at the time of 
 the recording of these steadily gathering tra- 
 ditions concerning its ancient place and 
 power." 
 
 When Jehoshaphat was on the throne he 
 commissioned princes, Levites, and priests to 
 teach the book of the law of the Lord to the 
 people throughout all the cities of Judah. 
 After Israel returned from exile Ezra and his 
 corps of teachers instructed the people. 
 
 In the eighth chapter of Nehemiah we have 
 a description of Ezra's school : 
 
 " And all the people gathered themselves 
 together as one man into the street that was 
 before the water gate ; and they spake unto 
 Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law 
 of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to 
 Israel. 
 
 " And Ezra the priest brought the law be- 
 fore the congregation both of men and women, 
 and all that could hear with understanding, 
 upon the first day of the seventh month. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 19 
 
 " And he read therein before the street that 
 was before the water gate from the morning 
 until midday, before the men and the women, 
 and those that could understand ; and the 
 ears of all the people were attentive unto the 
 book of the law. 
 
 " And Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit 
 of wood, which they had made for the pur- 
 pose ; and beside him stood Mattithiah, and 
 Shema, and Anaiah, and Urijah, and Hilkiah, 
 and Maaseiah on his right hand ; and on his 
 left hand, Pedaiah,and Mishael, and Malchiah, 
 and Hashum, and Hashbadana, Zechariah, 
 and Meshullam. 
 
 " And Ezra opened the book in the sight 
 of all the people (for he was above all the 
 people) ; and when he opened it all the peo- 
 ple stood up. 
 
 *' And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great 
 God. And all the people answered, Amen, 
 Amen, with lifting up their hands ; and they 
 bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord 
 with their faces to the ground. 
 
 "Also Joshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, 
 Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodijah, Maa- 
 seiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pela- 
 iah, and the Levites, caused the people to 
 understand the law ; and the people stood in 
 their place. 
 
20 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 "So they read in the book in the law of 
 God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused 
 them to understand the reading-." 
 
 Edersheim tells us that the synagogue 
 originated during or in consequence of the 
 Captivity, The synagogue schools multi- 
 plied throughout Israel, and during the min- 
 istry of our Lord there were from 460 to 480 
 synagogue schools in Jerusalem alone. The 
 schools were so influential among the Jews 
 that it was said that " If you would destroy 
 the Jews you must destroy the schools," 
 
 Jesus was, without doubt, taught in one of 
 the synagogue schools at Nazareth, When 
 He began His public career He made use of 
 the synagogues, " And Jesus went about all 
 Galilee, teachmg in their synagogues and 
 preaching the Gospel of the kingdom," 
 " The synagogue became the cradle of the 
 Church." ' 
 
 It is well to note how teachmg was empha- 
 sized, " And daily in the temple, and in 
 every house they ceased not to ieach, and 
 preach Jesus Christ," ^ Jesus giving His com- 
 mission said : " Go ye therefore and teach all 
 nations . . . teachmg them to observe all 
 things whatsoever I have commanded you."' 
 
 1 Edersheim, " Life and Times of Jesus," Vol. I, p. 431. 
 * Acts V. 42. ' Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 21 
 
 The fact that in three hundred years from 
 the death of John Christianity spread all 
 over the civihzed world is attributed to the 
 system of teaching. Prof. George W. Rich- 
 ards says : " The Middle Ages became dark 
 ages when the schools of the Church de- 
 clined," Many historians call attention to 
 the fact that where the Bible-schools were 
 continued, or where they were early renewed, 
 there Christianity was preserved in its purest 
 form, and produced its fairest flower. The 
 Waldenses have kept up Bible training 
 among their people for a thousand years. 
 
 The Jewish Talmud says : "Jerusalem was 
 destroyed because the instruction of the 
 young was neglected." Bishop Jebb de- 
 clares that through all the centuries of the 
 Christian era " in exact proportion as cate- 
 chizing has been practiced or neglected, in 
 the same proportion have the public faith 
 and morals been seen to flourish or decline." 
 TrumbulP reminds us that "The history of 
 the Christian Church shows that just in pro- 
 portion as the Church Bible-school — the Sun- 
 day-school as we now call it — has been ac- 
 corded the place which our Lord assigned to 
 it in the original plan of His Church, has 
 substantial progress been made in the ex- 
 
 i"Yale Lectures," p. 66. 
 
22 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 tending of the membership, and in the up- 
 building— ^the edifying — of the body of Chris- 
 tian believers in the knowledge of God's 
 Word and in the practice of its precepts." If 
 history be a guide, we must not allow the 
 teaching function of the Church to go into 
 decline. 
 
 The modern Sunday-school movement 
 dates from 1 780, when Robert Raikes told his 
 experience with the neglected children of 
 Gloucester, England. Raikes tells us that 
 pin-making had been an important industry 
 at Gloucester from the early part of the 
 seventeenth century. Many small children 
 from the city and surrounding regions were 
 employed. Vast numbers of them were un- 
 educated and away from parental restraint 
 and moral supervision. On Sundays the 
 factories were closed and gross immoralities 
 broke out among these children. 
 
 One morning Mr. Raikes went into the 
 suburbs of Gloucester, and seeing a group 
 of children at play, he asked a woman 
 whether they belonged to that part of the 
 city or not. The woman replied : " The 
 street is filled with multitudes of these 
 wretches, who, released on that day (the Sab- 
 bath) from employment, spend their time in 
 noise and riot, playing at ' chuck,' and 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 23 
 
 cursing and swearing in a manner so horrid 
 as to convey to any serious mind an idea of 
 hell rather than any other place." \ 
 
 Mr. Raikes thought it would be harmless 
 if some little plan was formed to check what 
 he called *' This deplorable profanation of the 
 Sabbath." He inquired of the woman if 
 there were teachers in the neighbourhood. 
 He was told of four women. He made an 
 agreement to pay each of these four teachers 
 a shilling a Sabbath to instruct in reading 
 and church catechism the children he might 
 send to them. "The children were to come 
 soon after ten in the morning, and stay till 
 twelve ; they were then to go home and stay 
 till one ; and after reading a lesson they were 
 to be conducted to church. After church 
 they were to be employed in repeating the 
 catechism till half-past five, and then to be 
 dismissed, with the injunction to go home 
 without making a noise ; and by no means 
 to play in the street." ^ 
 
 In an account given by Mr. Raikes to 
 Colonel Townley, and published later in the 
 Gentleman' s Magazine, he said : " All that I 
 require are clean hands, clean face, and the 
 hair combed. If you have no clean shirt, 
 
 1 Harris, " The Story of Robert Raikes," p. 47. 
 ' Letter of Robert Raikes, June 5, 17S4. 
 
24 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 come in that which you have on." He char- 
 acterized his work as '* botanizing in human 
 nature." The children received were from 
 six to fourteen years of age. Only boys 
 were admitted at first, but three years later 
 girls were allowed to come. We learn that 
 some of the scholars marched from their 
 houses with logs of wood and weights tied 
 to their legs to prevent their running 
 away. A boy, "Winkin Jim," brought a 
 young badger under his arms, and " let it 
 fly" in school so as to make "Old Mother 
 Critchley jump," ^ 
 
 At the close of three years a woman, who 
 lived near one of the schools thus opened, 
 said to Mr. Raikes : " The place is quite a 
 heaven upon Sundays compared to what it 
 used to be." 
 
 Mr. Church, a manufacturer of hemp and 
 flax, who employed many children, when 
 asked by Raikes if he had perceived any al- 
 teration in the poor children he employed, 
 said : '* Sir, the change could not have been 
 more extraordinary, in my opinion, had they 
 been transformed from the shape of wolves 
 and tigers to that of men. In temper, dis- 
 position, and manners, they could hardly be 
 said to differ from the brute creation. But 
 
 1 Harris, " The Story of Robert Raikes," p. 53. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 25 
 
 since the establishment of the Sunday-schools 
 they have seemed anxious to show that they 
 are not the ignorant, illiterate creatures they 
 were before." ^ 
 
 So startling was the reformation wrought 
 by the primitive Sunday-schools that Adam 
 Smith said : " No plan has promised to effect 
 a change of manner with equal ease since 
 the days of the apostles." ^ 
 
 The queen summoned Mr. Raikes to her 
 presence in order to hear from him "by what 
 accident a thought which promised so much 
 benefit to the lower order of people as the in- 
 stitution of the Sunday-school was suggested 
 to his mind." 
 
 In five years Raikes' experiment was 
 deemed a success, and God gave Robert 
 Raikes to see some of the harvest of his 
 faithful sowing. When he saw the direful 
 need of something being done for the street 
 arabs, a . voice seemed to whisper to him, 
 " Try ! " Later he said : " I can never pass 
 by the spot where the word try came so 
 powerfully into my mind, without lifting up 
 my heart and hands to heaven, in gratitude 
 to God, for having put such a thought into 
 my heart." 
 
 1 Letter of Robert Raikes, June 5, 1784. 
 
 2 Harris, " The Story of Robert Raikes," p. 129. 
 
26 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 We have seen that the first teachers were 
 paid teachers. This fact Hmited the spread 
 and permanence of the Sunday-school for a 
 time. A writer in the Sunday- School Reposi- 
 tory says : " If we were asked whose name 
 stood next to that of Robert Raikes in the 
 annals of Sunday-schools, we should say the 
 person who first came forward and voluntarily 
 proffered his exertions, his time, and his 
 talents to the instruction of the young and 
 the poor ; since an imitation of his example 
 has been the great cause of the present 
 flourishing state of these institutions, and of 
 all that future additional increase which may 
 be reasonably anticipated." 
 
 Previous to the movement by Raikes other 
 men had sought the religious training of the 
 young. Thirty years before the Sunday- 
 school at Gloucester, John Wesley had 
 gathered the children in various parts of 
 England for religious instruction. " Wesley 
 saw clearly that the child was the heir, and 
 that to possess the child was to build the 
 church." 
 
 In July i8, 1784, Wesley was at Bingley 
 Church. In his journal of that date he says : 
 " Before service I stepped into the Sunday- 
 school, which contains 240 children, taught 
 every Sunday by several masters, and super- 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 27 
 
 intended by the curate. ... I find these 
 schools springing up wherever I go. Per- 
 haps God may have a deeper end therein 
 than men are aware of. Who knows but 
 some of these schools may become nurseries 
 for Christians?" ^ 
 
 To Rev. Richard Rodda, of Chester, 
 Wesley wrote on June 17, 1787: " My dear 
 brother, I am glad you have taken in hand 
 that blessed work of setting up Sunday- 
 schools in Chester. It seems these will be 
 one great means of reviving religion through- 
 out the nation. I wonder Satan has not yet 
 sent out some able champion against them." 
 In his journal of Sunday, April 20, 1788, 
 when at Bolton he writes : " About three (in 
 the afternoon) I met between nine hundred 
 and a thousand of the children belonging to 
 our Sunday-schools. I never saw such a 
 sight before."^ His prophetic soul was 
 thrilled at the prospect. On March 24, 1 790, 
 Wesley said of the Sunday-schools : "It is 
 one of the noblest institutions which has been 
 seen in Europe for some centuries." 
 
 Secular instruction was given in the very 
 early Sunday-schools, because its first mis- 
 sion was to the illiterate, but when the public 
 
 ' Wesley's Journal, Vol. II, p. 599. 
 ' Ibid., Vol. II, p. 690. 
 
28 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 schools became more common, religious in- 
 struction came naturally into prominence. 
 
 One of the first Sunday-schools in the 
 United States was organized by Bishop 
 Asbury in 1 786 in a private house in Hanover 
 County, Virginia. Other Sunday-schools 
 early appeared in Boston, New York, and 
 Philadelphia. By the end of the eighteenth 
 century the Sunday-school was " an accepted 
 and essential agency for any progressive 
 church." 
 
 By 1786 there were 250,000 scholars in the 
 Sunday-schools of England. In 1827 there 
 were 1,250,000 in the Sunday-schools of 
 Great Britain and America. In 1850 there 
 were 6,000,000 in all Sunday-schools, In 
 1875 there were 110,000 Sunday-schools; 
 1,500,000 teachers ; and 10,000,000 scholars. 
 In 1911 there are over 28,000,000 officers, 
 teachers, and scholars in the Sunday-schools 
 of all nations. This movement is spreading 
 throughout the world. 
 
 In the United States there are i5o,455 
 Sunday-schools ; 1,544,455 officers and teach- 
 ers ; 12,777,739 scholars. In our public 
 schools in 1908 there were 466,000 teachers, 
 and 16,000,000 pupils. There are about a 
 million more teachers in the Sunday-schools 
 of America than in our public schools. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 29 
 
 The increase of Sunday-school forces in the 
 United States from 1905 to 1908 was as fol- 
 lows : Schools, 15,021; teachers, 37,727; 
 scholars, 1,439,266. This means an increase 
 per day of over thirteen schools, thirty-four 
 teachers, and thirteen hundred and fourteen 
 scholars. 
 
 Let us have broader views of the possibili- 
 ties of this world-wide movement. In 1905 a 
 man said to Mr. W. N. Hartshorn, chairman 
 of the Executive Committee for International 
 Sunday-schools, as he thought of the meagre 
 financial support given to the committee for 
 their work : " Why, my dear brother, you 
 seem to be doing a world-wide business on a 
 ' nickel in the slot returns,' using narrow 
 gauge, single-track equipment and power 
 rather than the wide gauge, four-track equip- 
 ment of the ' Empire State ' and ' Twentieth 
 Century Limited.' " ^ We must give the Sun- 
 day-school a chance to work out its mighty 
 mission, and this can be done only as the 
 Church shall place much larger gifts upon 
 God's altar for the Sunday-school work. 
 
 2. The Sunday - schooV s Mission and 
 Poiver. The Sunday-school exists for char- 
 acter. Its purpose is to save the scholar. 
 This is forever its fundamental aim. Every- 
 
 ' Report of the Toronto Convention, p. 413. 
 
30 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 thing else is only a means to this supreme 
 end. Its mission is the same as the Bible's, 
 the same as Christ's. " The ultimate aim of 
 the teaching is the knowledge of Christ, 
 Christian experience, personal salvation." ^ 
 The aim of Sunday-schools is *' to quicken 
 spiritual life and instinct and give knowledge 
 and understanding of the means of spiritual 
 growth." ^ 
 
 The Sunday-school seeks the education of 
 the heart. History furnishes the names of 
 many men who were brilliant in mind, but 
 depraved in heart. Heart culture is better 
 than brain culture. The heart is " centre and 
 spring " of character. Its supremacy must 
 be forever recognized. Dr. John has well 
 said that " it is not simply civilization the 
 world wants, but civilization with con- 
 science." ^ 
 
 Culture of conscience must not be forgot- 
 ten. Educated rascals are a bane to our na- 
 tional welfare. Adepts in treachery and 
 crime stain the nation's fair name, and threaten 
 our future good. Dr. M. J. McLeod •* calls 
 attention to the man convicted in the courts 
 
 ^ Demarest. 
 
 ' Mariana C Brown, " Sunday-school Movements in 
 America," p. 178. 
 
 • " The Worth of a Man," p. 233. 
 
 * " Earthly Discords and How to Heal Them," p. iS. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 31 
 
 of Philadelphia a few years ago, whose life of 
 shame and crime was admitted by the police 
 to be without a parallel in the records of the 
 Rogue's Gallery. This criminal was a col- 
 lege graduate and a post-graduate at Ann 
 Arbor. He was so clever in covering up 
 his tracks that he baffled his pursuers for 
 years. He was at last found guilty of arson, 
 forgery, bigamy, and murder. He was an 
 educated rascal. 
 
 Men rob municipalities, pillage the coffers 
 of the nation, scandalize our civilization, and 
 blacken the pages of history because they 
 have cold, hard, selfish, and dwarfed hearts. 
 In 1905 after two years of investigation, Judge 
 Lindsey estimated that at least fifty per cent, 
 of the boys of Denver were dishonest. "We 
 want," says Levi Gilbert, ''that our youth 
 should know how to balance up their bank 
 accounts ; but we want to have them do it 
 without putting a cold thousand in their 
 pockets. We want them to know something 
 about geography, but something more than 
 the shortest route to Canada."^ Wendell 
 PhilHps, in his lecture on " Public Opinion," 
 said : " They tell us that this heart of mine, 
 which beats so unintermittedly in the bosom, 
 if its force could be directed against a granite 
 
 > Address before Toronto Convention, 1905. 
 
32 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 pillar, would wear it to dust in the course of 
 a man's life. You may build your capitol of 
 granite, and pile it high as the Rocky Moun- 
 tains ; if it is founded on or mixed up with 
 iniquity, the pulse of a girl will in time beat 
 it down." 
 
 Socrates of old declared : " I do nothing but 
 go about persuading you all, old and young 
 alike, not to take thought for your persons, or 
 your properties, but first and chiefly, to care 
 "^ about the greatest improvement of the souV^ 
 The care of the body is important, the train- 
 ing of the mind is of great moment, but the 
 culture of the heart is supreme and crucial. 
 
 A sage said long ago, " Keep thy heart 
 with all diligence for out of it are the issues 
 of life." We have physical culture, intellec- 
 tual culture, but heart culture is often neg- 
 lected. Bushnell asserts : " The world-ward 
 nature is cared for, but the religious, that 
 which opens Godward, that which aspires 
 after God, and, occupied by His inspiring 
 impulse, mounts into all good character, as 
 being even liberty itself ; that which consum- 
 mates and crowns the real greatness and 
 future eternity of souls, is virtually ignored." ^ 
 
 Watkinson says : ^ " Rarely men think of 
 
 ' " Christian Nurture," p. 80. 
 
 *•' Education of the Heart," p. 52. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 33 
 
 putting the heart to school." The imagina- 
 tive, musical, and literary faculties are cul- 
 tured but the heart is neglected. Thus he 
 declares : " Every plant of the garden is cared 
 for except the rose." To illustrate the folly 
 of such a method he uses one of the fairy 
 tales of botany. " The foliage of the poin- 
 settia close around the flower has the habit of 
 turning to a splendid scarlet, which is often 
 wrongly regarded as the blossom itself ; the 
 actual bloom is a most insignificant thing. 
 And, just as the leaves of this fashionable 
 plant are rich with gorgeous, glowing colour, 
 whilst the real flower is miserably meagre ; 
 so men laboriously train their secondary 
 faculties even to a brilliant perfection, while 
 the supreme organ of love and sacrifice is 
 permitted to dwindle into insignificance." ^ 
 
 The Sunday-school seeks to develop the 
 heart in love, and in broad, generous im- 
 pulses. " The formation of the highest type 
 of Christian character is certainly a com- 
 mendable purpose in the work of the Sunday- 
 school." 2 
 
 Love is queen among the Christian graces, 
 and she must be given her rightful crown. 
 Hope may wave her golden wand and keep 
 
 '"Education of the Heart," p. 52. 
 
 * Haslett, '♦ Pedagogical Bible-school," p. 69. 
 
34 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 her eyes fixed on the gates of Paradise ; faith 
 may reach her hand up through the clouds 
 on whose bosom the lightnings flash and 
 play and lay hold upon the pillars of the 
 Throne ; mind may seek to know the secrets 
 of the universe in rock, and flower, and star ; 
 wisdom may turn a deaf ear to the glittering 
 enticements of sin, and allow the siren voices 
 of iniquity to sing in vain ; enthusiasm may 
 storm the bristling ramparts of enthroned 
 sin ; patience may wait calm and tranquil 
 amid the storm ; but love is supreme, love is 
 queen, love is " the end of the commandment 
 and the fulfilling of the law." 
 
 Because the Sunday-school seeks the de- 
 velopment of the heart in love towards God 
 and towards man it helps to secure the full- 
 orbed life for man. Phillips Brooks once 
 spoke of the length, and breadth, and height 
 of the holy city as revealed by John, and then 
 went on to say that life is like the city. Life 
 has three dimensions. Man moves forward, 
 he has aim, ambition. " The length of life is 
 its onreach in some noble calling or pursuit." 
 Life moves outward, relates itself to other 
 lives, has breadth. " The breadth of life is 
 its outreach towards our fellow men in help- 
 fulness and sympathy." Life is upward, God- 
 ward. " The height of life is its upreacb 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 35 
 
 towards God." Life thus relates to self, to 
 neighbour, and to God. The complete life 
 has three dimensions. If the life has only- 
 one dimension, relates only to self, it is nar- 
 row. If life has only two dimensions, relates 
 to self and to men, it is shallow. It is not 
 until life has three dimensions, not until it 
 has onreach, outreach, and upreach that it is 
 full-orbed, and complete. 
 
 The Sunday-school helps to develop a gen- 
 eration of Christians whose lives are founded 
 upon the Word of God. It helps to make 
 Bible Christians. What we greatly need 
 is a church-membership whose lives are il- 
 luminated by a faithful study of the Word. 
 This will help to banish some of the strange 
 inconsistencies of church-members, because 
 the Sunday-school must insist upon the ap- 
 plication of the truth studied to the life lived. 
 This will tend to rid the earth of such con- 
 ceptions as are indicated by the following in- 
 cident. A coloured man after giving a glow- 
 ing testimony was asked to pay a certain 
 debt, whereupon he remarked : " Ligun is 
 ligun, an' bisnes' is bisnes', an' I ain't gwine 
 to mix um." Training in the Sunday-school 
 will help all of us to " mix um." 
 
 This knowledge of the Bible gotten in the 
 Sunday-school arms one for the day of temp- 
 
36 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 tation. When Christ was tempted He thrust 
 His hand into God's armoury and brought 
 forth the Sword of the Spirit, which is the 
 Word of God, and gave the defeating thrust 
 to the Adversary of His soul. The nim- 
 bleness with which Jesus handled that Sword 
 was doubtless partially learned in the syna- 
 gogue Bible-school. 
 
 Christmas Evans, the Welch preacher, tells 
 in his unique way how the unclean spirit that 
 was cast out could not find entrance into 
 other hearts. He imagines that the demon 
 passes along the highway until he sees a 
 plowboy ready to begin his day's toil : " Ah, 
 here is a human house, into which I will en- 
 ter and live," says the evil spirit. " I will go 
 and possess that boy. I will take the power 
 of his youth and I will make it a power for 
 wickedness. I will use every faculty of his 
 in the work of advancing crime." As the 
 evil spirit approached the lad he heard him 
 singing the ninth verse of the 119th Psalm: 
 "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his 
 way ? By taking heed thereto according to 
 Thy word." That truth out of^ the book was 
 the young man's protection. The evil spirit 
 said : " This place is too dry for me ; I can- 
 not dwell here ; there is no room for me 
 here ; I must go elsewhere." 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 37 
 
 The demon passed on until he saw a girl 
 on her way to school. She was fair of face, 
 graceful, beautiful. "Ah," said the evil 
 spirit, " I will creep to her side, and I will 
 whisper into her ear an evil thought that will 
 set her soul on fire and turn her into a beau- 
 tiful tempter. Mighty for evil will be her 
 power. I will dwell forever in her and for- 
 ever work through her." But as he drew 
 near he perceived she had an open Bible in 
 her hand and was trying to commit to mem- 
 ory the words : " Our daughters shall be as 
 corner-stones carved aftec the similitude of a 
 palace." Rebounding with a shock the evil 
 spirit said : " There is no room for me here ; 
 the place is too dry for me ; I will go else- 
 where for a habitation." 
 
 Finding himself in front of the church 
 manse, where the aged minister was dying, 
 the evil spirit said : " Ah, I will enter into the 
 soul of this man of God. True, my stay 
 will be short, but I "can do a most deadly 
 work. Now is the time of the old man's 
 weakness. I will create doubt within him. I 
 will make him talk like a heathen and an un- 
 believer, and die under a cloud, and thus I 
 will weaken the whole force of his long min- 
 istry," He entered the manse to execute his 
 pernicious purpose. The aged minister was 
 
38 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 saying with his last ounce of energy : 
 "Though I walk through the valley of the 
 shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou 
 art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they 
 comfort me." The evil spirit had struck an- 
 other of the shields of God, and he fled away. 
 So the study of the Bible helps to fortify us 
 in the day of temptation. 
 
 There is what is called " arrested develop- 
 ment " in the vegetable kingdom. The plant 
 stops short of perfection. There is arrested 
 development in the physical bodies of men. 
 We have dwarfs, cripples, monstrosities. 
 These scenes are sad. But a still sadder 
 sight are the moral dwarfs and cripples. 
 What pathos and tragedy in spiritual ar- 
 rested development ! To see a heart that 
 once beat strong and steady in its love and 
 devotion to God smitten with the devil of 
 blight and reduced to a dwarfed and withered 
 hope is indeed appalling. 
 
 All life must be fed. The plant without 
 air, and soil, and water must die. The body 
 must have food or it pines and shrivels. The 
 soul must have nourishment or it will become 
 dwarfed. The true diagnosis of many a soul 
 is : " Dying from lack of food." The Bible 
 is one of God's foods for the soul. Chrysos- 
 tom went so far as to say : " Here is the 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 39 
 
 cause of all our evils, our not knowing the 
 Scriptures." One man in the New Testa- 
 ment said : " Soul, thou hast much goods 
 laid up for many years : take thine ease, eat, 
 drink and be merry," But a soul cannot 
 be fed on " goods." Jesus said : '* Sanctify 
 them by Thy truth ; Thy word is truth." A 
 church with a large per centage of its mem- 
 bership in the Sunday-school must grow 
 strong. 
 
 We are to "search the Scriptures." We 
 must "study to show ourselves approved 
 unto God." The synagogue school was 
 called " Beth-Midrash," or " House of Search- 
 ing." Gems of celestial truth reward the 
 earnest searcher of God's Word, Dr. Lori- 
 mer tells of the sunken forest of white cedar 
 on the coast of New Jersey. "This mine of 
 buried timber has been worked for more than 
 eighty years, and has proved to be a source 
 of wealth. Over this buried forest large 
 trees are growing and flourishing, and these 
 have often to be hewn away to reach the 
 more precious logs hidden some four to five 
 feet beneath the surface of the soil." ' So, 
 often as a reward of earnest searching we 
 find precious truth in God's Word beneath 
 the surface. 
 
 ' " The Arguments for Christianity," p. 258. 
 
40 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 What a sight to see the whole church at 
 study ! To behold almost infants, children, 
 young men and maidens, adults and even 
 the aged, all studying the revelation of God, 
 is indeed a thrilling sight. 
 
 The Sunday-school is a mighty evangelis- 
 tic agency. Dr. W. E. Hatcher says : " A 
 crowning phase of church organization — 
 perhaps the most powerful and far-reaching 
 of any yet devised — is the Sunday-school. 
 It has the Bible for its text-book, mankind 
 for its constituency, and the sweetest hour of 
 the Lord's day for its opportunity." 
 
 That it is a great missionary agency in 
 new communities is evidenced by the fact 
 that seventy per cent, of our churches were 
 first organized as Sunday-schools. That it is 
 a tremendous evangelistic force is proven by 
 the estimate that eighty-five per cent, of our 
 church-membership come directly from the 
 Sunday-school. 
 
 The Sunday-school is the most available 
 avenue through which to reach the un- 
 evangelized in the communities where 
 churches already exist. When a boy on the 
 farm, I looked after the sheep. Sometimes I 
 would have to carry young and tender 
 lambs from the pasture to the place of 
 shelter. There was no trouble in getting the 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 41 
 
 mother to follow when I had the lamb. Let 
 the Church of God get hold of the child 
 through the Sunday-school and the mother 
 is likely to follow, and the father may not be 
 far away. And surely this kind of an 
 evangelistic agency is needed when we recall 
 the startling and astounding fact that there 
 are eight million children in the United States 
 to whom neither Protestant nor Roman 
 Catholic churches minister. 
 
 How sacred is the task of seeking the chil- 
 dren of non-Christian homes ! " He who sins 
 against a child," says Hugo, " sins against 
 God," and if we neglect a child when we might 
 help it are not our garments smirched ? 
 
 There are children who seem " damned 
 into the world." " Lust is their father, brutal- 
 ity their mother, vice their teacher, filth their 
 companion, drunken crime their ambition, 
 hunger their inspiration, and drunkenness 
 their heaven." ^ 
 
 We should plant Sunday-schools in the 
 plague spots of our cities, and help restore 
 decency where there is now moral pollution. 
 If our hearts are touched with divine pity we 
 will seek for our Sunday-schools not simply 
 the children of Christian homes, but also 
 those of the less fortunate families. 
 
 1 Fiom address of Frank Crane. 
 
42 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Booker T. Washington tells of his first 
 opportunity of attending a Sunday-school. 
 He was a poor boy. When his mother died, 
 he was thrown out as a waif upon the street. 
 One Sunday morning a good man called to 
 him, and said : " Sonny, I want you to go 
 with me to Sunday-school." Washington 
 says : " I did not know where he was leading 
 me, but I had faith enough in him to follow, 
 and he led me, a poor unknown negro boy, 
 into the Sunday-school, and I have been in- 
 terested in the Sunday-school ever since." ^ 
 
 One day in Philadelphia a young man 
 went down the street into a poor section of 
 the city, and saw a group of boys and girls. 
 The next Sunday he started a Sunday-school 
 among them. He says : " I was but a boy 
 when I began the Bethany Sunday-school in 
 what was then a very poor part of the city."^ 
 Twenty-seven children were present the first 
 Sunday. Some were unwashed and their 
 hair unkempt. The young superintendent 
 got water and washed their faces, and combed 
 their hair. This process was often repeated 
 in that school. Fathers and mothers 
 wondered what had happened to Johnny and 
 
 ' Address, " The Religious Development of the Negro." 
 ^ From a letter received by the author concerning the 
 Bethany Sunday-school. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 43 
 
 Mary at the Sunday-school. Curiosity was 
 aroused. The school grew. Soon some of 
 the parents sent all the children. Out of that 
 Sunday-school grew the present Bethany 
 Sunday-school and church which have the 
 largest membership in the Presbyterian de- 
 nomination, if not in the world. That " boy " 
 is still superintendent. He has a Bible class 
 of eight hundred. He visits the sick, and he 
 sends flowers when there is a funeral among his 
 scholars. The world knows this prince among 
 Christian gentlemen as John Wanamaker. 
 
 Thus the Sunday-school may prove itself 
 a great evangelistic force, a recruiting agency 
 for the progress of the Church. 
 
 The adult classes may be an evangelizing 
 agency. The time is overdue when the adult 
 membership of the church should not only be 
 found in Bible classes, but when they should 
 recognize the evangelistic force of a Bible 
 class. Marion Lawrance, speaking of the 
 work of organization in a Bible class of men, 
 tells how the class increased. When they 
 wanted a new member volunteers were called 
 for, and seven were accepted, one for each 
 day in the week. On Monday the one 
 designated for that day made a pleasant call, 
 and invited him to the class the next Sab- 
 Sath. " He would think of it." On Tues- 
 
44 1 he Work, of the Sunday-School 
 
 day another called, and gave the invitation 
 in his way ; and without unduly pressing it, 
 each in turn paid his respects. The one who 
 called on Sunday morning found him yet in 
 bed. At the class a brief report was asked 
 from each, and then seven more volunteers 
 called. One day the man said : "I never had 
 so much interest taken in me in my life. I 
 think all my friends must be in the Bible class 
 of the Grove Street church. I'll be there 
 next Sunday, sure ! " 
 
 The Bible-school has been called " The 
 University of Protestantism." Bishop Vin- 
 cent sees in the ideal school of the future, " A 
 College of the Book of books." ^ 
 
 Provision is now made so that people of all 
 ages may be in some department of this 
 school. The Sunday-school is not the chil- 
 dren's church, nor is it a school simply for 
 children. It is the church-school, intended 
 for all. New-born babes are placed upon the 
 cradle-roll, and are welcomed into the ranks 
 of the Sunday-school host with the song : 
 
 " Another new baby we welcome to-day. 
 To-day a new name has been given. 
 We will give him a place on our dear cradle-roll, 
 For of such is the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 ^ From address on " A Forward Look for the Sunday- 
 school." 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 45 
 
 For the infirm and all who are necessarily 
 absent from the session of the school we have 
 the Home Department. The place for all 
 others is the school itself. Father with a way- 
 ward son, the way to keep him in the Sun- 
 day-school is to be there yourself. "Azariah 
 did that which was right in the sight of the 
 Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah 
 had done." ^ We are all imitators, and ex- 
 ample means much. 
 
 Of the ancient Jewish Bible-school we read : 
 " The righteous go from the synagogue to 
 the school," or, as we would now say : "The 
 good man goes from the church to the Sun- 
 day-school." ^ The primary department of 
 the Jewish school included those from six to 
 ten years of age. The intermediate depart- 
 ment comprised scholars from ten to fifteen. 
 The senior department was made up of all 
 over fifteen years old.^ The scholar never 
 became too old for that school, and at 
 death he graduated into the celestial school 
 on high. Let that ideal swing in sacred 
 splendour before our modern Sunday-schools. 
 
 Some modern mottoes are suggestive: 
 " All the Church in the Sunday-school ; all 
 the Sunday-school in the Church." Here is 
 
 1 2 Kings XV. 3. 
 
 * Trumbull, " Yale Lectures," p. i6. ^ Ibid,^ p. 192, 
 
46 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 another : " Every scholar a Christian ; every 
 Christian a worker ; every worker trained." 
 We will mention still one more : " Every 
 member present every Sunday, on time, with 
 his own Bible, a liberal offering, a studied 
 lesson, and a mind to learn." A church with 
 such ideals fulfilled in her Sunday-school will 
 become " beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jeru- 
 salem, and terrible as an army with banners ! " 
 We begin to see that the Sunday-school 
 contains mighty possibilities for the moral 
 and religious uplift of the nation and the race. 
 The Sunday-school harnesses the forces of 
 the church, it develops the teachers and those 
 who are taught, instructing them in the mes- 
 sage of the world's great Book. It vastly 
 extends the kingdom of Christ in the world. 
 It helps to bind together the nations of the 
 earth in peace and harmony. It is a great 
 educator of temperance and is forever laying 
 foundations for our nation's future glory and 
 welfare. The teaching of temperance in the 
 Sunday-school was adopted by the convention 
 of 1890. The boys of that time are voters 
 now, and new impetus is coming every day 
 to this reform. The Sunday-school is a great 
 patriotic institution. Daniel Webster once 
 asked Thomas Jefferson : " What is to be the 
 salvation of our nation ? " After a pause, 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 47 
 
 Jefferson replied : " Our nation will be saved, 
 if saved at all, by teaching children to love 
 the Saviour." 
 
 Many parents neglect the teaching of the 
 Bible to the boys and girls growing up in the 
 home. Then, too, the Bible has passed al- 
 most entirely from the public school. It now 
 becomes more and more incumbent upon the 
 Sunday-school to give instruction concerning 
 those principles and precepts upon which the 
 prosperity and perpetuity of the nation rests. 
 It is certain that the Sunday-school is one of 
 the prime factors in moulding the religious 
 and the moral condition of our Republic. In 
 this institution is one of the greatest forces 
 for fashioning the future of the nation. The 
 English statesman, John Bright, speaking of 
 the influence of the Sunday-school upon his 
 own nation, said : " I believe that there is no 
 field of labour, no field of Christian benevo- 
 lence, which has yielded a greater harvest to 
 our national interests and national character J/ 
 than the great institution of the Sunday- 
 school." ^ Mr. Green says in his " History of 
 the English People " that the Sunday-schools 
 established by Mr, Raikes at the close of the 
 eighteenth century were the beginning of 
 
 ' Quoted by Professor Richards in address on " An Historic 
 View of the Sunday-school." 
 
y 
 
 48 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 popular education. Mr. D. Ballantyne, speak- 
 ing for Scotland at the World's Sunday- 
 school Convention in Rome in 1907, said : 
 " Scotland owes a large measure of its moral 
 and religious strength to the existence of its 
 Sunday-schools, and at no time in its history 
 was this religious agency so wide-spread as it 
 is now." 
 
 Dr. Trumbull claims that " America has 
 been practically saved to Christianity and the 
 religion of the Bible by the Sunday-school." ^ 
 A Frenchman having studied our national 
 life gave as his judgment that : " The Sun- 
 day-school is one of the strongest foundations 
 of the republican institutions of the United 
 States." 
 
 President McKinley, in a letter to the editor 
 of the Sunday-School Times, said : " Every 
 youth who is taught to observe the principles 
 of justice and forbearance becomes an intelli- 
 gent friend of the doctrine of peace, and every 
 endeavour which aims at such instruction is 
 deserving of the highest commendation." ^ 
 Marion Lawrance calls the Sunday-school 
 " the noblest development of the nineteenth 
 century." 
 
 '"Yale Lectures," p. 122. 
 
 * Tenth International Sunday-school Convention Report, 
 p. 95. 
 
Origin, History, Mission and Power 49 
 
 Tremendous are the possibilities in the 
 Sunday-school for building the Church of the 
 living God. The Sunday-school must extend 
 her work into the unevangelized communities, 
 and she must intensify it in the fields already 
 occupied. 
 
 The aim set forth when the American Sun- 
 day-school Union was organized in 1824 must 
 be our ideal : "To plant a Sunday-school 
 wherever there is a population." One man 
 in the glow of his holy enthusiasm said : 
 " Let us make it down-hill from every direc- 
 tion to our Sunday-schools." And as the 
 consecrated host of God's militant Church 
 faces the splendid opportunities for service in 
 the Sunday-school we seem to hear the divine 
 word : " Behold, I have set before thee an 
 open door, and no man can shut it." 
 
II 
 
 THE TEACHER ; HIS TASK ; HIS 
 
 EQUIPMENT; HIS POWER j 
 
 AND HIS REWARD 
 
" He who teaches the child of his fellow man shall occupy a 
 
 prominent place among the saints above." — Jewish Saying. 
 
 " I do not believe that all the efforts men have ever made 
 tend so much to the greatness and happiness, and to the 
 security and true glory of this country (Scotland), as have the 
 efforts of your Sunday-school teachers." — yo/m Bright. 
 
 " I think it is Browning who tells us in one of his poems of a 
 picture in which an angel is portrayed intently engaged in doing 
 something. At first sight it does not clearly appear what he is 
 doing. The angel appears chained to the spot ; he is intent 
 upon something. And when you look at it closely, by the 
 angel's side there kneels a little child with closed eyes and up- 
 lifted hands and face ; and the angel is teaching the little child 
 to pray. The heavens are opened, and other angels are beck- 
 oning this angel to heaven. On the earth great enterprises are 
 beckoning the angel. But he is chained to the spot; for to 
 teach the little child to pray is better than entering the open 
 heavens; certainly, before the time." — E. Y. Mullins. 
 
II 
 
 The Teacher; His Task; His Equip- 
 ment; His Power; and His Reward 
 
 TEACHING is the most ancient func- 
 tion of the Church, so the teacher is 
 older than the preacher. Jesus is 
 called " The Great Teacher^ It is recorded 
 that He and His apostles " went about teach- 
 ing and preaching." In His last commission 
 Jesus said : " Go ye therefore, and make dis- 
 ciples (learners) of all the nations : . . . 
 teaching them to observe all things." The 
 apostle writes : " And God hath set some in 
 the Church, first apostles, secondly prophets, 
 thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of 
 healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of 
 tongues." ^ Thus it is seen that the teacher 
 takes high rank in his calling ; he is in a 
 worthy succession. 
 
 One of our statesmen said not long ago : 
 "The educational problem of this age, and 
 every other age, is not the founding of the 
 schoolhouse but the making of the school- 
 master." Similar words may be said con- 
 
 » I Cor. xii. 28. 
 
 53 
 
54 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 cerning our Sunday-school work. The 
 teacher is the prime factor. 
 
 I. The Teacher's Task. The Sunday- 
 school teacher deals with values beyond pos- 
 sible estimate. He works upon a soul. He 
 works with God upon a soul. He uses God's 
 Word as he works with God upon a soul. 
 He works for eternity as he uses God's Word 
 and works with God upon a soul. 
 
 Teaching is defined as " causing another to 
 know." The teacher then must study the fine 
 art of true pedagogy. The scholars must be 
 taught to perceive the truth, to partake of the 
 truth, and then to proclaim the truth. Some 
 one has said that the teacher's task is to bring 
 the child to Christ, to build him up in Christ, 
 and to send him oxiXfor Christ. It is said of 
 Jesus : " The whole purpose of His teaching 
 was to bring men into right relation with the 
 divine will, to show them how to live in har- 
 mony with the divine power, and at last to 
 unite them with the divine personality." 
 
 Bishop Vincent says of the teacher's task : 
 " It is a great work, reaching inward even to 
 the sacred centre of the soul's life, reaching 
 upward even to the throne of God, reaching 
 forward even to an endless eternity. . . . 
 It is a work upon souls, for eternity, under 
 divine inspection, with divine agencies, and is 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward ^§ 
 
 dependent upon divine inspirations. . . , 
 He is to teach the Word of God ; to teach 
 Christ through the Word ; and to so teach 
 Christ through the Word as to bring souls liv- 
 ing in this world into vital union with the 
 Lord." ^ Again Bishop Vincent sums up the 
 teacher's work : (i) To see that the truth is 
 imparted ; (2) that it is so imparted that it 
 will be received ; (3) that it is so received 
 that it will be retained ; (4) that it is so re- 
 tained that it will be employed for personal 
 growth, human good, and God's glory." ^ 
 
 Sunday-school scholars need enlighten- 
 ment, guidance, encouragement, and inspira- 
 tion. They must have bread for the soul ; 
 chaff will not do. Poetry and similes may well 
 illustrate and adorn the truth, but they must 
 not be a substitute for the truth. The teacher 
 must give food, mental and spiritual pabulum. 
 
 The teacher sows seeds and seeds grow. 
 This is his encouragement. He sows seed in 
 the spring time of immortal lives. He plants 
 truth in hearts that shall grow into harvest in 
 the golden autumn of immortality. He sows 
 with eternity's harvest in view. 
 
 The teacher helps to train the tendrils of 
 the heart's affections about Christ in a holy 
 
 1 " The Modern Sunday-school," pp. 72, 159. 
 » Hid., p. 166. 
 
56 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 allegiance, and to save lives from the misery 
 and doom of sin. 
 
 2. The Teacher's Equipment. What John 
 Brown of Haddington said to his theological 
 students may be said to the Sunday-school 
 teachers : " Three things ye must have : 
 piety, learning, and common sense. God 
 will gie ye the first ; I will gie ye the second ; 
 but if ye hae nae the third, the Lord hae 
 mercy on ye." 
 
 First of all, the teacher must know God. 
 This knowledge is not mere mental assent 
 concerning the actuality of God, it is not 
 simply belief in the historic personality of 
 Jesus, but a heart-to-heart relationship, a kin- 
 ship of soul with Christ, a fellowship of spirit 
 with the Saviour brought about by a loving 
 trust in God the Father, who sent Jesus upon 
 His mission to save. 
 
 The teacher must have experience of the 
 truth he teaches. " A man must himself be 
 a Bible before he can understand God's 
 Bible." No matter what other equipments 
 he may possess, without this, failure is cer- 
 tain. With this in large degree, other quali- 
 fications may be meagre, and yet success 
 may be achieved. Dr. Schauffler' records 
 the incident of a sailor who was a teacher. 
 
 ' «' Pastoral Leadership," p. 105. 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 57 
 
 He knew little of history, and nothing of 
 science, but was well acquainted with Christ. 
 Every member of his class accepted Christ 
 and made public confession. He then went 
 to the pastor and said : "Take my class away. 
 I am uneducated. I can't lead them any 
 higher, but I have led them to Christ. Give 
 me a new class that does not know Christ, 
 and I will try to lead them to the Shepherd." 
 The pastor gave that class to a more edu- 
 cated Christian, and he appointed the man a 
 new task, and he led every member of the 
 new class to the Saviour. The one saving ele- 
 ment in that teacher's equipment was his per- 
 sonal experience. But if breadth of scholar- 
 ship, grace of speech, and force of reason can 
 accompany the personal experience of the 
 teacher, they are not to be belittled, but ear- 
 nestly coveted and consecrated for still larger 
 service for the kingdom. We may well heed 
 Tennyson's lines : 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell. 
 That mind and soul, according well, 
 May make one music as before." 
 
 The teacher must illustrate in life what he 
 teaches in word, for " the teacher's life is the 
 life of his teaching." " Character is capital." 
 
58 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Here is the teacher's call to translate into a 
 living epistle the Sunday-school lesson he 
 would teach. His work beckons him to lofty 
 accomplishment on the plane of living. 
 
 It is a splendid achievement to be able to 
 carve a block of marble into an image so 
 perfect that you can almost see the muscle 
 move, the nerve quiver, and the heart beat. 
 It is a splendid achievement to be able to 
 take a simple piece of music like "Home 
 Sweet Home " and sing it with such pathos 
 and power as to make listeners sob and 
 weep. It is a splendid achievement to be able 
 to so weave words together in the expression 
 of human thought as to sway an audience 
 like trees before a tempest. But it is a 
 nobler achievement, a holier accomplish- 
 ment, and a diviner art to adorn the Gospel 
 in daily life, and to give the teachings of 
 Jesus a new incarnation. 
 
 The teacher must have the touch of God 
 upon his life, and to have this he must go 
 alone with God. Jacob went alone with God 
 upon the heights of Bethel, and he came 
 forth from his solitude as a prince of Jehovah. 
 Elijah went alone with God upon the mount, 
 and came forth with a new torch of light in 
 his bosom. Paul went alone with God into 
 the desert of Arabia, and came forth with a 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 59 
 
 tongue of flame and with a heart of fire. 
 John the Baptist went alone with God in the 
 wilderness, and came forth as an evangelistic 
 voice to pioneer the way for the Messiah. 
 Luther went alone with God, and came forth 
 as the knight-errant of the Reformation. 
 Lincoln went alone with God amid the pelt- 
 ing storms of the Civil War, and came forth 
 with tranquil heart. Washington went alone 
 with God at Valley Forge, and came forth 
 with the lustre of a new patriotism- upon his 
 brow, and with the breath of the Eternal 
 upon his spirit. And thus the teacher must 
 find divine equipment for his task. 
 
 The Sunday-school teacher must know the 
 Bible. The divine dictum to him, as well as 
 to the preacher, is : " Study to show thyself 
 approved unto God, a workman that needeth 
 not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of 
 truth." If the teacher does not study he will 
 get into the fog, and instead of leading his 
 class up the clear heights of the mountain of 
 truth he will fall with them into the ditch. 
 
 The teacher must know more than the 
 mere mechanical facts concerning the Bible, 
 such as the location of the various books, the 
 geography of the land in which the Bible was 
 written. He must find its fountains of truth, 
 its life for the soul. He must read his Bible 
 
6o The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 not simply so many chapters per day and so 
 many books per month. He must read it to 
 get life out of it. Joseph Parker says : " Sup- 
 pose a man were appointed by us to report 
 the oratorio called the Messiah, We ask him 
 to tell us what the oratorio is. He says, ' I 
 have taken infinite pains with my analysis, 
 and I can therefore tell you exactly what the 
 oratorio is : it consists of two thousand 
 words ; musically, it consists of fifty breves, 
 two hundred semibreves, and nearly eight 
 hundred quavers ; it has solos — soprano, 
 bass, tenor ; its choruses require thousands of 
 voices. This is the oratorio.' That is a 
 woodman's report ; that is the oratorio by 
 statistics." ^ What poverty of conception of 
 that great hymn with its sweet symphonies, 
 triumphal choruses, and hallelujah strains 1 
 Do not read the Bible like that. Get hold of 
 its lofty themes. Let its holy message live 
 in your heart, let its heaven-born truth burn 
 its way to the core of your being ! 
 
 If you are a teacher, you need to read the 
 Bible so that you can rightly guide the in- 
 quiring soul. The writer recalls the facts of 
 an incident read about fifteen years ago. A 
 train was making its way against a blizzard 
 on one of our northern railways. There 
 
 ' Parker's " People's Bible — John," p. 79. 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 6l 
 
 was a mother with her child on that train. 
 She was nervous for she was afraid she might 
 get off at the wrong station. A man in the 
 car noticed her anxiety and assured her that 
 he knew every station and would see that she 
 was put off at the right place. The train 
 stopped at the town next to the one she was 
 destined for, and then moved on again in the 
 storm. After a while the train stopped again 
 and the man said to the woman : " This is 
 your station, get out quickly." She took her 
 child and left the car, and the train moved 
 on. It soon stopped, and the brakeman 
 called the name of the station at which the 
 woman was to have gotten off. The man 
 who had misdirected the woman rushed to 
 the brakeman and said : " Why, you have 
 already stopped at that town." The brake- 
 man said : " No, there was something the 
 matter with the engine and we stopped a few 
 moments to repair it." " My God," ex- 
 claimed the man, " I put that woman and 
 child off in the storm ! " They went back 
 and found the woman and her child, but the 
 storm had cast the winding sheet of death 
 about them. It was a terrific blunder for that 
 man to misguide that traveller, but vastly 
 more tragic is it to give misdirection to a soul 
 that is travelling to the judgment. The 
 
62 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 teacher must know his Bible. The teacher 
 must know the scholar. He must find out 
 the mental, social, and spiritual condition of 
 every member of his class. He must know 
 how to find the " point of contact." He must 
 enter the realm of psychology, and he will 
 find it a fascinating field for study. Eminent 
 psychologists have rendered splendid service 
 in this interesting and entrancing realm. 
 This study will help the teacher to adapt him- 
 self to the mental and to the spiritual condi- 
 tion of the particular scholars he is called 
 upon to teach. The laws of psychology that 
 govern the mind have been established by 
 the Creator, and should be most eagerly and 
 faithfully studied by the Sunday-school 
 teacher. 
 
 The faithful study of the psychology of the 
 scholar will result in a clear recognition of 
 the tremendous fact of the tendency to per- 
 manency of character, and that this law 
 operates early in life. We have often heard 
 the statement : " Sow an act and you reap a 
 habit ; sow a habit and you reap a character ; 
 sow a character and you reap a destiny." 
 And this sowing begins early. 
 
 Professor De Motte says : " Action deter- 
 mines structure." He means that the man 
 who lives a good life is building it into the 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 63 
 
 very tissues of his body, and the man who 
 lives a vicious life is building that into his 
 nerve fibre, brain tissue, and muscle structure. 
 
 The structure of the moral man is likewise 
 affected by his deeds and by his thoughts. 
 When a person sins he is but helping to fix 
 a kind of structure in his moral fibre that will 
 keep him sinning. As Joseph Cook declares : 
 " Repetition is the hammer which forges the 
 chains of habit, and our own free choices 
 wield the hammer." ^ 
 
 " Not reformation, but formation " demands 
 our earnest attention more and more. 
 Heaven does not come by chance. God is 
 not capricious. The race is set before us, it 
 must be run. The battle is put in array, it 
 must be fought. The prize is held in view, 
 it must be won. The crowns of life are not 
 thrown out at random to the crowd, but are 
 given to those who walk worthy of the call- 
 ing of God. The moral world is no chance 
 world. We are under the regency of law. 
 God makes no mistakes in the bestowal of 
 His rewards. So far as man's part in salva- 
 tion is concerned, coronation depends upon 
 consecration. Happy the life that recognizes 
 God's claim early. 
 
 The Sunday-school teacher must be willing 
 
 » " Occident," p. 177. 
 
64 The_,Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 to work. He must aspire to be at his best. 
 He must " feel the thing he ought to be beat- 
 ing beneath the thing he is." He knows 
 that head and heart must be joined in a holy 
 alliance for the accomplishment of the task 
 undertaken. He knows that he must " not 
 pray for tasks equal to his powers, but for 
 powers equal to his tasks." 
 
 A man profuse in tears, but short on 
 thought, had the habit of addressing Sun- 
 day-schools. One day he stood before the 
 boys and girls of a school and soon began to 
 weep. One boy whispered to his comrade : 
 "What's that old 'duffer' crying about?" 
 The other boy replied : " Keep still ; if you 
 had as little to say as he has you would cry 
 too." 
 
 Hard work is a necessity with the Sunday- 
 school teacher. In the depths of the sea are 
 precious jewels, but the hand of the sluggard 
 can never gather them. In the heart of the 
 mountains are veins of silver and threads of 
 gold, but the hand of the lazy man can never 
 coin them. In the prairie soil are harvests of 
 wealth, but the indolent man can never reap 
 them. In the avenues of trade are rich re- 
 wards, but the shiftless man can never grasp 
 them. In the mine of knowledge are jewels 
 of celestial thought, but the lazy man can 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 65 
 
 never bedeck his brow with such diadems. 
 It is toil that gathers the emeralds of the sea, 
 coins the treasures of the n^ountains, reaps 
 the glowing harvests, sends pulsing commerce 
 on its daily rounds, and draws forth the 
 treasure from the mine of knowledge. It 
 is toil that drives the vessel o'er the sea, 
 points the telescope to the stars, and har- 
 nesses the quivering forces of the universe. 
 It is toil that makes the poem charm, the 
 harps of music ring, the canvas glow, the 
 marble speak, and the shuttle hum. And it 
 is patient, persistent searching that brings to 
 the possession of the teacher many a precious 
 jewel from God's inexhaustible mine. And 
 we say with Carlyle : " All true labour is di- 
 vine, sweat of the brow, then up to sweat 
 of the brain, up to sweat of the heart. This 
 includes all Kepler calculations, all Newton 
 meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, 
 all acted heroisms up to that final agony of 
 the Garden, which all men call divine." ^ 
 
 The teacher must have patience. The 
 harvest often seems long in coming. A boy 
 of ten years of age heard Wilbur Fisk speak 
 on the subject of education, and such an im- 
 pression was made upon the boy's mind that 
 he determined that, so far as help might lie 
 
 * " Past and Present." 
 
66 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 in his power, the cause of Christian education 
 should not lack funds. That boy was Mr. 
 Rich, who in later years gave money for the 
 founding of Boston University. Though Dr. 
 Fisk did not know it, Boston University 
 started in that speech when the ten-year-old 
 boy was impressed. 
 
 Bishop Oldham ^ tells of a boy who was 
 taken to a meeting when seven years old. 
 He sat on a front seat, and was uninterested 
 until a man came into the pulpit who took 
 down some charts. The man began to talk 
 about foreign missions. The speaker put 
 before the child's absorbed gaze a picture, 
 and he saw the great circle of dead black, 
 and in the middle of the circle there was a 
 small white spot. The speaker then asked : 
 " Do you know what that black circle means, 
 and do you know what that white spot 
 means ? That black circle represents the 
 millions who are living in the night of pagan- 
 ism, and that little white spot is the little 
 handful of Christians that are to be found in 
 pagan lands." Sixty-nine years after that 
 night that boy who had become an old man 
 said : ** I never forgot that, and when I went 
 home I knelt down and said the prayers my 
 
 1 lu address on " Tlie Value of the Teaching of Foreign 
 Missions in the Sunday-schools." 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 67 
 
 mother taught me, and then I a^ded this on 
 my own account, ' Oh, Lord, let me get to be 
 a big man, and I will work to make that 
 white spot a little larger, that there may be 
 not so much black, and that there may be a 
 little more white.' " 
 
 A few years ago the church in the city of 
 Cleveland, of which that man was a member, 
 held a great missionary convention, and over 
 $300,000 was pledged at a single session, and 
 the man who had been that little boy gave 
 one-third of it. That life of splendid giving 
 began in the boy of seven. 
 
 Jesus knew what it was to wait. Beneath 
 the rough exterior of Peter, Jesus saw the 
 possibility of a saint. Under the homely 
 outer garb of John, the fisherman, Jesus saw 
 a seraphic soul in embryo. If Jesus could 
 see apostles in fishermen, it ought not to be 
 hard for us to see saints, heroes, and prophets 
 of God in the boys and girls of our Sunday- 
 schools. 
 
 The following incident shows the reward 
 of patience. A young woman in a town in 
 England asked for a Sunday-school class. 
 There was no vacancy in the corps of teach- 
 ers, but she was told that if she wanted to 
 gather up a class of boys from the street and 
 from neglected homes she could have a place 
 
68 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 to teach them. A number of poor, ragged fel- 
 lows were brought together, among them one 
 wretched looking lad called Bob. 
 
 The superintendent soon invited the class 
 to his home, and each boy received a new 
 suit of clothes. Bob attended the school for 
 two or three weeks and then dropped out. 
 His suit was ruined, but the generosity and 
 faith of the superintendent supplied another 
 suit. That second suit soon shared the same 
 fate. The teacher lost heart and decided to 
 give him up. But the superintendent said : 
 " Please don't do that ; I am sure there is 
 something good in Bob. Try him once 
 more. I'll give him a third suit of clothes if 
 he'll promise to attend Sunday-school." 
 Bob's waywardness had met more than a 
 match in that superintendent. Bob was 
 soon a changed boy. He became an earnest 
 seeker after truth. He joined the church and 
 soon took a class himself. He later studied 
 for the ministry. The world knows Bob now 
 as Dr. Robert Morrison, who became the 
 founder of Protestant missions in China, and 
 translated the Bible for one-quarter of the 
 human race. Patience won, and had its re- 
 ward. 
 
 The teacher must have enthusiasm for his 
 work. There are facts enough to create this 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 69 
 
 enthusiasm. You are a builder of civiliza- 
 tion if you are training a child. Let the 
 teacher remember that "childhood is the 
 batde-ground of the kingdom." Let him re- 
 call the words of Dr. Goodell : " He who 
 builds the church of Christ must save the 
 children. If we save the children we save 
 the world. The world is most easily and ef- 
 fectively saved in childhood. Life and death 
 are in the training of children." ^ 
 
 Leschetiszky, the teacher of Paderewski, is 
 said never to be satisfied until a pupil has 
 expressed " all the sentiment, colour, warmth, 
 vigour, and fire of his nature in his execution." 
 He will say to a student : " Your fingers run 
 over the keys and say nothing. They are 
 like icicles. Fill them with love, with sym- 
 pathy ! " The teacher must fill his task with 
 love, with sympathy, with enthusiasm. 
 
 You see the botanist fall in love with his 
 science. He visits the flowers in their bloom, 
 and looks upon their gentle beauty, so soft 
 and delicate, that these perfumed thoughts of 
 God might well be the work of angel fingers. 
 Whether he is on the wild mountain or in 
 the fruitful valley, on the lowly plain or on 
 the storm-sw^ept hills, in northern climes or 
 under sultry suns, in his own home-yard or 
 
 1 " How to Build a Church." 
 
70 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 by a distant shore, his eye is attentive to na- 
 ture's charms for he is in love with botany. 
 
 Here is the geologist enamoured of his work. 
 He delves through the crust of the earth, 
 reading the hieroglyphics of God on the 
 rocks, and the fossil leaves become tongues 
 of flame, telling the story of a storm-swept 
 world. Thus he goes down from stratum to 
 stratum, descending the ladder of creation, 
 and as he beholds the sepulchre of the ages 
 his heart throbs and thrills, for he is in love 
 with geology. 
 
 The astronomer is charmed with his match- 
 less science. It enamours his heart and brain. 
 His study unfolds the beauties and wonders 
 of creation before his enraptured gaze. With 
 enchanted soul he labours on far into the 
 night, and while others sleep he follows his 
 chosen science on the highways of creation 
 until the sun with his diamond chariot unbars 
 the gates of the east and puts out the star- 
 candles of the night. He is in love with as- 
 tronomy. 
 
 The musician becomes enthusiastic as the 
 fair Maid of Music charms his heart and en- 
 lists his powers. He gives his life in full and 
 sacred devotion to her. Years pass. At last 
 he is before an expectant multitude. They 
 will not be disappointed, for music is in his 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 71 
 
 soul. The fibres of his being are attuned to 
 the laws of harmony. He begins to play. 
 The accordant notes float out in waves of 
 rippling music. The sweet cadence changes 
 to solemn strains, the solemn strains to 
 sweeping melody, the sweeping melody be- 
 comes a tide of harmony, and the perform- 
 ance closes amid the thrilling raptures that 
 almost stop the tide of life. Why ? Because 
 the man is in love with music. 
 
 Oh, Sunday-school teacher 1 get in love 
 with your work. To work with God upon a 
 human soul is the divinest of tasks. If the 
 botanist can spend a life with eager zeal in 
 the study of the flowers ; if the geologist can 
 have his soul set on fire as he reads the 
 record in the rocks ; if the astronomer can 
 have his heart grow hot as he follows in the 
 paths of the stars, and weighs worlds in the 
 balances of his thought ; if the musician can 
 become so enamoured of his work that he 
 will labour long and hard at his task ; what 
 shall we say of the holy zeal that should pos- 
 sess the soul of the teacher who deals with 
 immortal spirits ? He who seeks to lift be- 
 fore the scholar the noblest ideals and to fill 
 the heart with the purest hopes, and to help 
 him seek the divinest truth, and to fill his 
 life with a triumphant song, and to fashion 
 
72 The Work, of the Sunday-School 
 
 the soul for eternal life, must have his heart 
 melt in mercy, beat with compassion, and 
 glow with sublime enthusiasm. " The work 
 is great ; the time is short ; the Master is ur- 
 gent." 
 
 3. The Teacher' s Power. Ideals determine 
 destiny. They mould the destiny of nations 
 as well as of individuals. The Israelites of 
 old dwelt upon the rugged highlands, while 
 their Philistine neighbours lived on the more 
 fertile lowlands by the sea. The Hebrews 
 had little traffic with the outlying nations, 
 but their neighbours eagerly sought com- 
 merce with other lands. Israel's isolation 
 amid the rocks and barren hills enabled her 
 to keep, to a remarkable degree, the ideals of 
 God in her heart. She was not always true 
 to them, but her prophets kept those ideals 
 swinging before her gaze, and the holy fires 
 did not go out entirely upon her altars. Her 
 neighbours have left little trace in history, 
 but that Hebrew civilization influences the 
 nations, and throbs in our modern life. This 
 is a result of a difference in ideals kept before 
 those nations. 
 
 The ideals we hold before the young fashion 
 character. Parents are the first priests of 
 God to the child, but alas ! how many forfeit 
 the holy opportunity, and some Sunday- 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 73 
 
 school teacher becomes the real priest of God 
 to many a youth. 
 
 The teacher moulds the life of the scholar 
 because he comes to believe in the teacher ; 
 the teacher becomes an ideal. Faith is the 
 medium through which personal influence 
 can operate. The man in whom you have no 
 confidence does not mould you. It is the 
 man whom you trust who dominates you, 
 and binds you to his ideals. Here is a man 
 whose hands you know are stained with sin, 
 his thoughts are unclean, his heart is corrupt. 
 He does not mould your character, he does 
 not fashion your life, he does not control your 
 thought. You have no faith in him. But 
 here is another man whose hands are clean. 
 His feet walk in the way of virtue, his head 
 is in the light, his heart is true, his purposes 
 are pure, his life is radiant. You believe in 
 him and hence he helps to mould you, and 
 draws you towards his ideals. You surren- 
 der to him because you believe in him. 
 
 The author of "The World Beautiful" 
 says : " It is a law of science that sound can- 
 not travel through a vacuum ; the sound waves 
 require the atmospheric conditions for their 
 vibration ; and this may serve as an analogy 
 that through the spiritual vacuum made by 
 unfaith no divine aid can come." And in our 
 
74 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 relation to one another faith is a necessary 
 medium through which personal influence 
 and moulding power may be communicated. 
 With a true Sunday-school teacher this 
 medium of faith and confidence becomes a 
 reality. Scholars come to look upon the 
 teacher as an ideal. At the Tenth Interna- 
 tional Sunday-school Convention held at 
 Denver in 1902, one speaker told of a young 
 woman who was very successful as the 
 teacher of a class of thirty young men. One 
 day this teacher asked each member of her 
 class to write upon a slip of paper one reason 
 why he came to Sunday-school. Many of 
 the answers received are very suggestive and 
 speak to us of the mighty moulding power 
 that is wielded by the loyal and consecrated 
 Sunday-school teacher. Here are some of 
 the answers she received : 
 
 " You have faith in young men." 
 " You are interested in us, and in what we 
 do." 
 
 " We know you will be at Sunday-school." 
 
 " You know us on the street." 
 
 " We believe in your prayers." 
 
 " You welcome us to your home." 
 
 '* You understand young men." 
 
 " We know you are a Christian." 
 
 " You always come prepared." 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 75 
 
 " You don't think we are all bad." 
 
 " You live as you teach." 
 
 Those young men believed in that teacher, 
 and their faith in her became a medium 
 through which a moulding power could be 
 transmitted. The very fact that they came 
 to have faith in her gave her power to fashion 
 their lives. This influence one life may ex- 
 ert upon another gives solemnity and royalty 
 to life. The teacher's nobility of character 
 helps to fashion the scholar's life. We are 
 slow to estimate the full charm of goodness, 
 and its kingly influence upon human lives. 
 
 When Cambridge University of England 
 sought a Professor of Sanscrit a few years 
 ago there were but two candidates. These 
 were Edward B. Cowell and a German. The 
 one who relates the incident says that the 
 German had no special reputation in Eng- 
 land. Cowell knew the German quite well 
 and sounded his praises, declaring him to be 
 eminently fitted for the place. But Cowell 
 was selected. The Mohammedan court in- 
 terpreter to England was so impressed with 
 the noble character of Cowell that he said : 
 "The fact that Professor Cowell is a Chris- 
 tian makes it seem probable that Christianity 
 is true." That was the tribute the Moham- 
 medan paid to goodness. 
 
7 6 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Test many of the great names in history 
 with the measuring line of goodness and 
 alas ! how soon they sink into the realm of 
 dwarfdom, and humble ones leap into splen- 
 dour. Try this test and Alexander is pulled 
 from his pedestal and humble Dorcas mounts 
 the throne ; Nebuchadnezzar retires into the 
 shadow and heroic Daniel assumes the 
 crown ; Herod fades and shrivels and John 
 the Baptist steps forth with the tread of a 
 king ; the vain pomp and glory of men are 
 eclipsed, while humble devoted goodness ap- 
 pears like a crowned seraph and a singing 
 angel. Oh, teacher ! you mould by the 
 power of goodness. 
 
 The teacher moulds the scholar by his 
 friendship and love. No one can worthily 
 sing the lyric of friendship. In the friend- 
 ship of Jonathan, the prince, and of David, 
 the shepherd boy, we see a heart affinity, a 
 marriage of souls. In the divine glow of 
 that holy friendship Jonathan forgot that he 
 was heir to the throne. When David re- 
 ceived the homage of the people no jealousy 
 kindled in Jonathan's bosom. David's kingly 
 heart responded to Jonathan's princely soul. 
 The king's son was ready to exalt the shep- 
 herd boy to the throne. Here is the power 
 of human friendship at its noontide. And in 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 77 
 
 the friendship between the teacher and the 
 members of his class there may be a heavenly 
 charm that will make the teacher's work a 
 holy task and freight it with moulding 
 power. 
 
 In a mission school where sacred friend- 
 ship had sprung up between teacher and 
 scholar when a poor little girl of one of the 
 classes was told that she could not live long, 
 she said tenderly: "Mother, don't tell my 
 teacher I am dead ; for it will break her heart 
 to know it." 
 
 No one can measure the power of love in 
 life. You remember the infernal conspiracy 
 that was planned for the destruction of Drey- 
 fus. You know how he was taken four thou- 
 sand miles away from home and put on 
 Devil's Island. There under a tropical sun 
 he suffered. The heat was intense. It was 
 one hundred and thirty degrees in the shade. 
 He was shut up in a pen. He could see but 
 a small patch of sky. No grand vision even 
 of the heavens was afforded him. He slept 
 on a hard cot. The cot swarmed with ver- 
 min. He was told that his wife had become 
 untrue to him, that his children had deserted 
 him, and that his friends had forsaken him. 
 After his release when asked what it was that 
 sustained him amid the withering storm he 
 
78 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 said : " I knew that four thousand miles away 
 there was a Utile woman who loved me." 
 May the teacher know that through friend- 
 ship, and sympathy, and love for his scholars 
 he may bring constant inspiration into their 
 lives. 
 
 The teacher often moulds a life through 
 the avenue of memory. The awakening 
 power of memory is an asset in the moral 
 world. Dr. J. G. K. McClure relates how a 
 man of eighty years of age was lying one 
 summer day beneath a tree. It was Sunday. 
 As he lay there a bee flew among the clover 
 and began its buzzing. This attracted his 
 attention. As he listened to it the memory 
 of a day more than sixty years in the past 
 came back to him. He remembered how the 
 bees buzzed in the churchyard when he was 
 a boy. He remembered how they buzzed on 
 a special day when a friend sat down beside 
 him among the clover and asked him to be 
 true to his highest ideals of life, and how he 
 trifled with conscience that day and was dis- 
 loyal to it. He was a youth in England 
 then, and now he is an old man in America. 
 But as memory called up the past, and he 
 heard again the earnest words of his friend, 
 those words came to him with great force, 
 and lying there beneath the tree he yielded 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 79 
 
 to their influence and consecrated himself to 
 all those words sought. A newly awakened 
 memory stirred the soul of that man and 
 brought him to a decision for Christ. 
 
 I see in vision a young man who has gone 
 away from home and early companions. He 
 has strayed into forbidden paths. One night 
 he is out on the lonely plains. His compan- 
 ion sickens and dies. He is left alone. A 
 chill smites his heart. He looks up at the 
 silent stars. Memory awakes. More sv/iftly 
 than run the shuttles of the loom does his 
 mind travel across half a continent back to 
 other scenes and to other days. The mem- 
 ory of the distant past burns like a coal of 
 fire in his soul. He sees again the home 
 where his pillow at night was as soft as love 
 could make it, and where his mother's kisses 
 hung like jewels upon his cheek. Then 
 memory leads him into the Sunday-school 
 where a faithful teacher pointed to the way of 
 Life, and the words of Scripture he learned in 
 that Sunday-school come to mind : " Come 
 unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." " For God 
 so loved the world, that He gave His only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
 Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." And he hears again the heart-yearn- 
 
8o The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 ing appeal of the Sunday-school teacher that 
 he give his heart to Christ. And there 
 where only the stars look down, and with the 
 hush of the Eternal upon his spirit he sobs 
 out his prayer : " God be meriful to me a sin- 
 ner." Thus the memory of a faithful teacher 
 helps to bring him to God. The bread cast 
 upon the waters has been found after many 
 days. The seed sown, possibly amid weep- 
 ing, brings forth a joyful harvest. 
 
 A sainted missionary thinking of his work 
 said : " I would not exchange my place for a 
 throne." Oh, Sunday-school teacher ! repine 
 not, stay at your task, for you are a priest of 
 God, and by your moulding influence upon 
 young life you build for God and eternity. 
 
 4. The Teacher'' s Reivard. We often hear 
 of the problems, of the tasks, of the trials, 
 and of the discouragements of the Sunday- 
 school teacher. We would now say a word 
 concerning his reward. 
 
 (i) The development of the teacher' s own 
 life. One may congratulate himself when he 
 escapes taking a class in the Sunday-school. 
 But it is no occasion for congratulation, be- 
 cause he has allowed to pass a rare oppor- 
 tunity for his own highest development. 
 The church had been likened unto a "box of 
 unlighted candles," and when a person who 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 81 
 
 has ability to teach turns away from the op- 
 portunity, or shirks the responsibihty, his Hfe 
 is like the " unlighted candle." 
 
 Because man has not answered the call to 
 use his powers, how many a carpenter's ham- 
 mer has never swung, how many a forge has 
 never glowed, how many a weaver's shuttle 
 has never hummed, how many a field has 
 never been tilled, how many a pulpit has 
 never rung out with its sacred eloquence, 
 how many an artist has never painted a pic- 
 ture, how many a sculptor has never lifted a 
 chisel, how many a poet has never sung the 
 song of his soul, and how many a Sunday- 
 school class has gone teacherless because the 
 power lodged within human hearts and 
 brains has not been perfectly consecrated to 
 God and to His service ! Carlyle says : 
 "For a man to die who might have been 
 wise and was not ; this, I call a tragedy." 
 For one to have the gift and the opportunity 
 for teaching, and then refuse to teach is pa- 
 thetic beyond the compass of words to ex- 
 press. 
 
 The reward of self-development comes to 
 the teacher through several channels. He 
 must study the child, he must know whom 
 he is to teach. This leads him into the realm 
 of psychology. New fields of knowledge 
 
82 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 open before the progressive teacher. In his 
 eagerness for preparation for his class there 
 comes the expansion of his own thought-life. 
 
 The teacher must know how to teach. We 
 have noted in a previous chapter that teach- 
 ing is "causing another to know," so the 
 teacher must study this fine art. He must 
 know how to prepare a lesson, how to find 
 " the point of contact," how to hold the at- 
 tention, and how to impress the truth of the 
 lesson upon the heart and mind of the 
 scholar. 
 
 The teacher must know what to teach, and 
 this leads him into a discriminative and ap- 
 preciative study of the Bible. There is no 
 limit to the wealth that may come to him 
 from this wondrous mine. 
 
 The teacher learns that he must illustrate 
 in his life what he teaches, for " the teacher's 
 life is the life of his teaching." Here is his 
 call to translate into a living epistle the Sun- 
 day-school lesson he would teach. Thus his 
 work beckons him to lofty accomplishment 
 on the plane of living. The call to the heights 
 in adorning the Gospel by his life is a portion 
 of the teacher's reward. 
 
 (2) To see the developmcjit of the scholar 
 is a part of the teacher's reward. If the 
 greatest work of life is to grow a soul, then 
 
The Teacher's I'ask and Reward 83 
 
 to see a soul expand and reach out and up 
 after truth must be a thrilHng sight to any- 
 true teacher. 
 
 The growth of a tree is full of interest. 
 We see the acorn thrust into the earth. It 
 is instinct with life; it is packed power. 
 Nature whispers to its heart. Its embryo 
 quickens. What vital energy is there 1 It 
 bursts its confining walls. Spring rains and 
 summer suns coax it upward. Through the 
 crust of the earth it comes. It begins its 
 life-battle. Its leaves spread to catch the 
 dews of heaven. Its rootlets delve into the 
 earth and search for food. It feeds, absorbs, 
 assimilates, and grows. It is trampled upon. 
 The winds cuff it, but it gathers strength. A 
 century passes. Its roots are anchored in 
 the soil and in the clefts of the rock. The 
 superstructure is a giant. Its strong arms 
 sway to and fro on the bosom of the wind. 
 It tosses its kingly head from side to side 
 when in the grip of the storm and buffeted 
 by the blast. The winds of God make music 
 in its branches like ^olian harps. But the 
 interest in the growth of a tree is poor and 
 paltry indeed in comparison to the interest in 
 the development of a human soul. 
 
 If the sculptor's heart throbs with joy as 
 he sees the image come forth to perfection of 
 
84 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 symmetry and grace ; if the painter's soul 
 burns with zeal as his picture is developed ; 
 then surely the teacher's spirit may glow 
 with holy rapture as he sees the tendrils of 
 the soul reach up and begin to cling to God. 
 
 This reward of seeing the development of 
 the scholar may not come largely during the 
 period of the teaching. The teacher must 
 sometimes wait long years before the crown 
 of reward is received. 
 
 Dr. H. Clay Trumbull tells how one of his 
 Sunday-school teachers near the close of the 
 lesson period would lay his hand tenderly 
 on a boy and say : " My dear boy, I do wish 
 you would love Jesus and give Him your 
 whole heart." ^ The years sped away, but 
 Dr. Trumbull declares that the influence of 
 that persistent pleader remained fresh and 
 potent. 
 
 (3) Another source of reward is the grati- 
 tude of the scholars. Ask people in a public 
 meeting what influence they consider was 
 the most potent in leading them to Christ, 
 and the meeting will not progress far before 
 some one will arise to bless the name and 
 memory of a faithful Sunday-school teacher. 
 It is well for the teacher to be aware of this 
 appreciation, for it nerves the arm and quick- 
 
 • " Teaching and Teachers," p. 254. 
 
The Teacher's Task, and Reward 85 
 
 ens the pulse to know that your devotion 
 will not be forgotten. 
 
 A mother came to the teacher of her little 
 boy and said : " John was playing on the 
 floor this afternoon, and all at once he 
 stopped and watched me, and then said : 
 ' Mama, I wish you were as much like Jesus 
 as my teacher is.' " ^ 
 
 You have seen the sun moving on in his 
 meridian strength, whispering to the seeds, 
 and summoningnature to an abundant harvest, 
 and bathing the world in splendour ; but there 
 is no light on land or sea like the glow that 
 beams in the face of one you have blessed 
 and cheered. You have seen emerald jewels 
 from the sea, and sparkling diamonds that 
 flashed on the neck of beauty, but you never 
 saw any jewels half so rich and rare as the 
 tear-jewels of gratitude that trickled down 
 the cheeks of those you led in the way of 
 peace. You have seen flowers fresh with the 
 breath of summer and wet with the dews of 
 morn, but you never saw any flowers so 
 beautiful as the roses that bloomed upon the 
 cheeks of orphans you made sing for joy. 
 Gratitude is a part of the reward of the 
 teacher. 
 
 1 Antoinette AbernethJ^ Lamoreaux, " The Unfolding Life," 
 P- 94- 
 
86 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Real service to the world is receiving 
 recognition as never before. The ancients 
 may deify the man who could turn a river 
 out of its course or slay a hydra-headed 
 monster ; Greece may crown the wrestler 
 and the charioteer ; old-time chivalry may 
 laurel the grim ruler who could enslave an 
 empire ; but we are coming to honour people 
 who serve humanityc For almost one hun- 
 dred years Napoleon has stood first in the 
 lists of the honoured of France, but recently 
 a new list of noble Frenchmen was made, 
 and Pasteur was at the top. We honour the 
 artist who gives us a beautiful and suggestive 
 picture, rather than an Alexander who rears 
 new dynasties amid the fragments of oriental 
 empires. We laud the sculptor who sum- 
 mons the angel from the block of marble, 
 rather than the man who crushes his foes by 
 force of arms. We praise the man who sings 
 the songs of freedom, rather than a Hannibal 
 who scales the Alps and rushes down their 
 icy slopes to knock at the gates of Rome. 
 We exalt the man who heralds a great reform 
 and quenches with his shield of faith the iire- 
 tipped darts of opposition, rather than a 
 Napoleon who rocks thrones and empires. 
 And we do well to honour the teachers who 
 allow large drafts upon mind and heart for 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 87 
 
 the welfare of others, and whom the Jews 
 two thousand years ago called : " the true 
 guardians of the city." 
 
 (4) But more than the rewards already 
 enumerated is the reward of divine approval. 
 The measure of your service is the measure 
 of your reward. Better be the humblest 
 worker in the vineyard of humanity than the 
 most magnetic leader who cares naught for 
 the happiness of mankind. Better be a 
 Dorcas labouring with needle and thread to 
 clothe the orphans and the poor, than the 
 richest queen whose heart is far removed 
 from sympathy and tears. Better be a 
 Florence Nightingale ministering to the sick, 
 than a golden-mouthed orator whose words 
 blast rather than brighten the eternal hopes 
 of man. Better be a Shaftesbury sheltering 
 the outcast waifs, or a Ruskin with your 
 heart upon the altar of humanity, than an 
 absolute king upon a throne of gold. Better 
 dry the tears of sorrow, hush the cry of pain, 
 and lessen the miseries of mankind than 
 wield a rod of iron. Better be a humble 
 teacher in the Sunday-school training the 
 tendrils of the heart to twine about God and 
 our redeeming Lord, than cause thrones to 
 collapse by the waving of a selfish sceptre. 
 
 The divine Master said : '* He that would 
 
88 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 be greatest, let him be servant of all." In 
 the light of this dictum, Moses is greater than 
 Pharaoh, Elijah than Ahab, John the Baptist 
 than Herod, Paul than Nero, Savonarola 
 than Lorenzo, Jenner than George III, Lin- 
 coln than Rothschild, and Christ the servant 
 than Croesus the king. 
 
 Selfishness shrivels the soul. This is God's 
 law. A few years ago the writer visited the 
 ruins of Pompeii. In the museum close by 
 are many bodies that have been taken from 
 the ruins of the buried city. One skeleton 
 was found with the fingers clutched about a 
 quantity of gold. Think of the madness of 
 the man trusting in gold on that awful day, 
 when the light melted out of the sky, when 
 deep and massy clouds hung over Vesuvius, 
 when fiend-like flames leaped from the vol- 
 cano's crater, when the gloomy caverns 
 groaned, when the rumbling sounds echoed 
 in the hidden clefts of the rock, when vege- 
 tation shrivelled under the consuming breath 
 of heated, foul and vaporous air, when the 
 agents of terror and death were omnipresent, 
 when hope perished and despair revelled and 
 reigned, when the mountain, roused like a 
 giant from the sleep of years, rocked, and 
 quivered, and reeled, when fiery cataracts and 
 demon floods leaped onward, when avalanches 
 
The Teacher's Task and Reward 89 
 
 of fire steamed, and smoked, and writhed, 
 and went hissing into the sea, and the groan- 
 ing waves rolled back their lava-scorched 
 lips, when all the horrors of ghastly night, 
 and of more ghastly death rushed on the 
 noon, yet even then, this man in his madness 
 trusted in glittering gold, gone mad over 
 money, insane through selfishness. 
 
 There is a gentle voice that calls a man 
 away from a life of selfishness to a life of 
 service. That voice often comes as gently 
 as the raindrops fall upon a summer sea, as 
 softly as the light kisses the petals of the rose. 
 It calls the heart out in new aspirations and 
 aims as gently as nature summons the flower 
 from the seed, or the oak from its acorn cup. 
 This appeal for one to enter the life of help- 
 fulness and service acts as gently as the sun- 
 beam falls upon the iceberg's frozen heart, 
 as deftly as gravitation acts on matter. Man 
 in his selfishness is chained to the earth, he 
 is fettered to a poor, narrow, grovelling life. 
 But this call to service summons man to a 
 higher place of outlook, to a grander view of 
 life and of the world. If he heeds the call, 
 his eye will flash with new fire. With new 
 pinions of hope and faith he will mount to a 
 higher sphere and to a freer realm. The 
 chains that once fettered him to the sordid, 
 
90 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 selfish life will be shattered, and he will rise 
 to a clearer vision of the mountain peaks of 
 eternal truth. Happy, thrice happy the 
 person whom God deems worthy to be called 
 to service in the Sunday-school. 
 
 England has her Westminster Abbey, 
 where many of her sons of fame are buried. 
 The United States has her Hall of Fame. 
 And we must not forget that God has His 
 list of immortals, of whom He says : " And 
 the teachers ^ shall shine as the brightness of 
 the firmament, and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as the stars forever and ever." 
 
 • Daniel xii. 3, marginal reading. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SCHOLAR WE TEACH 
 
" And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord ; and great 
 shall be the peace of thy children." — Isaiah. 
 
 " For me increasingly the call of the child is the call of the 
 ascended Christ to my heart." — G. Campbell Morgan. 
 
 " There are some of us eighty years old, who were made dis- 
 ciples to Christ in our childhood." — Justin liJartyr. 
 
 " The Church of Christ will be wise when it takes every rep- 
 resentative of the new generation at the rating which our work 
 gives him, confirms his native faith, tells him that now he must 
 in childish ways do the will of the blessed Master, and leads 
 him on and up until the impulsive outgoings of the young heart 
 are changed into deliberate convictions, and fixed purposes to 
 belong to Christ forever and forever," — Bishop Hughes. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Scholar We Teach 
 
 LIFE begins with the sweet dawn of 
 babyhood. Soon the eyes look out 
 in wonderment. The hand is out- 
 stretched to grasp the unknown. The babe 
 is a bundle of wonders ; it is a gem celestial. 
 What coils of strength, what potentiality are 
 infolded there ! What mental majesty, what 
 moral beauty, what spiritual glory are the 
 possible issues of this flash of life from God 1 
 Tennyson sings : ^ 
 
 " The baby new to earth and sky, 
 
 What time his tender palm is prest 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought that * this is I ' : 
 
 *♦ But as he grows he gathers much. 
 
 And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me,' 
 And finds ' I am not what I see, 
 And other than the things I touch.' 
 
 " So rounds he to a separate mind 
 
 From whence clear memory may begin, 
 As through the frame that binds him in 
 His isolation grows defined." 
 
 1 " In Memoriam," Section XLV. 
 93 
 
94 1 he Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 The problem that interests both church 
 and state is the problem of the child. The 
 church that cares best for the children will 
 be, and ought to be, the church of the future. 
 The child is rightly called "the battle-ground 
 of the kingdom." The infinite sacredness of 
 childhood must be profoundly impressed 
 upon us. When a teacher approaches a 
 child he draws nigh " the holiest temple of 
 God." 
 
 We sing of the children : 
 
 " Fresh from the kingdom of heaven 
 Into this earth-hfe they come 
 Not to abide ; we must guide them 
 Back to the heavenly home." 
 
 Victor Hugo said: "The sublimest song to 
 be heard on earth is the lisping of the human 
 soul on the lips of children." The English 
 bard sings : " Heaven lies about us in our 
 infancy," 
 
 Men tell us that if we want to take the 
 world for Christ, we must spend our mission- 
 ary money and efforts upon the dominant 
 and conquering races. If there be any wis- 
 dom in that sentiment, then much more 
 readily should we see the wisdom in the 
 Church spending her energy upon the young 
 who will be leaders and moulders of society 
 
The Scholar We Teach 95 
 
 to-morrow. Charles E. Jefferson says : ' ' With 
 all her follies and crimson stains, Rome goes 
 on her conquering way because she knows 
 the value of a child." 
 
 Christianity alone, of all the religions of 
 the earth, glorifies childhood. Ruskin called 
 attention to the fact that there are no chil- 
 dren in Greek art, but whoever has looked 
 upon the masterpieces of Christian art knows 
 how childhood is honoured and glorified. 
 Jesus put a child in the midst, and the church 
 that would take the world must keep that 
 little child where Jesus put him. Cardinal 
 Manning said : " Give me the children and 
 England shall be Catholic in twenty years." 
 Let the Church train and nurture the children 
 and she will find her shortest and surest way 
 to the redemption of the world. The child 
 is the key to the problem of world evangeli- 
 zation. Childhood is the strategic time in 
 which to win trophies for the King. And 
 when we earnestly seek the children for the 
 Saviour we are very near to the spirit of 
 Christ as revealed in His attitude towards 
 the children. 
 
 Childhood is susceptible to the appeal of 
 the Saviour's love. You say: "The child 
 cannot understand the plan of salvation ; I do 
 not believe in child-religion." We reply in 
 
96 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 the words of A. H. McKinney : " I would 
 rather try to teach subHme reHgious truths 
 to a child of six than to an adult of forty- 
 six." ^ The child's heart has not been hard- 
 ened by disobedience ; its conscience has not 
 been seared by sin. We may be reminded 
 of the words of Dr. Edward Judson : "It is 
 sometimes said that even a child can be con- 
 verted ; it should be said that even a grown 
 person can be. The nearer the cradle, as 
 a rule, the nearer Christ." ^ How urgent 
 the Bible is concerning the religious nurture 
 of the young ! "Train up a child in the way 
 he should go." ^ " Bring them (the children) 
 up in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord."* "Feed My lambs."' Does the 
 Church heed these words adequately? Spur- 
 geon said there were certain preachers who 
 acted as if the Lord had not said : " Feed My 
 lambs," but : " Feed My girafTes," because 
 they put the food so high up that the lambs 
 could not get near it. 
 
 The child should be taught from infancy 
 that he belongs to God, not to Satan. What 
 blighting heresy to teach him that he must 
 
 '"The Teacher, the Child and the Book," p. 158. 
 •Quoted by Pattison in " Ministry of the Sunday-school," 
 p. 36. 
 
 'Prov. xxii, 6. *Eph. vi. 4. 'John xxi. 15. 
 
The Scholar We Teach 97 
 
 serve an apprenticeship under the tutelage of 
 the devil before he can be God's child ! The 
 Prodigal Son did not take the best course 
 when he went into riot, and degradation, and 
 shame, and close to the brink of ruin before 
 he came into filial and obedient relationship 
 with his father. Bushnell well asks : " Who 
 can think it necessary that the plastic nature 
 of childhood must first be hardened into 
 stone, and stiffened into enmity towards God 
 and all duty, before it can become a candi- 
 date for Christian character ? " ^ You ask : 
 " What becomes of the doctrine of the neces- 
 sity of the new birth ? " What we have said 
 does not deny the necessity of regeneration. 
 But we must remember that the " initiating 
 touch of grace " may be given very early. 
 The earlier the moral choice is made for 
 Christ the better, and why should not the 
 child be led " in his Jirsf moral act to cleave 
 to what is good and right" as well as in any 
 later act ? Why not most urgently seek to 
 have the child choose Christ from the very 
 dawn of moral choice, rather than at some later 
 hour in life's day ? Bishop McCabe was con- 
 verted at the age of eight, and Matthew 
 Henry at seven. None of us can remember 
 when we learned the alphabet, but we know 
 
 1" Chiistian Nurture," p. 22. 
 
98 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 that we learned it some time. So there are 
 those who do not recall when they first re- 
 sponded to the wooing of God's Spirit; it is 
 back beyond the field of memory. 
 
 When a child is trained from infancy for 
 God there will likely come early a deliberate 
 and fixed purpose to be Christ's follower for- 
 ever. As G. Campbell Morgan says : ** There 
 will come a moment, known as adolescence, 
 when will begins to work ; and the child will 
 say, yes, I am His, and then, sweet and 
 gentle as the kiss of the morning on the hill, 
 as the distilling of the dew on the herb, the 
 child will pass into personal relations with 
 Jesus Christ." ^ 
 
 In conference love-feasts Bishop Foster 
 gave as his testimony : " I know nothing 
 about conversion experimentally in the tech- 
 nical sense of that term. As far back as 
 memory goes I remember loving the Saviour 
 and of having the sweet, childish conscious- 
 ness that the Saviour loved me." Jesus in- 
 dicates that childhood is the time to come to 
 Him when He says : " Suffer little children, 
 and forbid them not, to come unto Me ; for 
 of such is the kingdom of heaven." ^ And 
 long before Jesus said this, it was written : 
 
 * From address on " The Claim of the Child." 
 ' Matt. xix. 14. 
 
The Scholar We Teach 99 
 
 " Remember now thy Creator in the days of 
 thy youth." ^ God called Samuel when a 
 child.^ Josiah was but a youth when he be- 
 gan to seek after the God of David his 
 father.^ 
 
 Dr. A. F, Shauffler * tells of a minister, who 
 upon hearing the scholars of the primary 
 class called " the little lambs," said : " Don't 
 call them little lambs ; call them little wolves." 
 Dr. Schauffler goes on to say : " Was he 
 right or was he wrong ? It rather jars upon 
 our conventional conception of these little 
 ones. Are they lambs or are they wolves ? 
 This much is certain : All the wolves of to- 
 day were once little children. All the jail- 
 house occupants of to-day were once prattling 
 little ones. This much is also certain : All 
 the great saints of to-day were once primary 
 scholars. Wolves, or lambs, are they ? 
 Neither exactly. Possible wolves ? Yes. 
 Possible lambs ? Yes. There is the poten- 
 tiality of the wolf in the child, and there is 
 the potentiality of the lamb in the child. 
 There is a possible demon in the child, and 
 there is a possible saint in the child. So 
 that when we face the little ones as well as 
 the older ones, we are facing boundless pos- 
 
 1 Eccl. xii. I. 2 1 Sam. iii. 19. s 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3. 
 
 * " Pastoral Leadership of Sunday-school Forces," p. 94. 
 
100 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 sibilities upward and boundless possibilities 
 downward." " The soul waits at the point 
 of its magnificent infancy, to be led into the 
 choices, tastes, affinities, and habits that are 
 to be the character of its eternity." ^ 
 
 Specialists of child psychology, and stu- 
 dents of the nature and phenomena of child 
 life may prove valuable helpers to teachers in 
 our Sunday-schools. 
 
 Haslett ^ divides the life of the individual 
 as follows : 
 
 " I. Infancy — birth to the third year. 
 
 " 2. Childhood — third year to about the 
 twelfth year. 
 
 " 3. Puberty — eleven or twelve to fifteen. 
 
 " 4. Adolescence — about twelve to twenty- 
 five." 
 
 Or again : 
 
 *' I. Body or physical — birth to one and a 
 half or two years. 
 
 " 2. Senses about two to eight or nine. 
 
 " 3. Judgment and memory — eight or 
 nine to about fourteen. 
 
 " 4. Imagination — fourteen to about eight- 
 een. 
 
 "5. Reason and volition — eighteen to 
 about thirty or later. 
 
 1 Bushnell, " Christian Nurture," p. 72. 
 *" Pedagogical Bible-school," p. 94. 
 
The Scholar We Teach loi 
 
 " 6. Reflection and sentiments — thirty to 
 about sixty-five. 
 
 " 7. Reminiscence — sixty-five and later." 
 
 During the first five or six years the life 
 of the child is especially self-centred. In 
 this period the child thinks only of its own 
 pleasures and pains. One amazing thing to 
 the writer is how a certain little sister cares 
 so little for a brother when he is in trouble. 
 Her doll and her doll's clothes are of more 
 concern than her little brother's distress. 
 
 From five or six to eleven or twelve the 
 social element becomes a factor. Boys and 
 girls play together. The thought of self as 
 the centre abides, but not so prominently as 
 before. Curiosity is aroused and the mind 
 teems with questions. The child is imitative 
 now and submissive, and the habits of rever- 
 ence, prayer and worship can be established. 
 
 In these years the contents of a boy's 
 pockets reveal an amazing variety of objects. 
 His hair shows the marks of a comb only in 
 front. On his wrists is seen "the rim of 
 high water mark." The sheets of his bed 
 tell too often that he crept into bed with un- 
 washed feet. He slams the door, kicks the 
 table, walks in the mud and water, rather 
 than on the sidewalk, and his mother by a 
 narrow margin escapes nervous prostration. 
 
102 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 But we are still more interested in the 
 period of adolescence which extends from 
 about twelve to twenty-five with boys, and 
 from about eleven to twenty-two with girls. 
 This period is sometimes divided as follows : 
 Early adolescence, twelve to sixteen ; middle 
 adolescence, sixteen to eighteen ; later adoles- 
 cence, eighteen to twenty-five. In the early 
 years of this period there is the growth of 
 the physical. The muscles, bones, and heart 
 especially develop. 
 
 In this first period of adolescence the boys 
 are awkward and crude. They laugh boister- 
 ously, and talk loudly. Blood and thunder 
 are in their conversation. Team games, as 
 baseball, football, and tug-of-war enlist their 
 interest. The group is larger than the indi- 
 vidual, and the boy will work for the good 
 of the team. The girls are bashful and 
 sensitive. They are apt to giggle on slight 
 provocation. Though little more than a 
 child you must not designate one in early 
 adolescence as a "child." Better not call a 
 boy of this age a " kid " if you want to re- 
 tain your grip upon him. " Any attempt," 
 says one, " to treat a child at adolescence 
 as an inferior is instantly fatal to good 
 discipline." Criticism crushes, and en- 
 couragement inspires. Great loss comes to 
 
The Scholar We Teach 103 
 
 the Church and Sunday-school in these 
 years. 
 
 In the earlier years of adolescence the 
 sexes fly apart. The boys are called " hor- 
 rid " and the girls are called " sissy." A 
 little later the boys seek the company of 
 the girls. Charlie waits for Annie to see 
 her home. 
 
 Boys are said to be most susceptible to 
 influence for good or evil from twelve to 
 nineteen, with the climax at sixteen ; girls 
 are most susceptible from eleven to seven- 
 teen, with the climax at fourteen. One 
 student has found that the greatest number 
 of spiritual awakenings and commitments 
 to the Christian life came from twelve to 
 sixteen. 
 
 These years of adolescence are among the 
 most potential of life. There are no other 
 years fraught with such fateful destiny. This 
 period has been called " the holy place of 
 opportunity " for the parent and for the 
 teacher. The fact that crucial choices are 
 made very often that determine character for 
 eternity gives gravity to the delicate task of 
 parents and teacher. Happy is the guide 
 who is in close intimacy with the child and 
 has the child's sacred confidence when life's 
 crisis is at hand. 
 
104 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 The tables of immortality prepared by 
 Starbuck, Coe, Gulick and others ought to 
 work conviction in our hearts concerning 
 early conversion. What solemn truth they 
 bring us ! Professor Starbuck found that of 
 526 officers of the Young Men's Christian 
 Associations in the United States and the 
 British Provinces the average age of con- 
 version was about sixteen and five-tenths 
 years.^ 
 
 Out of 254 men he found that eighty-three 
 per cent, were converted between the ages 
 of ten and twenty, distributed as follows : 
 three per cent, at the age of ten, three per 
 cent, at the age of eleven, five per cent, at 
 the age of twelve, four per cent, at the age 
 of thirteen, nine per cent, at the age of four- 
 teen, twelve per cent, at the age of fifteen, 
 thirteen per cent, at the age of sixteen, eleven 
 per cent, at the age of seventeen, ten per 
 cent, at the age of eighteen, nine per cent, at 
 the age of nineteen, and four per cent, at the 
 age of twenty.^ 
 
 Professor Coe's study of the 272 members 
 of the Rock River Conference reveals that 
 the average age of conversion was sixteen 
 and five-tenths years. He gives the average 
 
 • Quoted by Professor Coe in the " Spiritual Life," p. 40, 
 ' " The Psychology of Religion," p. 29. 
 
The Scholar We Teach 105 
 
 age of conversion of 1,784 men as sixteen and 
 four-tenths years. ^ 
 
 Dr. A. B. Van Ormer who had access to 
 the obituary notices for the Christia7i Advo- 
 cate of New York sa)^s : "There were 2,276 
 available memoirs of men and 2,542 of 
 women. The memoirs cover all the decades 
 of the nineteenth century, with the varying 
 conditions of religious interest that occurred 
 during the century. . . . More than twelve 
 per cent, of all the spiritual awakenings of men 
 occurred before or at twelve years of age ; 
 of women more than sixteen per cent, oc- 
 curred before or at twelve years of age. In 
 the favourable home influence cases more 
 than twenty-one per cent, of the men made 
 their public confession before or at twelve 
 years of age ; of the women more than thirty- 
 seven per cent." ^ 
 
 Marion Lawrance asserts that probably 
 over ninety per cent, of the conversions 
 occur prior to the eighteenth year.^ Any 
 teacher may well tremble when he sees a 
 scholar slip out of the teens without becom- 
 ing a Christian. 
 
 Starbuck says: "Conversion does not oc- 
 
 * " The Spiritual Life," pp. 43, 45. 
 
 ' Address : " The Age of Spiritual Awakening." 
 
 "General Report, 1908, International Convention. 
 
lo6 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 cur with the same frequency at all periods of 
 life. It belongs almost exclusively to years 
 between ten and twenty-five. The numbsr of 
 instances outside that range appear few and 
 scattered. That is, conversion is a distinct- 
 ively adolescent phenomenon. It is a singu- 
 lar fact also that within this period (the 
 adolescent) the conversions do not distribute 
 themselves equally among the years. In the 
 rough, we may say they begin to occur at 
 seven or eight years, and increase in number 
 gradually to ten or eleven, and then rapidly 
 to sixteen ; rapidly decline to twenty, and 
 gradually fall away after that, and become 
 rare after thirty. One may say that if con- 
 version has not occurred before twenty, the 
 chances are small that it will ever be ex- 
 perienced." ^ 
 
 Surely these facts furnish a great lesson 
 concerning the vast importance of early 
 training in the home and in the Sunday- 
 school. 
 
 What shall we do concerning children and 
 church-membership ? We believe Wesley 
 was right when he gave all baptized children 
 a probationary membership in the church. 
 This gives them an intimate relation to the 
 organic body. We do not mean that boys 
 
 1 " The Psychology of Religion," p. 28. 
 
The Scholar We Teach 107 
 
 and girls are to be taken promiscuously into 
 full membership. Great care must be ex- 
 ercised. Prayer, patience, and persistence 
 are needed in the training of these prospective 
 church-members. If we could only get what 
 has been called the ** triple alliance " of par- 
 ents, Bible-school teacher, and secular in- 
 structor, to work in harmony for the moral 
 and religious development of the boys and 
 girls, they would in most cases be worthy 
 candidates for church-membership. 
 
 There is an old story told of a Scotch elder 
 who was considerably aroused because his 
 pastor habitually declined to receive children 
 into church-membership. One day he in- 
 vited the minister to go with him and see 
 the sheep put in the fold for the night. The 
 elder stood at the entrance to the fold and 
 allowed the sheep to enter, but whenever a 
 lamb came he pushed it back with a heavy 
 stick. After a while the pastor exclaimed : 
 " What are you doing to the lambs ? They 
 need the shelter far more than the sheep 1 " 
 "Just what you are doing to the children," 
 was the instant reply. We may add these 
 words : " What is the use of a fold, if the 
 lambs are to be kept outside till it is seen 
 whether they can stand the w^eather ? " ^ 
 
 ^Bushnell, "Christian Nurture," p. 309. 
 
lo8 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 A farmer was asked how he came to have 
 such a fine flock of sheep. His answer was : 
 " I take care of the lambs." It is better to 
 keep health than to get cured after you are 
 sick. It is better to train a boy to be honest 
 than to cure a thief. It is better to train a 
 boy to be truthful than to reform a liar. It 
 is better to train a boy to be brave than to 
 reform a coward. It is better to train a boy 
 to love God and his playmates than to 
 change the heart of a moral rebel. For 
 thirty years Robert Raikes sought the reform 
 of the criminals of the jail, but finally con- 
 cluded that "prevention must be not only 
 better but also likelier than cure." As Gypsy 
 Smith says : "A fence at the top of a prec- 
 ipice is better than a hospital at the bottom." 
 
 Henry Drummond calls attention to an 
 old poem which bears the curious title : 
 "Strife in Heaven." The thought is as 
 follows : 
 
 " The poet supposes himself to be walking 
 in the streets of the New Jerusalem, when he 
 comes to a crowd of saints engaged in a 
 very earnest discussion. He draws near, 
 and listens. The question they are discuss- 
 ing is, which of them is the greatest monu- 
 ment of God's saving grace. After a long 
 debate, in which each states his case sep- 
 
The Scholar We Teach 109 
 
 arately, and each claims to have been far the 
 most wonderful trophy of God's love in all 
 the multitude of the redeemed, it is finally 
 agreed to settle the matter by a vote. Vote 
 after vote is taken, and the list of competi- 
 tion is gradually reduced until only two re- 
 main. These are allowed to state their case 
 again, and the company stand ready to join 
 in the final vote. The first to speak is a 
 very old man. He begins by saying that it 
 is a mere waste of time to go any further ; it 
 is absolutely impossible that God's grace 
 could have done more for any man in 
 heaven than for him. He tells how he 
 had led a most wicked and vicious life — 
 a life filled up with every conceivable in- 
 dulgence, and marred with every crime. He 
 has been a thief, a liar, a blasphemer, a 
 drunkard, and a murderer. On his death- 
 bed, at the eleventh hour, Christ came to 
 him and he was forgiven. 
 
 *' The other is also an old man who says, 
 in a few words, that he was brought to Christ 
 when he was a boy. He had led a quiet and 
 uneventful life, and had looked forward to 
 heaven as early as he could remember. 
 
 " The vote is taken ; and, of course, you 
 would say it results in favour of the first. 
 But no, the votes are all given to the last. 
 
1 lo The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 We might have thought, perhaps, that the 
 one who led the reckless, godless life — he 
 who had lied, thieved, blasphemed, mur- 
 dered ; he who was saved by the skin of his 
 teeth, just a moment before it might have 
 been too late — had the most to thank God 
 for. But the old poet knew the deeper truth. 
 It required great grace verily to pluck 
 that old brand from the burning. It re- 
 quired depths, absolutely fathomless, depths 
 of mercy to forgive that veteran in sin at 
 the close of all these guilty years. But it 
 required more grace to keep that other life 
 from guilt through all these tempted years. 
 It required more grace to save him from the 
 sins of his youth, and keep his Christian boy- 
 hood pure, to steer him scathless through 
 the tempted years of riper manhood, to crown 
 his days with usefulness, and his old age with 
 patience and hope. Both started in life to- 
 gether ; to the one grace came at the end, to 
 the other at the beginning. The first was 
 saved from the guilt of sin, the second from 
 the poivcr of sin as well. The first was saved 
 from dying in sin. But he who became a 
 Christian in his boyhood was saved from liv- 
 ing in sin. The one required just one great 
 act of love at the close of life, the other had 
 a life full of love, — it was a greater salvation 
 
The Scholar We Teach 1 1 1 
 
 far. His soul was forgiven like the other, 
 but his life was redeemed from destruction." ^ 
 
 The world is out of tune, and much of the 
 trouble can be traced to the lack of training, 
 or wrong training, in youth. What a scene 
 of horror greets us as we turn our gaze upon 
 life 1 Envy gnawing away with its tooth 
 of spite ; infernal conspiracies concocting 
 schemes of iniquity ; schools of scandal fur- 
 nishing their finished graduates ; purlieus of 
 shame sending forth their fumes of death 
 minds burning up with unhallowed fires 
 " hearts feebly fluttering in the toils of fate " 
 pathetic waifs of dismantled lives whose 
 " blossom is going up like dust " ; rancorous 
 hatred festering like cancers of infamy ; cor- 
 ruption, incest, and vice bringing forth their 
 heritage of woe ; bigotry, greed, and passion 
 polluting human nature, enslaving man's no- 
 blest impulses, filching away his manhood, 
 dehumanizing his heart, and casting their 
 winding sheet of death about him ; drunken 
 brawls, midnight murders, pistol-shots that 
 tell of the shattered brains, all reiterate the 
 thought of misguidance in youth and life. 
 
 When Robert Moffat was brought into the 
 Church the people said : " Only a boy^ But 
 that boy opened up new provinces to the 
 
 * Henry Drummond, " The Ideal Life," pp. 153-155. 
 
1 1 2 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Gospel, gave a translated Bible to savage 
 tribes and brought African chiefs to the feet 
 of Christ. With wisdom it is said : "A man 
 converted at sixty is a soul saved plus ten 
 years of service ; a child saved at ten is a 
 soul saved plus sixty years of service." In 
 the children are the future saints, apostles, 
 and prophets of the kingdom. Jesus knew 
 the possibilities of fishermen. Beneath the 
 rough, blustering exterior of the fisherman, 
 Peter, Jesus saw an apostle. Under the coarse 
 outer garb of John, Jesus recognized the 
 possibilities of a seraphic soul, who by his 
 Gospel would lift the world close to the heart 
 of God. And when the Sunday-school 
 teacher faces children he faces wonderful 
 possibilities. 
 
 W. L. Watkinson quotes George Dawson 
 as saying : " I should have been proud to 
 have held the spy-glass for Columbus, to have 
 picked up his fallen brush for Michelangelo, 
 to have carried Milton's bag, to have blacked 
 Shakespeare's boots, or to have blown the 
 bellows for Handel." If such trivial service 
 to the great is to be coveted, what shall we 
 say, oh, teacher, of thy crown of privilege, of 
 thy golden opportunity to mould a young 
 life, to give impulse and inspiration to an 
 immortal spirit? 
 
The Scholar We Teach 1 13 
 
 We are told that "all that is wanted to 
 create a new star is a start. There is a vast 
 floating nebulae. If it will only cohere at 
 some little point, then the body will begin to 
 form and presently you will have a star. All 
 that you want is the point of contact, the co- 
 hering point, then the new life will begin to 
 grow, and the new soul will begin to root." ^ 
 Happy is that teacher who can get the child 
 early in life to recognize that its growth of 
 soul must come through contact with, and 
 rootage in, Christ. 
 
 Guiding angels and directing demons are 
 ready to conduct the child as he stands at 
 the threshold of moral choices. The teacher 
 must help him to interpret life. He must 
 enable him to see what Browning saw, that : 
 
 " This world's no blot for us 
 Nor blank, it means intensely and it means good : 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 
 
 The teacher deals with the sensitive child 
 heart. The waves of the ocean answer the 
 summons of the moon, and the tides proclaim 
 with what authority the mistress of the night 
 speaks. Iron filings respond to the call of 
 the magnet and reveal the subtle influence of 
 the electric current. Bursting bud and open- 
 
 • W, J. Dawson, in Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 
 
114 T^^ Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 ing flower tell us how nature obeys the 
 whisper of spring. Scales are so delicately 
 adjusted that even the warmth of a human 
 body will cause the arm of the balance to 
 turn. But more susceptible still to influence 
 is the heart of a child. No wonder the Bible 
 says that we must not " despise," nor " of- 
 fend," nor hinder these little ones. "You 
 must keep holy the being of the little child. 
 Protect it from every rough and rude impres- 
 sion, every touch of the vulgar ; a touch, a 
 look, a sound, is often sufficient to inflict 
 savage wounds. A child's soul is more 
 tender and vulnerable than the finest or ten- 
 derest plant." ^ How delicate then is the 
 teacher's task ! He is no small factor in 
 many a life. Dr. Schauffler tells of a girl 
 who was joining the church and was asked : 
 •• What led you to Christ ? " Her reply was : 
 '* First I loved my teacher, and then I loved 
 my teacher's Bible, and then I loved my 
 teacher's Saviour." 
 
 Sublime patience is needed in developing 
 the inner life of the child. Sir Robert Ball 
 tells how the light that comes from some 
 stars is so slight that it does not affect the 
 optic nerve. But a photographic plate ex- 
 posed for hours can detect this light. The 
 
 • Froebel, 
 
Th€ Scholar We Teach 1 15 
 
 long exposure gives the faint and invisible 
 beams a chance to make an impression. 
 Our snap-shot glances at God's eternal truth 
 do not give time for an impression. And 
 in the teaching of the young time is an im- 
 portant factor. It takes time to grow a tree. 
 A decade sweeps away, and a redwood tree 
 of California is only a tiny sapling ; a century 
 hurries into eternity, and it is still far from 
 maturity ; a thousand years pass by, and it 
 has not yet come to the zenith of its power. 
 In the Calavera forests there are trees esti- 
 mated to be six thousand years old. In the 
 antediluvian age they sent their roots into 
 the earth and lifted their heads to catch the 
 dews of heaven. Through the centuries they 
 have wrestled with the storms and packed 
 their fibre with strength. Thus a hundred 
 generations of men have come and gone 
 while these forest monarchs have come to 
 gianthood. The teacher must be patient, 
 and learn to labour, and to trust, and to wait 
 while boys and girls grow into spiritual gran- 
 deur and into sainthood. 
 
 When we remember that experience, 
 science, and history teach that character 
 tends to permanence as the years pass, the 
 work of the teacher becomes supremely 
 sacred and solemn. To help start a soul in 
 
1 1 6 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 the right direction is a subHme task. Wat- 
 kinson reminds us that " when the trees in 
 the spring time are nipped by the frost they 
 may recover, but they never quite recover ; 
 all the summer long the scarred leaves tell of 
 their early misfortune. It is much like this 
 with human character. A life blighted in its 
 spring misses a certain glow in its summer, 
 a certain ripeness in its autumn." ^ 
 
 In the child the gravitation of the soul is 
 Godward. The young heart leaps eagerly 
 towards the celestial. The damning power 
 of sin is seen in the fact that this attraction 
 becomes less and less as the life remains 
 apart from Christ. Woe be to him for whom 
 perdition attracts more than heaven ! We 
 must save the children. We must keep them 
 facing heavenward. 
 
 ** One ship goes East, another West 
 By the selfsame winds that blow, 
 'Tis the set of the sail and not the gale 
 That determines the way they go. 
 Like the winds of the sea are the ways of Fate 
 As we voyage along through life, 
 'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal, 
 And not the calm or the strife." 
 
 Soul training is the divinest art. If Angelo 
 could spend eighty years with sublime en- 
 thusiasm to represent the beauty of the 
 
 " Beginnings of the Christian Life," p. I2. 
 
The Scholar We Teach 117 
 
 human form in marble ; if Raphael could 
 have his heart on fire as he sought to put 
 upon the canvas the images that burned in 
 his brain ; if the student of nature has a 
 heart that grows hot as he examines the 
 flower, smites the rock, or gazes at the star, 
 then he who deals with immortal spirits that 
 are the opening flowers in God's great gar- 
 den, may have a heart that melts in mercy, 
 glows with enthusiasm, and yearns for the 
 salvation of those under his care. Farrar 
 says : " If we work upon marble, it will 
 perish ; if we work upon stone, it will 
 crumble to dust; but if we take a child and 
 train it well, we carve a monument which 
 time can never efface." 
 
 It is splendid work to guide the iron 
 monster that has the giant steam pulsing in 
 its heart ; it is a worthy achievement to be 
 able to safely direct the proud leviathan of 
 the deep as she plows her w^ay through the 
 heaving main ; but grander still is the ac- 
 complishment of the Sunday-school teacher 
 who can safely direct the life-craft of an im- 
 mortal spirit so that it shall miss every 
 Scylla and Charybdis of temptation, every 
 hidden reef and rock, mount every wave, 
 weather every gale, and sail safely into the 
 harbour of eternity. 
 
1 1 8 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 We are not surprised when the Jewish 
 Talmud says : " He who teaches the child of 
 his fellow man shall occupy a prominent 
 place among the saints above." No man 
 can measure the value of a child. 
 
 Newton N. Riddell gives the following 
 incident : " One of the first families of New 
 York City were taking their vacation in the 
 Adirondack Mountains. One night their 
 little baby coughed a little croupy cough ; 
 this woke mama and thrilled her with fear ; 
 then father was disturbed ; a messenger was 
 sent to the nearest station ; a croup specialist 
 of New York was called by wire ; a special 
 train was ordered out ; the regular trains on 
 the New York Central were side-tracked ; 
 the United States mails were delayed ; a 
 wreck was caused on the freight lines; a 
 couple who were to sail for Europe missed 
 their steamer and thereby lost the fortune 
 that awaited them ; two United States 
 Senators were late arriving in Washington ; 
 and a bill was lost in the Senate which 
 afiected the whole commercial world. My I 
 what a disturbance for one croupy child to 
 make ! " ^ This hints of the estimate those 
 parents placed upon their child. 
 
 Celestial mathematics must be employed 
 
 *'< Immanuel," p. 194. 
 
The Scholar We Teach 1 19 
 
 to determine the child's soul-worth. Man's 
 measuring lines are too short to reach the 
 depths of this abyss. Not until you could 
 know the miseries of the lost, all the horrors 
 of a blighted soul, all the pangs of a remorse- 
 ful heart ; not until you could experience all 
 the joys of the just, all the delights of the 
 ransomed, all the raptures of the redeemed ; 
 not until you could compass in your thought 
 the sweep of eternity, and weigh in the bal- 
 ances of your mind the treasures of an 
 infinite God ; not until you could exhaust 
 the meaning of heaven, hell, destiny, im- 
 mortality, and eternity could you estimate 
 the full value of a child. 
 
IV 
 THE BOOK WE TEACH 
 
"We believe that between the 'beginning' in Genesis and 
 the ' Amen ' in Revelation is the remedy for all the troubles of 
 this world, and if we can get the Bible, with all its meaning, 
 into the hearts and the lives of the people, we will solve every 
 problem, social, political, ecclesiastical, and financial that the 
 world has ; and it is our duty and our office to try to bring that 
 about." — John Stiies. 
 
 " To tell what the Bible has been and done for the world 
 would be to rewrite in large part the history of modern civili- 
 zation ; to retell the story of Christian missions, including those 
 which brought the Gospel to our own shores; to extract the 
 finest qualities in much of our best literature ; to lay bare the 
 inner springs of the lives of those who have laboured best and 
 most for the moral and spiritual well-being of their kind." — 
 James Orr. 
 
 " In the Bible there is more that _fi»ds me than I have ex- 
 perienced in all other books put together ; the words of the 
 Bible find me at greater depths of my being ; and whatever 
 finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having 
 proceeded from the Holy Spirit." — Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 
IV 
 
 The Book We Teach 
 
 WORDS enshrine ideas. They link 
 mind with mind ; they are the 
 trades upon which ideas run. A 
 literature treasures up the chief heritage of a 
 people. Hence Lytton said : " There is no 
 Past so long as books shall live." Milton 
 said: "A good book is the precious life-blood 
 of a master spirit embalmed and treasured 
 up on purpose to a life beyond life." yEneas 
 Sage declared that ** books are the true 
 Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead 
 converse." *' Give me a book, health, and a 
 June day," said Emerson, " and I will make 
 the pomp of kings ridiculous." 
 
 By means of books we may march with 
 Alexander as he rears new dynasties amid 
 the wreck of dismantled kingdoms. We 
 may go with Hannibal as he scales the Alps 
 and rushes down their icy slopes into sunny 
 Italy to threaten the Roman dominion. We 
 may go with Columbus until he touches the 
 shores of a new world. We may go with 
 Magellan as he girdles the globe. We may 
 
124 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 go with Hugh Miller among the rocks, and 
 with Newton in his study of the stellar 
 hosts. As Balfour says: "You may enter 
 at your leisure into the intellectual heritage 
 of the centuries " ; and a medieval writer de- 
 clares : " All minds in the world's history 
 find their focus in a library. This is the 
 pinnacle of the temple from which we may 
 see all the kingdoms of the world and the 
 glory of them." 
 
 With the Bible in hand we may go with 
 the author of Genesis as he unrolls the pano- 
 rama of creation, with the prophets in their 
 lofty imagery, with the gospel writers in their 
 portraiture of the Christ, with Paul as he un- 
 folds the philosophy of salvation. We may 
 follow the lead of the Bible as it tells of sin 
 and of a Saviour found, of man lost and of 
 man redeemed, of death as "the wages of 
 sin " and of eternal life as " the gift of God." 
 In this Book we have "the record of the 
 divine education of the race." 
 
 The sunlight stored up in coal has been 
 used to illustrate how truth has been stored 
 up in the Bible. Ages upon ages ago God's 
 sunlight was packed away in the great trees 
 that grew. The trees became carbonated, 
 and now, myriads of years later, we dig up 
 the coal. We place this fuel in our furnaces, 
 
The Book We Teach; 125 
 
 and the stored up sunlight of other days 
 warms us. So in the olden time God spake 
 unto the fathers, and unto the prophets, and 
 unto the apostles, and holy men of God 
 wrote as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost. Their messages are in the Book, 
 and by the help of that Spirit who inspired 
 them the treasured truth glows and lives 
 again. " As God made man and breathed 
 into him the breath of life and he became a 
 living soul, so God made the Scriptures and 
 breathed into them the breath of life, and 
 they became the living Word." 
 
 Heinrich Heine exclaims as he thinks of 
 the Bible : " What a Book ! Vast and wide 
 as the world, rooted in the abysses of Crea- 
 tion, and towering up behind the blue secrets 
 of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and 
 fulfillment, birth and death, the whole drama 
 of humanity, all in this Book 1 " 
 
 Robert Pollock sings : 
 
 *' Most wondrous book ! bright candle of the Lord ! 
 Star of eternity ! the only star 
 By which the bark of man could navigate 
 The sea of life, and gain the coast of bUss 
 Securely." 
 
 Our English word " Bible " is from biblos 
 and biblos was the inner bark of the Egyptian 
 reed, the papyrus plant out of which paper 
 
126 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 was first made. ** Liber," the Latin word for 
 book, was the inner bark of the hnden, or beech 
 tree. Our word " book " is from " beche " 
 (Old English) and has reference to the origin 
 of the paper out of which the book is made. 
 
 The Bible is not one book but sixty-six 
 books. It is an unconscious tribute that we 
 pay to the harmony of the Scriptures when 
 we speak of the sixty-six books as one book. 
 The unity of the Bible seems yet more won- 
 derful when we remember that its composition 
 extended over a period of fifteen hundred 
 years, and that it was written by some forty 
 authors. The writers of this Book are law- 
 givers, kings, prophets, shepherds, herdmen, 
 vine-dressers, fishermen, physicians, and pub- 
 licans. Its contents are history, prophecy, 
 poetry, drama, pastoral letters, fiction, and 
 revelation. 
 
 As a piece of literature the Bible is a won- 
 derful Book, though this is not its chief claim 
 upon our attention. " The apples are gold, 
 but even the basket is silver." " The pearl 
 is of great price ; but even the casket is of 
 exquisite beauty." When Ruskin, the prince 
 among the nineteenth century prose writers, 
 was a boy, his mother made him commit to 
 memory much of the Bible. In later years 
 Ruskin said : '* To that discipline I owe the 
 
The Book We Teach 127 
 
 best part of my taste in literature." When 
 Matthew Arnold was on a voyage from 
 America to England he read much. Some 
 one asked him what book he was reading, 
 and he replied : " The New Testament. I 
 find it the most delightful reading I can get, 
 and its style and merit as a work of literature 
 never cease to please me." 
 
 Lord Macaulay said : " Whoever would 
 acquire a knowledge of pure English must 
 study King James' version of the Scriptures." 
 Thomas Carlyle characterized the book of 
 Job as "one of the greatest things ever 
 written by a pen." Goethe, referring to the 
 book of Ruth, declared : " It is the loveliest 
 thing in the shape of an epic or idyl which 
 has come down to us from the centuries." 
 Max Miiller, the great student of oriental 
 languages, says : " My most delightful hoiy 
 every day is furnished by David. There is 
 nothing in Greece, nothing in Rome, noth- 
 ing in all the west like David." Coleridge 
 calls the book of Ephesians " the divinest 
 composition of man." Literature furnishes 
 no poetry grander than the Psalms, no his- 
 tory more charming than the Gospels and 
 Acts of the Apostles, no fiction to compare 
 with our Lord's parables, no stateliness like 
 the moving majesty of Job and Isaiah. 
 
128 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 In the nature of its themes the Bible sur- 
 passes all other books. It speaks of God, 
 of creation, of providence, of angels, of man, 
 of life, of death, of immortality, of eternity, 
 of destiny, of salvation, of heaven, and of hell. 
 In breadth and sweep of theme it is more 
 vast than any other book, in flight more 
 lofty, in depth more profound. 
 
 The Bible in histojy is a theme worthy of 
 the Sunday-school teacher's attention and 
 study. This Book is wrought into the his- 
 tory of generations. Huxley said : " It is an 
 unquestionable fact that for the last three 
 centuries this Book has been woven into all 
 that is best in English literature and history." 
 Listen to Haydn's ".Creation," and remember 
 that it is the first chapter of Genesis in music. 
 When you hear Handel's "Messiah" with its 
 sublime strains, remember that the Bible was 
 the inspiration of that rapturous hymn. 
 When Handel was told by his Sovereign that 
 the " Messiah " afforded him great pleasure, 
 Handel said to the Emperor : " Your Majesty, 
 I did not intend to arouse or to afford pleas- 
 ure ; I meant to make the world better." 
 When he composed the passage that accom- 
 panies the words, " He was despised and re- 
 jected," Handel wept. He tells us that when 
 he wrote the " Hallelujah Chorus " he 
 
The Book We Teach 129 
 
 thought he saw " the heavens open with the 
 angels standing about the throne." 
 
 Ask Milton concerning the sublimest poem 
 of our language and he will tell you that the 
 Bible is its mother. The writings of Shake- 
 speare, of Wordsworth, of Browning, of Ten- 
 nyson, of Longfellow, of Lowell, and of 
 Whittier are saturated with the Bible. 
 Shakespeare alone has three thousand Bib- 
 lical quotations in his writings, and Tennyson 
 four hundred and sixty. 
 
 The artist Millet said : " I get my inspira- 
 tion from reading the Psalms of David." 
 Whoever has visited the famous art galleries 
 knows that the Bible has furnished many of 
 the scenes for the greatest artists of the world. 
 
 The Bible is the book upon which reformers 
 have fed the holy fires that flamed in their 
 bosoms. It is the book that has kindled the 
 lamp of hope in the breast of the slave. The 
 Bible is the fountain from which the streams 
 of liberty have flowed. The translated Bible 
 vitalized English civilization in Wyclif s day. 
 
 Dr. John Clifford, of London, speaking of 
 the influence of the Bible upon England's 
 civilization, said : " The Bible has made us. 
 Our Reformation sprang out of that Book. 
 It was the Bible preached by Wyclif and his 
 poor priests which inspired that revolt against 
 
130 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 papacy which at length in our departure from 
 Rome and in the ascent of the British people 
 to freedom of conscience and to sovereignty 
 in the life of the world." ^ Froude, the his- 
 torian, declares that " all that we have in the 
 way of civilization in a sense which deserves 
 the term, is but a visible expression of the 
 transforming influence of the Gospel." 
 
 The open Bible in Luther's hand brought 
 Germany to her feet with the cry of liberty 
 on her lips. William Wilberforce who did 
 yeoman service in breaking the chains from 
 the bondmen of Great Britain said : " Read 
 the Bible! Read the Bible I Through all 
 my perplexities and distresses I never read 
 any other book, I never knew the want of 
 any other." Andrew Jackson, pointing to 
 the Bible, said : ** That Book is the rock on 
 which our Republic rests." Emerson de- 
 clared that the Puritan pulpits " were the 
 springs of American liberty." But those 
 Puritan pulpits drank from the Bible's foun- 
 tain of truth. Upon this Bible brought by 
 the Pilgrim Fathers this mighty Republic of 
 the West was founded. 
 
 This Book is the inspiration back of hos- 
 pitals and asylums, and of all the highest 
 types of charity, mercy, and protection for 
 
 ^ " Sacerdotalism and Sunday-schools," p. 14. 
 
The Book We Teach 131 
 
 the weak. The sweet humanities of our day 
 have come out of the heart of Christian love. 
 Macaulay says : " I altogether abstain from 
 alluding to topics which belong to divines ; I 
 speak merely as a politician, anxious for the 
 morality and the temporal well-being of so- 
 ciety ; and so speaking, I say that to discoun- 
 tenance that religion which has done so much 
 to promote justice, and mercy, and freedom, 
 and arts, and sciences, and good government, 
 and domestic happiness, which has struck ofi 
 the chains of the slave,which has mitigated 
 the horrors of war, which has raised women 
 from servants, and playthings into compan- 
 ions and friends, is to commit high treason 
 against humanity and civilization." In his 
 " History of European Morals," Lecky, writ- 
 ing of the influence of Christ, says: "The 
 simple record of three short years of active 
 life has done more to regenerate and to 
 soften mankind than all the disquisitions of 
 philosophers and all the exhortations of mor- 
 alists." 
 
 A modern writer, who has drawn arrows 
 from many quivers, tells us that when Charles 
 Dickens was asked what is the most touch- 
 ing story in literature, he replied: "The story 
 of the Prodigal Son." When Coleridge was 
 asked to name the richest passage in litera- 
 
132 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 ture, he answered : " The Beatitudes." 
 Burke called the " Sermon on the Mount" 
 the most impressive political document on 
 the rights of man. The sentence best loved 
 by children in all literature is : " Suffer the 
 children to come unto Me " ; the sentence 
 best loved by the aged is : " Let not your 
 heart be troubled " ; the sentence best loved 
 by men is : " God so loved the world that He 
 gave His only begotten Son." ^ 
 
 Take away the Bible and its influence upon 
 mankind and you rob the historian of his 
 most thrilling chapters, the artist of his sv;eet- 
 est conceptions, the poet of his loftiest 
 themes, and the prophet of God of his di- 
 vinest messages. As we earnestly read this 
 Book doubt fades and faith kindles, hypocrisy 
 unmasks and sincerity lives, despair enters 
 into its death pangs and hope reblooms, 
 hatred perishes and love lives and grows, sin 
 slinks away and piety prays, transient things 
 shrivel and eternal verities assume their true 
 magnitude, a new spring-tide fills the heart 
 with song and joy, and God rises in majesty 
 on the soul. 
 
 The continuance of this Book in its influ- 
 ence upon history is most wondrous. Myr- 
 iads of books never reach a second edition. 
 
 'Hillis, "The Influence of Christ in Modern Life," p. 75. 
 
The Book We Teach 133 
 
 The librarian of Edinburgh University said 
 one day to Professor Simpson : *' How many 
 books shall I reserve in the library for your 
 students?" The reply was : " You may put 
 every book in the cellar that is more than ten 
 years old." ^ Books in that department over 
 a decade old were only curiosities. 
 
 Bishop Warren says of the Bible : " It rose 
 out of the spirit world that is the source of 
 all power. So in all the years of your com- 
 ing life the Bible will rise out of the spirit 
 world with the same voice that commanded 
 the light to shine out of darkness. The lofti- 
 est scholarship will revere it. Ethics will 
 turn to it for its principles and authority. 
 Philosophy will find its loftiest flights therein. 
 Legislation will be based on it. There 
 poetry will find its deepest wells of inspira- 
 tion, and oratory its most sonorous periods 
 and aptest quotations to bejewel its grandest 
 flights." =^ 
 
 This Bible has stood the tempests of millen- 
 niums. Diocletian tried to exterminate it in 
 the third century. Bold, keen, and learned 
 criticism has done its worst from the days of 
 Celsus until now to undermine its message. 
 The astute Porphyry hurled his venomed 
 
 * " Drummond's Addresses," p. 66. 
 
 2«<The Bible in the World's Education," p. 152. 
 
134 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 shafts. Hume with rare subtlety wielded 
 cogent weapons. He said : " Methinks I see 
 the twilight of Christianity." It has been 
 suggested tliat he mistook the time of day. 
 It was the twihght, but not of the evening 
 that deepens into night, but of the morning 
 that brightens to the glory of Christianity's 
 noon. 
 
 Voltaire flung his arrows tipped with fire. 
 He said : *' I will go through your theo- 
 logical forest and girdle every tree ; so 
 that in a quarter of a century not a sapling 
 shall be left to you." He boasted that he 
 would soon make deism the religion of the 
 world, but his printing press was soon print- 
 ing Bibles. Tom Paine waged the fight in 
 his "Age of Reason," but he has gone "to 
 join the armies of the obsolete," and the 
 Bible's gospel message still moves on tender 
 in sympathy, majestic in grandeur, trium- 
 phant in its march. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton said that if all the great 
 books of the world were given life, and they 
 should come together in a convention : " The 
 moment the Bible entered, the other books 
 would fall upon their faces, even as the gods 
 of Philistia fell when the ark of God was 
 brought into their presence." 
 
 The books of the enemies of the Bible soon 
 
The Book We Teach 135 
 
 pass out of print, but millions upon millions 
 of copies of the Bible are sold every year. 
 The British and Foreign Bible Society has 
 published over two hundred million copies 
 since 1804, the date of its organization. It 
 now issues about six million copies per year. 
 About seventy-five Bible societies publish 
 twenty-five thousand copies of this sacred 
 Book every week-day. 
 
 This Book is translated into more than four 
 hundred languages. Three million copies of 
 the Revised Version were called for in a few 
 days when it was put upon the market. 
 Before the Revised New Testament was 
 published in 1881 a million copies had been 
 sold. This was not a new book, only a new 
 translation of an old one. On May 21, 1881, 
 it is said that the streets of New York were 
 blocked with people trying to get the Re- 
 vised New Testament. The four Gospels, 
 the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to 
 the Romans were telegraphed from New 
 York to Chicago that they might appear in 
 the morning papers. We are told that one 
 Chicago paper employed ninety-two com- 
 positors and five proof-readers, and they 
 completed their task in twelve hours. 
 
 The dusty lips of archaeology are con- 
 stantly adding their testimony concerning 
 
136 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 the truthfulness of this Book, and while its 
 enemies die, and their criticisms come to 
 naught "the Word of our God abideth for- 
 ever." 
 
 *' Last eve I stood before a blacksmith's door, 
 And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime, 
 Then walking in, I saw upon the floor, 
 
 Old hammers worn by beating years of time. 
 
 ** ' How many anvils have you had? ' said I, 
 
 ' To beat and shatter all these hammers so ? ' 
 *Just one,' said he; then said with twinkling eye, 
 ' The anvil wears the hammers out, you know. ' 
 
 *' And so I thought the anvil of God's Word 
 For ages skeptic blows have beat upon : 
 Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, 
 The anvil is unharmed ; the hammers gone." 
 
 The Bible is not a text-book on science. 
 It has no canons of criticism on art or music. 
 Its prime purpose is to reveal God, human 
 duty, and human destiny. And the Bible is 
 to be judged by its message upon these 
 themes. It is well to remember Galileo's 
 reply when he was accused of heresy : " The 
 Bible was given to tell how to go to heaven, 
 and not how the heavens go." Man pro- 
 foundly needs instruction concerning God, 
 Duty, and Destiny, and concerning these the 
 Bible gives illumination. This is why the 
 
The Book We Teach 137 
 
 Bible "is the throbbing heart of Sunday- 
 school work," and of all other work that 
 seeks to win people to a religious life. 
 
 So we recognize in the Bible not simply 
 a book of literature, and a book that has 
 wrought itself into history, but we see in it a 
 Book of divine Revelation, a Book of Salva- 
 tion, a Book of Life. This is its mighty mes- 
 sage. Bishop Vincent says of the Bible : " It 
 has but one theme from beginning to end. 
 The Bible gradually developed through the 
 centuries, and in an important sense being 
 now gradually developed, has always one 
 central, dominating idea, — the divine relief or 
 remedy for the human need. There is prac- 
 tically no other subject in the Bible : Sin 
 and Salvation ; human weakness and divine 
 strength ; man's thirst and God's river of 
 life ; human darkness and heaven's light ; 
 disease and remedy ; weariness and rest ; 
 despair and hope ; death and life." ^ It is 
 because it is a Book of Life that it has been 
 able to withstand the assaults of the centuries. 
 
 The Egyptians had a book called "The 
 Book of the Dead," but Watkinson says : 
 " God's most holy Word is the Book of Life, 
 and the book of the living— it makes souls, 
 creeds, nations, civilizations to breathe and 
 
 * Address: " A Forward Look for the Sunday-school." 
 
138 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 grow. It is the radium of the moral world. 
 . . . Scientists aver that a particle of 
 radium encloses a gulf of fire which will 
 radiate heat for eighty thousand years ; these 
 doctrines of revelation are yet richer in force 
 • — they defy centuries and outlast stars." ^ 
 
 At the great Sunday-school Convention 
 held at the City Temple in London, in 1898, 
 Bishop Fowler said of the Bible : " The uni- 
 verse is too narrow for it. Time is too short 
 for it. It is as deep as the foundations of 
 eternal justice ; as wide as the moral govern- 
 ment ; as high as the throne of the Infinite, 
 and as enduring as the life of the Almighty, 
 and its inspiration is as exhaustless as the 
 love of God." 
 
 In its revelation of God the Bible meets a 
 profound need of the human heart. Life 
 bristles with interrogation points. Problems, 
 many and weighty, crowd upon the mind 
 and cry for solution. Every blade of grass 
 quivers with questions to which no man can 
 respond. Every fluttering leaf trembles with 
 mysteries which no man can unravel. Man 
 is tormented by the "riddles of creation." 
 Man's thought plunges into the ocean of 
 mystery about him, and into the ab3^ss of 
 mystery within him. But the arrows of his 
 
 '"The Supreme Conquest," pp. 170, 174. 
 
The Book We Teach 139 
 
 thought cannot pierce far. The plummet of 
 his thought does not drop deep. The flashes 
 of his inspiration are soon swallowed up in the 
 gulf of mystery. 
 
 Man craves a revelation of God and from 
 God. Homer represents Ulysses as " always 
 roaming with a hungry heart." Cicero said : 
 " I see no gods on Mount Olympus." He 
 was crushed at the thought of no adequate 
 revelation. The Psalmist said : " My heart 
 and my flesh crieth out for the living God." 
 The Magi eagerly followed the star, because 
 it hinted of a revelation from heaven. Richter 
 writes : " On every hilltop, in the summits 
 of the loftiest natures of every nation, will be 
 found an altar to the unseen personal God." 
 And man wherever found is well represented 
 as " standing at the eastern window waiting 
 for the dawn." 
 
 Man, baffled and perplexed, has cried : 
 " Oh, that I knew where I might find Him ! 
 As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so 
 panteth my soul after thee, O God. Tell me 
 Thy name." Man sees the earth parched, 
 scorched, and gaping for rain, and he sees 
 in it a symbol of his soul passion and he 
 cries : " My soul thirsteth for Thee." Think- 
 ing of the frailty of man and of the majesty 
 of God he pleads : " Bow the heavens and 
 
140 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 come down." God is the Reality after which 
 our hearts run. PhiHp was spokesman for 
 the race when he said : " Lord, show us the 
 Father, and it sufficeth us." 
 
 The Bible speaks to the perplexed. Lelande 
 said that he had swept the heavens with his 
 telescope and could find no God, and he 
 pretended thus to settle the question of the 
 divine existence in the negative. But that 
 does not satisfy. " No thought without 
 phosphorus," cried Moleschott, but that does 
 not clear the sky. Without Christ's reve- 
 lation we are correctly called " midgets only, 
 maddened with our little touch of mind." 
 Without Christ's word in this Book we must 
 resign ourselves to what Ibsen calls " the 
 eternal silence of the stars." But in the Bible 
 there is dawn, sunrise, revelation. 
 
 The Bible's revelation of God is brighten- 
 ing the hopes of man. It speaks to the per- 
 plexities of the race ; it faces the problems 
 of the heart. It tells us how man may creep 
 within the fold of the divine affection. It 
 tells us not simply of the kingship of the 
 Eternal, but of the kinship we have with 
 Him. The Bible " unveils " the Father. No 
 wonder Coleridge said : " I believe in the 
 Book because \t finds me." 
 
 The Bible reveals our Father as a God of 
 
The Book We Teach 141 
 
 providence. God is presented as the Creator 
 and Sustainer of uncounted worlds. He 
 walks upon the wings of the wind. The 
 clouds are His chariots. He hears the ravens 
 when they cry. He guards the planet in its 
 sweep, and the insect in its flight. He opens 
 the gates of the morning and the petals of 
 the rose. His footsteps are heard in the roar 
 of the storm and in the sob of the sea. He 
 calls the stars by name. " He bindeth the 
 sweet influences of the Pleiades, and looseth 
 the bands of Orion. He bringeth forth Maz- 
 zaroth in his season, and guideth Arcturus 
 with his sons." Not a wave ripples upon the 
 bosom of the sea, not a leaf flutters to its fall, 
 not a flower opens its eyes to the sun, not a 
 dewdrop quivers on the clover-leaf, not a 
 snowflake makes its wandering way to our 
 world, not a rain-drop falls in silence on the 
 sea that God does not commission. 
 
 The Bible reveals God not as a King upon 
 a marble throne, nor as a Judge who rules 
 with a rod of iron, nor as a Being " fierce, 
 relentless, and vindictive," but as the Lover 
 of our race, whose throne is pillared upon 
 mercy. 
 
 The Bible shows that the Father's love has 
 an immortal bloom. It reveals how His love 
 broke the silence of eternity and drew Him 
 
142 The Work of the Sunday- School 
 
 out of the unseen and we beheld the glory of 
 that divine affection in the life and mission 
 of our Saviour. The Bible shows us how 
 God's love hovers over the sleeping babe, 
 and solaces the heart of the weary mother as 
 she watches by the cradle of her smitten child ; 
 how His love keeps its unfailing vigils in the 
 sick-room, by the open grave, and in the 
 valley of the shadow of death ; how His love 
 soothes the burning temple, cools the feverish 
 brow, and quiets the whirling brain ; how 
 His love causes the sun of joy to burst from 
 the riven cloud, and the flower of hope to 
 break to beauteous blossom at our feet ; how 
 His love twines its chains of golden thoughts 
 concerning destiny and immortality about 
 the brittle thread of hfe ; how His love stations 
 a guardian angel beside the cradle, an angel 
 of blessing in the home, and a resurrection 
 by the tomb. 
 
 The Bible shows us a God who not only 
 makes the clouds His chariots, but who sees 
 my falling tear ; who not only walks upon 
 the wings of the wind, but who wings a mes- 
 sage of love to my sick heart ; who not only 
 weighs planets in the balances of His thought, 
 but who weighs the burden of my soul ; who 
 is not only a God of power, of glory, and of 
 moving majesty, but a God who is my 
 
The Book We Teach 143 
 
 heavenly Father, and who loves me, His 
 erring child. 
 
 When the Bible drops the plummet of its 
 thought into the abyss of God we must not 
 be surprised if mystery is found. In the 
 picture it presents of God there will surely be 
 some lines that stretch away into infinity. 
 Reason must have left her throne if men do 
 not expect mystery here. If there were no 
 mystery in a book which sought to tell us of 
 the Infinite we might well conclude that it 
 was an entirely man-made production. With 
 Bishop Thomson we say : " When Jehovah, 
 from His mountain home, sends down a 
 messenger, what wonder that there should 
 be some spots upon his face too bright 
 for mortal eye, and whose brightness must, 
 therefore, be shaded. Happy are we that 
 there are. They speak of the King, eternal, 
 immortal, invisible, and of His inaccessible 
 dwelling in light ; they speak of the im- 
 mortality and progress and coming illumi- 
 nation of the soul ; they keep the mind 
 forever on the knee and forever on the 
 wing."^ 
 
 The Bible gives revelation concerning Duty. 
 The Bible's truth is the daylight for the soul. 
 It lifts the anchors of our thought. It shows 
 
 J " Religious Essays," p. 1 8. 
 
144 ^^^ Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 us " the counsels of the Eternal mind." It 
 touches infinite circles. It makes the truth 
 glow and swing in solemn splendour before 
 us. It indicates what we are to do, what to 
 seek, and what to be. It reveals to us the 
 blessedness of the lowly, of the meek, of 
 those who thirst after righteousness, of the 
 merciful, of the pure in heart, of the peace- 
 makers, of those persecuted for righteous- 
 ness' sake. 
 
 The Bible indicates how Christ's disciples 
 must preserve society, and illuminate the 
 world. It teaches that anger must not reign, 
 that brother must be reconciled to brother, 
 that man must not have the lustful look, nor 
 the angry spirit. It speaks of the law of 
 truthfulness, of love for God, for neighbour, 
 and even for enemies. It tells us how to 
 pray, where to lay up treasure, and where to 
 impose our trust. Love and service must 
 enter like golden threads into life's garment. 
 We must be " conscious of duties " rather 
 than clamour forever for our " rights." Do- 
 ing these things man shall " ripen a heavenly 
 harvest, and the Christian shall at last drop 
 from the boughs of life into the lap of God 
 like mellow fruit," 
 
 The Bible tells of human Destiny. A 
 young man asked the burning question : 
 
The Book We Teach 145 
 
 " What must I do to inherit eternal life ? " 
 The Bible gives answer. It tells us that this 
 life and the life to come are linked as seed- 
 time and harvest, as cause and effect. Men 
 are on their way to a judgment throne where 
 Christ is Judge. There will be an eternal 
 kingdom which the righteous shall inherit, 
 and from which the wicked shall be excluded. 
 The separation will take place according to 
 an inner law of the life of those judged. As 
 Phillips Brooks said : " The Judge just lifts 
 His hand and raises from each soul before 
 Him every law of constraint whose pressure 
 has been its education. The real intrinsic 
 nature of each soul leaps to the surface. 
 Each soul's law of liberty becomes supreme. 
 They turn and separate. The freeing of 
 souls is the judging of souls. A liberated 
 soul dictates its own destiny." 
 
 The Bible reveals to us a living, reignitig 
 Saviour. There was recognition of Christ's 
 authority in m)Tiad ways when He was in the 
 flesh. The fig tree withered at His word. 
 At His command blind eyes began to see, 
 deaf ears began to hear, dumb lips began to 
 speak. One day Jesus fell asleep in the boat on 
 the Sea of Galilee. The storm broke in fury. 
 The tempest lashed the sea into madness. 
 The hissing flood threatened to engulf the little 
 
146 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 craft. The elements were wild with tumult, 
 and the face of Jesus must have been mois- 
 tened by the spray. Jesus awoke. He ut- 
 tered His word ; the tumult was hushed ; the 
 sea sobbed to silence. 
 
 Evil spirits took possession of a man, but 
 the Christ of authority came that way. At 
 His command the evil spirits fled. They 
 acknowledged Jesus as the Christ of author- 
 ity. He whispered into the ear of the sleeper 
 who lay shrouded in the embrace of death, 
 and forthwith the heart beat anew, the eye 
 flashed and the hue of life and health re- 
 turned. "At His girdle hang the keys of 
 death." 
 
 When Peter, James, and John are on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration, out of the cloud 
 comes a voice to the apostles saying, " Hear 
 ye Him." Moses is there. He had been 
 leader, lawgiver, and deliverer of Israel, but 
 the Christ of authority is there, and Moses 
 must be silent and listen to Him. Elijah is 
 there. He had fulfilled a great mission. He 
 had unsealed heaven v/ith prayer. He had 
 brought defeat and ruin to the prophets of 
 evil. But now the Christ of supreme author- 
 ity is present, and the lips of Elijah must be 
 mute. " This is My Son, hear ye Him." 
 
 Morrison of England says : " We are ex- 
 
The Book We Teach 147 
 
 agfgerating to-day the supphcating and be- 
 seeching Jesus. We are taking the grandeur 
 from the throne by thinking of Jesus as our 
 hfelong suppliant." ' He does Icnock at the 
 door of the heart, but we must remember 
 that it is a King who knocks. And Christ is 
 King " not merely by an office conferred, but 
 by a triumph won. He faced the enemies of 
 the race — sin, and sorrow, and ignorance, 
 and death— and His foot is upon the neck of 
 every one." Speaking of the kingship of 
 Christ one of God's modern prophets says : 
 " We keep Him nailed to the cross as if we 
 had forgotten that His life knew only six 
 hours on the cross and unnumbered ages on 
 the throne. The prints of the nails will 
 never fade out of His palms, but they are 
 hidden by the sceptre which He holds." 
 
 We are glad Jesus was once the babe of 
 Bethlehem, the child of Nazareth, the youth 
 of the temple, the preacher of the mount, and 
 the Christ of the cross, and so sanctified all 
 life from cradle to grave, from birth to death. 
 But He is now the risen, triumphant Lord, 
 the invincible Leader of His militant host. 
 That brow that once bled from a crown of 
 thorns is now jewelled with coronets of glory. 
 Those eyes that once looked upon a crazed 
 
 *" Comradeship and Character," by Various Authors, p. 213. 
 
148 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 and murderous mob now see millions paying 
 homage at His feet. That hand that once 
 bled from the cruel nails now grasps the 
 sceptre of empire. He who was once ex- 
 ecrated, maligned, and disgraced, is now 
 honoured, worshipped, and adored. He who 
 had no place to lay His head sits now upon 
 a throne. He has gone from a tree of shame 
 to an empire of power, from crucifixion to 
 coronation, the man of sorrows has become 
 the King of kings. 
 
 Napoleon could move -an army, Cicero 
 could arouse a city, Demosthenes could 
 ^ thrill a nation, but Jesus Christ with His 
 word of authority and power can move the 
 world. Socrates may wave his wand for a 
 few centuries, Plato may charm the world for 
 a few ages, Aristotle may bear sway for a 
 millennium, but Christ need never abdicate 
 His throne, for He is Lord of heaven and 
 King of men. 
 
 The Lily of the Valley is sending forth 
 sweet fragrance into all the world. The 
 Rose of Sharon has an immortal bloom. 
 The Star of Bethlehem is in the ascendant. 
 Christ is sending forth His truth and His 
 light. The dew of the morning is upon His 
 brow. A world-encircling and century-en- 
 compassing glance is in His eye. He steps 
 
The Book We Teach 149 
 
 with the tread of a conqueror upon the crests 
 of the centuries. He leads no forlorn hope. 
 His dominion is a certainty. He will belt 
 the globe with universal sovereignty. The 
 citadel of His power rises up out of the 
 chaos, and from its windows, He, the sentry 
 of the ages, cries unto His watchmen upon 
 the walls of Zion : "What of the night?" 
 and they send back the answer : " The dawn 
 Cometh!" On His vesture and on His 
 thigh is written : " King of kings and Lord 
 of lords." And this " swordless King " of 
 the ages will neither faint nor grow weary 
 until "the Gentiles come to His light and 
 kings to the brightness of His rising," not 
 until He shall see of the travail of His soul and 
 is abundantly satisfied, not until they write 
 " holiness to God upon the bells of the horses," 
 not until the redeemed of empires below, 
 with the redeemed of courts above, sing in 
 harmony sweeter than ten thousand harps : 
 
 " All hail the power of Jesus' name 
 Let angels prostrate fall, 
 Bring forth the royal diadem, 
 And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
 When we thus come to see the value of 
 this Bible in literature, its place in history, 
 and its mighty message to the heart of the 
 
ijo The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 race we are not surprised that man is slow to 
 let it die. What a vision it brings before us I 
 With majestic tread it conducts us through 
 the days of Creation. Its message flows 
 from the lips of sage, of seer, of prophet, and 
 of apostle, and from the Saviour's heart of 
 fire. It opens to our view the loving heart 
 of our heavenly Father ; it unbars the gates 
 of man's soul and lets the light divine shine 
 in ; it opens the gates of the future and dis- 
 closes the mysteries of the hereafter ; it points 
 man to the way of salvation and to the gates 
 of life ; it reveals the qualities of mind and 
 heart we must foster and cherish ; it tells us 
 that every word we utter is " docketed for 
 the judgment," and that every act is sublime 
 because ** its vibrations are eternal." It 
 shows us that religion is not " renunciation " 
 as Goethe said, that the will of God is not 
 something to be endured or something to be , 
 feared^ but something to be done, and some- V 
 thing to be deligJited in, and that " he that 
 doeth the will of God abideth forever." It 
 tells us that religion's ways are " ways of 
 pleasantness," and that her paths are " paths 
 of peace," that " the depressions of a true, 
 pure life are higher than the altitudes of 
 worldliness and sin," It shows us that there 
 are no joys like the joys of the ransomed, no 
 
The Book We Teach 131 
 
 hopes Hke the hopes of the redeemed, no 
 songs so celestial as the songs of Israel, and 
 no harps so sweet as those attuned on Zion's 
 hill. It shows us the Christ of authority and 
 power, and the Christ of the cooling hand, 
 of the healing word, of the benignant smile, 
 of the loving soul, of the forgiving spirit, of 
 the tender heart, the Christ whose touch is 
 life and whose smile is heaven. This is the 
 Book, O teacher ! which you are to study, 
 assimilate, and translate into a living gospel, 
 and which you are to " cause another to 
 know." 
 
V 
 
 DECISION DAY IN THE SUNDAY- 
 SCHOOL 
 
" I am fully persuaded that if we could secure a general and 
 wise observance of Decision Day, the Church would hare the 
 revival forvvhich we have been praying." — Pf^: C. Pearce. 
 
 " The teacher ought to understand what the step of Christian 
 decision involves in their (scholars) case, and then to ask and 
 expect and help them to take that step. 
 
 " The bringing of the scholars into the faith and the likeness 
 of Jesus is the only proper end and aim of the Sunday-school 
 teacher's endeavours." — H. CUiy I'riunbull. 
 
 " An objection often heard to Decision Day is that every day 
 should be Decision Day. To this also we quite agree. But is 
 it not true that every day should be a thanksgiving day? Yet 
 we are not prepared to drop our annual Thanksgiving Day 
 from the calendar." — Marion Lawra7ice. 
 
 " As Christian workers we are not satisfied unless decisions 
 for Christ are followed by church-membeiship ; and in the 
 minds of most people, children as well as adults, such decisions 
 are thus associated — perhaps because this generally follows. It 
 is therefore proper that the questions which relate to winning 
 our scholars to Christ and those that concern their becoming 
 members of the church be treated together." — David C. Cook, 
 
V 
 
 Decision Day in the Sunday-School 
 
 I. Why have Decision Day in the Sunday- 
 school? I. Because moral decision is a cru- 
 cial matter in the history of a soul. The 
 power of choice is among the sublimest gifts 
 of God to man. This is a part of the divine 
 image in which man was created. This is a 
 regal crown with which God adorned man. 
 It constitutes at once the glory and the so- 
 lemnity of life. 
 
 *' So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Dut)' whispers low, ' Thou must,' 
 The youth replies, ' I can. 
 
 » I > 
 
 Man's destiny for weal or for woe rests 
 with himself. Planets blindly obey the laws 
 that govern their majestic march. Beasts fol- 
 low their native instincts. Man is free, his 
 course in life is self-determined. He can do 
 or not do the moral acts of life. Choice is a 
 necessity of his condition. This is the divine 
 economy under which he lives. Take away 
 man's freedom of will and he becomes a ma- 
 155 
 
1 56 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 chine, virtue becomes a phantom, evil a 
 dream, and moral responsibility a delusion. 
 Man's will is the hinge upon which his des- 
 tiny swings. Character is a child of choice. 
 If man makes choice of the good, the forces 
 of righteousness begin to act, and they help 
 him build noble character. " Tendency in- 
 dicates choice," says one. Let that truth 
 burn in the heart. People conclude that 
 they are not rejecting Christ, but the "tend- 
 ency " of the life really indicates the choice, 
 and prophesies an approaching goal of moral 
 ruin. So the vast significance of moral de- 
 cisions in a human life argues for the observ- 
 ance of Decision Day in the Sunday-school. 
 
 2. It helps to make clear the real aim of 
 the Sunday-school, namely : to get scholars 
 to accept Christ as their Saviour, and after 
 this fundamental decision to develop Chris- 
 tian character according to the pattern and 
 teaching of Christ. The teacher gains the 
 conviction that the truth must not only be 
 presented carefully, but presented so as to 
 be welcomed into the heart of the scholar 
 and become a part of his life. The teacher 
 comes to see more clearly that the scholar 
 who is not a Christian must be led to Christ, 
 and the one who is a Christian must be built 
 up in Christ. 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 157 
 
 3. It tells the teacher that he must con- 
 crete his efforts. It crystallizes the teacher's 
 work around a definite object. It leads to 
 specific personal work. This is great gain. 
 The successful hunter takes aim, so does the 
 wise teacher. 
 
 4. The observance of Decision Day re- 
 veals to many a teacher that he can do true 
 evangelistic work. What wealth of blessing 
 comes, not only to the scholars won by the 
 teacher, but to the teacher also, when a soul 
 has been led to make definite decision for 
 Christ ! 
 
 5. Decision Day gives opportunity under 
 favourable surroundings for boys and girls 
 to make an open avowal of their Christian 
 discipleship. Enormous gain is made when 
 the scholar is led to a public committal of 
 his life to Christ. Some boys and girls are 
 timid and shy, and it is very difficult to 
 secure an open confession of their purpose to 
 be Christians. We believe Decision Day in 
 the Sunday-school furnishes a rare opportu- 
 nity to enlist such scholars on the side of 
 Christ. 
 
 6. It builds the church. Decision Day 
 shrinks the loss between the Sunday-school 
 and the church. A few years ago it was 
 claimed that only thirty-three per cent, of the 
 
{ 
 
 158 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 scholars who entered our Sunday-schools 
 came directly from these schools into church- )/ 
 membership. About ten years ago a man of 
 New York City said that according to the 
 data furnished for a number of years previous 
 to 1900, about one-fifth of the scholars of our 
 Protestant Sunday-schools of New York State 
 confessed Christ while members of those 
 schools. The observance of Decision Day is 
 helping to change this appalling fact. 
 
 II. Preparation for Decision Day. Let 
 the Sunday-school Board carefully consider 
 this matter, counsel together concerning it, 
 and pray about it until a solemn conviction 
 of the need and opportunity of Decision Day 
 takes deep root in their hearts. Let the 
 pastor preach once or more on themes that 
 set forth the importance of early decision for 
 Christ. Let him show that the Sunday- 
 school is the truly great evangelistic agency 
 in our world to-day. Let him lay the re- 
 sponsibility of winning the scholars to Christ 
 on the hearts of the parents and teachers. 
 
 Let the prayer-meeting of the church be 
 conducted in the interests of the Sunday- 
 school with special reference to Decision 
 Day. By Sabbath and week-day services 
 seek to enlist the hearty cooperation of as 
 many parents as possible in the Decision 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 159 
 
 Day service. Magnify the Sunday-sch^ool_ 
 and its great work in the hearing of all the 
 people. 
 
 Have a prayer-meeting for the teachers, 
 and officers and pastor on Saturday night, 
 or better still on Sunday just before the 
 Sunday-school hour. Let this be a time of 
 real heart preparation for the delicate task 
 that is at hand. Pray for a baptism of ten- 
 derness and for a spirit of Christlike solicitude 
 for the salvation of the scholars of the school. 
 
 Some teachers follow the plan of getting 
 decisions for Christ in their classes even 
 weeks before Decision Day. To do this it 
 is wise to see the scholar alone. This can be 
 done by having the scholar come to your 
 home or office, or by calling on the scholar 
 where you will be sure of a private conversa- 
 tion. A boy or girl will open the heart much 
 more readily, and express more frankly the 
 difhculties in the way, when only the 
 teacher's ears can hear. This method of 
 procedure makes of Decision Day more 
 what is called, " Witness Day." This plan 
 has its advantages, for as suggested by one : 
 " Every farmer knows he cannot set a date 
 and say, ' I will harvest all my corn and oats 
 on August tenth.'" The most opportune 
 moment to secure decisions for Christ may 
 
l6o The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 not occur on a particular Sunday in the case 
 of all you desire to reach, so by working 
 through several weeks towards the aim of 
 Decision Day more scholars may be won for 
 Christ than by simply using the one ap- 
 pointed day. 
 
 As a part of the preparation for Decision 
 Day let there be an expression on the part 
 of the teacher of his deep interest in the 
 spiritual welfare of the members of his class. 
 Let them know and feel the yearning solici- 
 tude of your heart for their personal decision 
 for Jesus Christ. Pray over this matter until 
 the expression of your interest will be truly 
 genuine, and from the depths of your heart. 
 
 III. Hoiv to cojiditct the service on Decision 
 Day. Cast-iron methods cannot be given. 
 I venture to give simply one plan used several 
 times by the writer. 
 
 Have a half hour prayer service with 
 pastor, teachers, and officers present just 
 before the session of the school. During the 
 school period avoid anything like business 
 just as far as possible. As Marion Lawrance 
 suggests : " Let there be no rattle of machin- 
 ery." Let all the hymns sung conduce to 
 the supreme object of the day — decision for 
 Christ. Let several persons lead briefly in 
 most earnest, intercessory prayer. Let the 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 161 
 
 teachers have fifteen minutes with their 
 classes that they may make the personal 
 appeal for their scholars to make definite 
 choice of Jesus as their Saviour. If the 
 lesson for the day furnishes the basis for 
 such an appeal use it, but if not, do not hesi- 
 tate to neglect the lesson and with heart of 
 fire plead as a faithful embassador of Christ 
 for the committal of the life to Jesus. 
 
 Let me here relate the experience of a 
 young lady teacher on a Decision Day. The 
 day was approaching when, according to the 
 plan, all the Sunday-schools in a certain city 
 were to make a concerted effort to secure 
 decisions for Christ. This young lady spent 
 much of the Saturday night in prayer. On 
 the Sabbath she went into the Sunday-school 
 service with a tender and glowing heart, for 
 the touch of God was upon her spirit. By 
 and by the time came for the teachers to 
 make the appeal to their classes. This young 
 woman pled with one and another, and one 
 decision after another was made for Christ. 
 When the hour closed all but two, I think, of 
 a class of about a dozen had yielded to this 
 persistent pleader. 
 
 When the teachers have made their appeal, 
 then let the pastor speak to the school, and 
 after brief but fervent words, let him call 
 
i62 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 for an open acknowledgment of the de- 
 cision to take Christ as Saviour and Lord. 
 He can have the scholars do this by stand- 
 ing or by coming forward. Here the teacher 
 may give an additional word of appeal and 
 encouragement while the pastor is giving the 
 call. 
 
 After this let there be a time for prayer, 
 and while hearts aglow with love are pray- 
 ing, still other decisions may be gotten by 
 one more appeal on the part of the teachers 
 who are near their scholars. 
 
 Before the dismissal let the names and 
 addresses of all who have made decisions 
 be gotten, so that the pastor as well as the 
 teacher may know the result in every class. 
 A form of Decision Day card may very well 
 be used. Here is one form : 
 
 My Decision 
 
 I accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour. I 
 purpose to serve Him all ?jiy life. 
 
 Scholar^ s name, 
 
 Address, 
 
 Date, 
 
 IV. After Decision Day. Those who have 
 made a real decision on Decision Day should 
 be gotten into what is designated in Method- 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 163 
 
 ist churches as the " Probationer's Class," 
 and in other churches by varying names. 
 Where we have the triple alliance of pastor, 
 teacher, and parent this will not be very 
 difficult. But often we do not have such a 
 happy combination. Then tact, persistence, 
 consecration, every gift and grace that man 
 can command is needed for the task that is 
 before the pastor and teacher. 
 
 The matter of joining the church is very 
 closely connected with the work of Decision 
 Day and is of such marked importance that 
 we may well consider it carefully. 
 
 The Church is a divine institution. She 
 has a divine commission from her Lord. 
 She does not make the truth, but she is 
 commissioned to proclaim it, to testify to it, 
 and to live it. She is not the way, but a 
 witness to the way. She is a Voice, a herald. 
 
 She gives protection. Parents who do not 
 go to church often desire to have their chil- 
 dren in the Sunday-school. To illustrate the 
 safety the church affords some one has used 
 the illustration of an apple tree that grows 
 inside the garden wall and one that grows in 
 the public highway. The old apple tree in 
 the lane at the edge of a village is full of 
 sticks and clubs. It belongs to the public. 
 It is unprotected. The apples are knocked 
 
164 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 off when only half grown. The tree is 
 worthless. Just inside the garden fence is a 
 similar tree, but it is protected. Its fruit 
 comes to perfection. The apple tree in the 
 lane is like a person trying to live a Christian 
 life outside of the church. 
 
 The church gives the signal of danger. It 
 was a noble deed when Paul Revere hung 
 out the lantern in the tower of the Old North 
 Church, Salem Street, Boston, and so warned 
 the Colonists that the British were coming. 
 So the church hangs out the signal of danger 
 and warns those within the fold. 
 
 The church speaks to us of God. One of 
 the most impressive sights of London is 
 Saint Paul's Cathedral. I remember how 
 one cloudy, gloomy day I walked across a 
 section of the city, and above the darkness and 
 the gloom of the lower streets I saw the dome 
 of that great temple of worship pointing up 
 to God. Bishop Quayle speaking of Saint 
 Paul's says : " Its huge dome crowds up 
 above the shoulders of the mercantile me- 
 tropolis. On the road to the Bank of Eng- 
 land this house of God stands, and where 
 commerce swirls wilder than a winter sea, 
 there climbs the spacious dome up, up, hunt- 
 ing God." 
 
 If the church is instituted of God, and is 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 165 
 
 for protection, and for the salvation of the 
 world, then the Christian ought to join it. 
 Yet the pastor meets difficulty in getting 
 young people who take their stand on Deci- 
 sion Day to take their place as candidates 
 for church-membership. The Sunday-school 
 teachers can help much here. Let them 
 show the scholar that the Christian who re- 
 fuses to join the church is counted as being 
 against Christ. Ask a person about becom- 
 ing a Christian, and if he does not want to, 
 he will be quite sure to say : " I don't want 
 to join the church." That is to say, he esti- 
 mates Christianity by the church-members. 
 If you are not a church-member, and yet 
 count yourself a Christian, the world counts 
 you as against Christ, and you are the only 
 person who can correct that false impression. 
 No man has ever been given the right to as- 
 sume an attitude such that, if every other 
 person assumed the same attitude, would an- 
 nihilate the church, and secret discipleship 
 means the annihilation of Christianity. 
 
 Young converts especially need the church. 
 We come to Christ not first of all for Jesus' 
 sake, but for our own sake. And we join 
 the church first of all not because the church 
 needs us, but more because we need the 
 church. Does any man rightly estimate his 
 
l66 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 spiritual forces when he tries to get along 
 without joining the church ? I have seen 
 many a one who claimed he could live a 
 Christian life outside the church make ship- 
 wreck of faith and go down before the world's 
 pelting storm. You may have tried to kindle 
 a fire with one stick of wood, but you found 
 it very difficult ; with half a dozen sticks it 
 was easy. The man who tries to keep the 
 fire of devotion burning in his heart outside 
 of the church, and alone, has a hard time. 
 
 People are sometimes kept out of the 
 church because of a wrong conception of 
 what the church is. The church is not a 
 place for perfect people simply. If it were 
 you and I would have no place there. The 
 church is for people who need help. We do 
 not join the church because we are good, but 
 because we iva^it to be good, because we 
 have an aspiration. The church is a school 
 for the development of character and gradua- 
 tion day seems far away. As one says : 
 " The church receives its members not be- 
 cause they have attained so much, but be- 
 cause there is so much that they need to 
 attain." Further he says : " For admission 
 to be declined on the ground that one is ' not 
 good enough ' is to miss the fundamental 
 purpose of the entire institution ; and for a 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 167 
 
 modest person to conceive that becoming 
 part of a church organization is advertising 
 to the pubhc that he has made great advance 
 in the holy hfe, is the same as it would be 
 for a little four-year-old to understand that 
 admission into the A. B. C. class means his 
 present attainment of a liberal education." 
 
 The scholar should be taught to have an 
 appreciation of the church. Without the 
 church there would be no Sunday-schools in 
 which to observe Decision Day. There 
 would be no preaching of the Gospel, there 
 would be no administration of the holy sac- 
 raments, there would be no missionary move- 
 ments to disseminate the glad tidings. With- 
 out the church there would have been no 
 evangelistic agency to touch our Western 
 civilization, and we would now be worship- 
 ping pagan idols instead of the true and liv- 
 ing God. 
 
 The church is the only organization in the 
 world that exists "solely for character." The 
 care and culture of character is her work. 
 
 Joining the church is not religion. Going 
 to church is not religion. Religion deals 
 with the relation of the soul to God. Dr. 
 Hallack tells of a little girl who was looking 
 in her mother's trunk one day and found her 
 mother's church letter which had failed to 
 
i68 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 reach the pastor. The little girl rushed to 
 her mother shouting : "Oh, mama, I've found 
 your religion in your trunk." That is not 
 the brand for which we plead. The right 
 kind of religion cannot be put into a letter 
 and boxed up in a trunk. 
 
 The church is not an end but a means. 
 The Bible is not an end but a means. We 
 love the Bible because it reveals God to us. 
 We love the church because she helps to 
 keep us close to the heart of God. The 
 function of the church is to help get us into 
 right relation with God and man, and to 
 keep us in such relation. 
 
 The church should be dear to us. The 
 ancient Israelites had the sacred Ark which 
 spoke to them of God. The church is the 
 Ark of God to-day. The Ark was dear to 
 the Israelites. Its very presence inspired 
 their hearts. When the Ark was brought 
 from Shiloh into the Hebrew camp the Is- 
 raelites " shouted with a great shout so that 
 the earth rang again." Its presence thrilled 
 the people of God with hope, and smote their 
 foes with despair. The Philistines said : 
 '* God is come into the camp of the He- 
 brews." One day aged Eli sat by the gate 
 waiting for tidings from the battle. His sons, 
 Hophni and Phinehas, were fighting in the 
 
Decision Day in the Sunday-School 169 
 
 ranks. There was great slaughter that day, 
 and a man of Benjamin ran from the army 
 and came to Shiloh where Eli waited. The 
 messenger said : " Israel is fled from before 
 the Philistines." This was sad news, but not 
 insurmountable. Then the man said : " Thy 
 sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead." This 
 was terrific, but not unbearable. Then the 
 messenger said : " The Ark of God is taken." 
 At that announcement Eli fell dead. The 
 Ark was unspeakably precious. We should 
 hesirtily sing : 
 
 " I love Thy kingdom. Lord, 
 The house of Thine abode, 
 The Church our blest Redeemer saved 
 With His own precious blood. 
 
 " I love Thy Church, O God ! 
 Her walls before Thee stand. 
 Dear as the apple of Thine eye, 
 And graven on Thine hand." 
 
 So after Decision Day let pastor and 
 teacher magnify the church, and so present 
 the real purpose of the church that those who 
 have made decision for Christ will see the 
 claim of the church upon them, and be led to 
 unite with it. To stop short of this goal is to 
 omit a very important matter in connection 
 with Sunday-school Decision Day. 
 
170 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Livingstone said one time: "The end of 
 the exploration is the beginning of the enter- 
 prise." And we must remember that the 
 end of the service on Decision Day is but the 
 beginning of the task we have undertaken. 
 
VI 
 
 HOW TO PREPARE A SUNDAY- 
 SCHOOL LESSON 
 
" Other things being equal, the difference between success 
 and failure in the work of a Sunday-school teacher is usually a. 
 matter of preparation. Ample, intelligent, and painstaking 
 preparation will often change what would otherwise be drudg- 
 ery into a satisfying pleasure." — Marion Lawrance. 
 
 " The teacher who ceases to grow ceases to teach. That is 
 why a Sunday-school lesson cannot be crammed. That is why 
 preparation for it must extend all through the week. Growth 
 cannot be ordered offhand. It comes from Father Time's 
 shop, and he is a deliberate workman. You will lose your hold 
 on your class if each Sunday hour does not begin with you a 
 little above them, and end with them at your level. This ad- 
 vance cannot be won Saturday night, or during the space be- 
 tween the first and second bells for Sunday-school. Such a 
 spasmodic leap ahead will leave you too much out of breath 
 even to tell them to come on." — Amos R. Wells. 
 
 •' There is nothing dramatic about the Sunday-school, but o! 
 all service it is the most real, essential and fruitful. If the 
 Church would once awake to this, the result would astonish it 
 and the world. This would mean the most real of revivals. 
 No spasmodic revival could compare with it. It is work that 
 begins at the right end ; it is positive, constructive, abiding, 
 fruitful beyond compare." — W, L. Watkinson. 
 
VI 
 
 How to Prepare a Sunday-School Lesson 
 
 IT is easier to give advice than to follow 
 it. There can be no inflexible method 
 outlined for the study of the Sunday- 
 school lesson. Different persons can suc- 
 cessfully adopt different methods. Different 
 lessons may require different modes of prep- 
 aration. 
 
 There are sovae preliftzinaries that we may 
 well consider before we come to the prepara- 
 tion of the lesson itself. 
 
 The teacher should know his class before 
 he can decide best how to prepare to teach 
 his class. He should know their spiritual 
 and mental condition, their social surround- 
 ings, and their home influences. He must 
 know their attainments and their needs before 
 he can bring the right supply. He must 
 know the scholar's lack, his ignorance, then 
 he may be able to offer the fitting knowledge. 
 It has been said that " we cannot make an- 
 other comprehend our knowledge until we 
 first comprehend his ignorance." 
 
 This knowledge of his class will help the 
 173 
 
174 1 he Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 teacher to settle upon an aim in his teach- 
 ing. If all in his class are Christians he will 
 not have just the same end in view as he 
 would if none were Christians. In one case 
 he will seek to confirm, to edify, to expand, 
 and to intensify ; in the other he will strive 
 more to bring to a decision for Christ. 
 
 Another preliminary we may consider is 
 our Lesson Helps. Every teacher needs a 
 Reference Bible, a concordance, a Bible dic- 
 tionary, and Bible maps. These are essen- 
 tial. A text-book that gives Bible references 
 by subjects is very valuable. After these 
 helps you may add Sunday-school journals, 
 commentaries, etc., as many as you have time 
 and money for. 
 
 We now come to the study of the lesson. 
 
 Begin early. Preparation on Saturday 
 night or Sunday morning is not adequate. 
 Give the lesson a chance to get into the fibre 
 of your being. Let its truths burn in your 
 heart. Pray during the week about the les- 
 son. Seek light and help from God. If you 
 begin early in your preparation you may 
 think of the lesson on the street, in the store, 
 in the shop, and wherever you may be at 
 work. 
 
 Another advantage of early preparation is 
 that illustrations will occur to you coming 
 
How to Prepare a Lesson 1 7 5 
 
 out of your own life, and one illustration of 
 your own is apt to be worth many borrowed 
 ones. It might not be so good for the printed 
 page, but the fact that it is your own will 
 lead you to present it with more spirit and 
 power. 
 
 Read the intervening verses and chapters 
 as well as the lesson. This will clear up 
 many things that might otherwise seem diffi- 
 cult. Our International Lessons, which we 
 do not criticize, are, nevertheless, a " hop, 
 skip, and jump " method of going through 
 the Bible. It cannot be otherwise. The 
 teacher is the person to counteract the weak- 
 ness of this plan. The teacher must supply 
 the connecting links. 
 
 Study the lesson at first without the lesson 
 Helps. Read it in the Accepted and Revised 
 Versions. Read parallel passages and side 
 references. Scripture often illuminates Scrip- 
 ture. What seems obscure in one place will 
 be made clear by a kindred passage. 
 
 Be independent of Lesson Helps as long as 
 you can. This will develop power. This 
 will require great determination. When you 
 find a difficulty do not do the easiest thing, 
 which is to turn and see what some one else 
 says about it. Do the best thing, study it, 
 find out what you think about it. Let com- 
 
176 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 mentaries, dictionaries, and journals alone 
 until you have done your best. The great 
 quantity of Lesson Helps used at the wrong 
 time is apt to produce a company of super- 
 ficial Bible students. Here is a really serious 
 danger. 
 
 Having studied the lesson carefully you 
 may then profitably see what others have to 
 say about it. You may then use all the 
 helps you can find. But if you have seen a 
 truth in the lesson and it has made a pro- 
 found impression upon you, do not leave that 
 truth to take up thoughts that others have 
 suggested. The truth that arrests your atten- 
 tion and grips you is the one for you to teach, 
 that is the truth that you can make live and 
 glow before your class in such a way as to 
 impress them. 
 
 One plan for the study of a lesson that has 
 had much favour is to ask the questions sug- 
 gested by "The Five W's " : "When? 
 Where? Whom? What? Why?" These 
 five questions answered concerning any 
 lesson will give the time of the lesson, the 
 geography of the lesson, the persons of the 
 lesson, the incidents of the lesson, and the 
 application of the lesson. 
 
 But beyond all helps and all methods is 
 the personality of the teacher. And it has 
 
How to Prepare a Lesson 177 
 
 been wisely said that those Lesson Helps are 
 the best which set you thinking", not those 
 which save you thinking. Study is a neces- 
 sity to the good teacher. It is not easy to 
 teach a Sunday-school lesson. No teacher 
 can lead his class up the clear heights of the 
 mountain of truth without study. 
 
 Ce7itre upon a feiv thoitghts rather than try 
 to discuss many thoughts. Find the great 
 central truth of the lesson and seek to make 
 everything illustrate, impress, and emphasize 
 that truth. The " golden text " generally 
 contains that truth. But as indicated above, 
 if some other truth has gripped you follow 
 where your interest lies. 
 
 Do not spend too much time on the 
 historical phase of the lesson. The time and 
 place of the lesson may well receive atten- 
 tion, for this is necessary for intelligent 
 study. But let there be suitable proportion 
 in the lesson period. If the lesson is about 
 Daniel in the lion's den do not plan to spend 
 half the time talking about the different 
 kinds of lions. A teacher said to her boys 
 one day : " Did you ever hear the story of 
 • Jack, the Giant-killer ' ? " " No ! " was the 
 response. " Well," said the teacher, " I will 
 tell you that story." Most of the lesson 
 period was consumed by the recital of that 
 
1 78 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 tale. Perhaps the subject of the Sunday- 
 school lesson was : " David and Goliath." 
 David was a giant-killer and brief reference 
 to the above story might be fitting, but to 
 allow it to usurp the whole lesson period 
 showed lack of sense of proportion. 
 
 To teach a Sunday-school lesson is not to 
 teach poetry, nor to tell pretty stories, nor to 
 present beautiful similes. All these may be 
 appropriately used to illustrate and impress 
 the great truths of the lesson. But here are 
 immortal souls before the teacher. They 
 live in a world of temptation and sin one 
 hundred and sixty-seven hours every week. 
 They are in the Sunday-school one hour 
 per week. The teacher has thirty minutes out 
 of one hundred and sixty-eight hours to im- 
 press them with divine truth. Here are 
 hearts that need help, encouragement, en- 
 lightenment, and guidance. They need the 
 truth concerning the deepest questions and 
 the most vital issues of life. The teacher 
 must not plan to feed them chaflf, they need 
 the bread of life. He must not give them 
 simply poetry, sentiment, similes, and flowers. 
 He must give them food suitable unto their 
 need. The teacher must select some vital, 
 inspiring, helpful truth and seek by every 
 means within his command to impress that 
 
^^How to Prepare a Lesson 179 
 
 truth upon them. He must illustrate it, 
 reillustrate it, repeat it, reiterate it, emphasize 
 it until it is burned into the souls of the mem- 
 bers of his class. He must not fail to make 
 them feel it. He must feel it himself, and 
 then they will be apt to feel it also. 
 
 In his approach to the scholar the teacher 
 must find the "line of least resistance." He 
 must find the plane on which his scholar 
 lives. Dr. H. Clay Trumbull ^ gives a fine 
 illustration of this. A teacher in a city mis- 
 sion school asked question after question of 
 a new little scholar without getting a satis- 
 factory answer. The boy did not know who 
 made him, who the first man was, who built 
 the ark, or who was cast into the lion's den. 
 In despair the teacher at last said : " Why, 
 my boy, what do you know ? " The boy's 
 face brightened and he answered cheerily : 
 " I know the ' head ' from the * tail ' of a 
 cent." The teacher for the first time knew 
 that boy's level. That boy had seen the 
 older boys pitch pennies, and he had learned 
 the difference between the " head " and the 
 " tail " of a cent. The penny could be used 
 as a starting point with that scholar. From 
 there the teacher could go on to tell what 
 Jesus said about the penny. 
 
 1" Teaching and Teachers," p. 170. 
 
l8o The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Du Bois ^ relates how the orientalist, 
 Canon Tristram, when in Ceylon addressed 
 an audience of native Christians through an 
 interpreter. He chose for his subject : "The 
 Good Shepherd." He says: "My inter- 
 preter told me afterwards that not one of my 
 hearers had ever seen a sheep, or knew what 
 it was. ' How then did you explain what I 
 said ? ' I asked. ' Oh/ he replied, ' I turned 
 it into a buffalo that had lost its calf and 
 went into the jungle to find it.' " That in- 
 terpreter had the instinct of a teacher. 
 
 The teacher must study the art of asking 
 questions. It is easy to ask questions if you 
 do not care how you ask them. It is difficult 
 to ask questions in such a way as to draw 
 out the thoughts of the scholars. 
 
 Some of the Lesson Helps years ago used 
 to print the questions with the answers 
 directly beneath. Some scholars would learn 
 these answers by rote. No matter what the 
 first question might be answer number one 
 would come. A teacher tells of his experi- 
 ence with one of the lessons. The topic for 
 the day was " The Walk to Emmaus." The 
 first question was, " Where is Emmaus ? " 
 The teacher recalled that the scholar to his 
 right was a boy who had been absent the 
 
 I " Point of Contact," p. 91. 
 
How to Prepare a Lesson 181 
 
 previous Sunday. The teacher asked : 
 "Where were you last Sunday, Joseph?" 
 Quick as a flash came back the answer : 
 " Seven and a half miles northwest of Jeru- 
 salem." He had answered the first printed 
 question : " Where is Emmaus ? " The 
 teacher said in mortified response : " Well, 
 you are certainly excusable for not being 
 here." 
 
 That to ask questions and receive answers 
 is a good method of teaching grows out of 
 the very nature of the mind. Bushnell used 
 to say : " We never know a thing until we 
 have said it." Professor Hart says : " The 
 knowledge is really not theirs (the pupils) 
 until they have reproduced it and given it 
 expression. They do not grasp it with a 
 clear and lasting apprehension until they 
 have expressed it in language. This is one 
 of the laws of mental action. We fix a thing 
 in our minds by communicating it to another ; 
 we make it plain to ourselves by the very 
 effort to give it explanation. Or, to state 
 the matter still more paradoxically, we learn 
 a thing by telling it to somebody ; we keep 
 it by giving it away." 
 
 Take only the Bible to the class. Do this 
 for the sake of your class and for your own 
 sake. It impresses the class with the thought 
 
l82 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 that you have mastered your lesson, that 
 you are not going to give them what others 
 think about the lesson, but what you feel is 
 the real message of the lesson. It makes 
 you prepare so that you are independent ; 
 the lesson has become a part of you. It 
 emphasizes the fact that the Bible is the one 
 great Book which is studied from week to 
 week. 
 
 Think often of the importance of your 
 work. This reflection is an important part 
 of your preparation. Abbott says : "If a 
 man builds nature straightway sets to work 
 ^^.'"'r to undo his building. Rust eats into the 
 iron and decay into the wood, and little by 
 little time ravages and destroys. But if man 
 plants nature proceeds to complete his un- 
 finished work." 
 
 The teacher is a sower. The seed he sows 
 is the Word of God. He plants truth in 
 human hearts. Its garnering shall be an 
 eternal harvest. The teacher seeks to save 
 hearts from the misery and thralldom of sin, 
 and to bind them in an everlasting covenant 
 to Christ our King. This is work worthy of 
 an archangel's endeavour. 
 
 When Dr. Kane had passed through six 
 months of arctic night he said that to be in 
 the sunlight was like bathing in perfumed 
 
How to Prepare a Lesson 183 
 
 waters. The Sunday-school teacher is to 
 keep young hearts from going into the arctic 
 midnight of sin, and to lead them forth into 
 the summer land of faith, and hope, and trust, 
 and noble living. 
 
 When the simoom is sweeping o'er the 
 desert with its poisonous breath as if from a 
 fiery furnace the Arabs fall prostrate on the 
 sand and hide from its withering breath. It 
 is the Sunday-school teacher's holy task to 
 keep young feet from the simoom of sin and 
 from the sirocco of sinful pestilence and 
 death. And if their scholars are already in 
 the simoom of sin to lead them to the feet 
 of Him who alone can save them from its 
 blighting breath. 
 
 It is sad to see little birds shivering in the 
 cold nest and no mother to sing her song to 
 the orphan brood, but the Sunday-school 
 teacher often brings the sweet lessons of 
 comfort and hope to orphan children, and 
 leads many to One who sticketh closer than a 
 brother. 
 
 Appreciate your work ! The factors that 
 enter into your task are God, and the Bible, 
 and immortal spirits, and destiny, and your- 
 self. Be patient. Eternity will reveal the 
 fidelity of your sowing, and if you go forth 
 even weeping now, but bearing precious 
 
184 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 seed, you shall yet come with rejoicing bring- 
 ing your sheaves with you. 
 
 Live the gospel you teach. A holy life 
 is an essential preparation for your sacred 
 work. Your life as an incarnation of the 
 truth you teach is a preparation no teacher y 
 can afford to neglect. The teacher's spirit, 
 life, character are an asset beyond all that 
 words can express. An incarnated gospel 
 speaks more potently than a written gospel. 
 
 " And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveHness of perfect deeds, 
 More strong than all poetic thought." 
 
 We need living gospels as well as written 
 gospels. When a true teacher stands before 
 his class he presents both. 
 
VII 
 
 SUNDAY-SCHOOL INSTALLATION 
 SERVICE 
 
" The church should extend its hand of welcome to ::he man 
 who consecrates his gifts to the work of teaching ic the Sab- 
 bath-school. A word of counsel and encouragement at that 
 important stage may have a most salutary effect upon his future 
 career. The public recognition would favourably impress the 
 church itself, and give the teacher increased power over his 
 scholars." — John H. Vincent. 
 
 " The formal installation of the officers and teachers elect of 
 the Sunday-school should generally obtain. It is more than a 
 matter of form. Impressively conducted, it becomes one of the 
 most profitable services of the Sunday-school year." 
 
 —JJ. M. Hamill. 
 
 " The benefits of a service for the installation of officers and 
 teachers must be apparent to all. It enables the pastor in a 
 vivid manner to call the attention of the whole church to the 
 importance of the Sunday-school work, and to impress upon the 
 officers and teachers their responsibility in the positions they 
 hold. Officers thus inducted into their office are apt to attach 
 more importance to their work than they otherwise would." 
 
 — Marion Lawrance. 
 
VII 
 
 Sunday-School Installation Service 
 
 THE Sunday-school officers and teach- 
 ers are the noblest volunteer army 
 in the world. To have a public 
 installation service for these devoted workers 
 is bestowing honour where honour is due. 
 It impresses the officers and teachers with 
 the thought of responsibility and obligation. 
 It gives dignity and significance to the work 
 done by the Sunday-school. It puts needed 
 emphasis upon the teaching function of the 
 church. An entire service may well be given 
 to it. The whole Sunday-school should be 
 invited to be present. The pastor should 
 preside, and he, or some invited minister, 
 should preach an appropriate sermon upon a 
 theme vital to the highest interests of the 
 Sunday-school. We give below a program 
 for such an occasion. 
 
 Order of Iitstallation Service 
 I. Organ voluntary, while the ushers con- 
 duct the officers and teachers to seats reserved 
 for them. 
 
 This chapter is used with the permission of the Board 
 of Sunday Schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
l88 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 2. Hymn : 
 
 Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace 
 
 Our path when wont to stray ; 
 Stream from the fount of heavenly grace, 
 
 Brook by the traveller's way. 
 
 Bread of our souls, whereon we feed, 
 
 True manna from on high ; 
 Our guide and chart, wherein we read 
 
 Of realms beyond the sky. 
 
 Word of the everlasting God, 
 
 Will of His glorious Son ; 
 Without thee how could earth be trod, 
 
 Or heaven itself be won ? 
 
 Lord, grant us all aright to learn 
 
 The wisdom it imparts ; 
 And to its heavenly teaching turn, 
 
 With simple, childlike hearts. Amen. 
 
 3. Collect : O Lord, the Author of spir- 
 itual life, who hast given unto us the good 
 seed of Thy Word ; grant that we may re- 
 ceive it into honest hearts ; and so gnard it 
 by Thy grace from the wiles of Satan and 
 the cares of this life, that the faith and hope 
 and love which Thou hast begotten may be 
 in us the beginning of life eternal, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 4. Prayer. 
 
 5. Anthem. 
 
 6. Responsive Scripture lesson : 
 Minister — And all the people gathered 
 
Sunday-School Installation Service 189 
 
 themselves together as one man into the 
 street that was before the water gate, and 
 they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the 
 book of the law of Moses, which the Lord 
 had commanded to Israel. — Neh. viii. i. 
 
 Congregation — And Ezra the priest 
 brought the law before the congregation 
 both of men and women, and all that could 
 hear with understanding, upon the first day 
 of the seventh month. — Neh. i. 2. 
 
 Minister — And he read therein before the 
 street that was before the water gate from 
 the morning until midday, before the men 
 and the women, and those that could under- 
 stand and the ears of all the people were at- 
 tentive unto the book of the law. — Neh. i. j. 
 
 Congregation — And Ezra the scribe stood 
 upon a pulpit of wood, and he opened the 
 book in the sight of all the people, and when 
 he opened it all the people stood up. — Neh. 
 i. 4, 5. 
 
 Minister — And Ezra blessed the Lord, the 
 great God. And all the people answered, 
 Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands ; 
 and they bowed their heads, and worshipped 
 the Lord with their faces to the ground. — 
 Neh. i. 6. 
 
 Congregation — And they caused the people 
 to understand the law ; and the people stood 
 in their place. So they read in the book in 
 the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, 
 and caused them to understand the reading. 
 — Neh. i. 7, 8. 
 
190 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Minister — When all Israel is come to ap- 
 pear before the Lord thy God in the place 
 which He shall choose, thou shalt read this 
 law before all Israel in their hearing. — Deut. 
 xxxi. II. 
 
 Congregation — Gather the people together, 
 men and women, and children, and the 
 stranger that is within thy gates, that they 
 may hear, and that they may learn, and fear 
 the Lord your God, and observe to do all the 
 words of this law. — Deut. xxxi. 12. 
 
 Minister — And all thy children shall be 
 taught of the Lord ; and great shall be the 
 peace of thy children. — Isa. liv. ij. 
 
 Congregation — Open Thou mine eyes that 
 I may behold wondrous things out of Thy 
 law. — Ps. cxix. 18. 
 
 Minister — Train up a child in the way he 
 should go ; and when he is old, he will not 
 depart from it. Bring the children up in the 
 nurture and admonition of the Lord. — Prov. 
 xxii. 6 ; Eph. vi. 4. 
 
 Congregation — Those that he planted in 
 the house of the Lord shall flourish in the 
 courts of our God. — Ps. xcii. ij. 
 
 Minister — And God hath set some in the 
 church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, 
 thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts 
 of healings, helps, governments, diversities 
 of tongues. — / Cor. xii. 28. 
 
 Congregation — Having then gifts differing 
 according to the grace that is given to us, 
 whether prophecy, let us prophesy according 
 
Sunday-School Installation Service 191 
 
 to the proportion of faith ; or ministry, let us 
 wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, 
 on teaching. — Rom. xii. 6, 7. 
 
 Minister — Feed the flock of God which is 
 among you, taking the oversight thereof, not 
 by constraint, but willingly ; not for filthy 
 lucre, but of a ready mind. — / Peter v. 2. 
 
 Congregation — That our sons may be as 
 plants grown up in their youth : that our 
 daughters may be as corner-stones, polished 
 after the similitude of a palace. — Ps. cxliv. 12. 
 
 Minister — I beseech you that ye walk 
 worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are 
 called. — Eph. iv. i. 
 
 Congregation — We would be meet for the 
 Master's use, and prepared unto every good 
 work. — 2 Tim. ii. 21. 
 
 7. Gloria Patri. 
 
 8. Offering. 
 
 9. Hymn : 
 
 Sow in the morn thy seed ; 
 
 At eve hold not thy hand ; 
 To doubt and fear give thou no heed, 
 
 Broadcast it o'er the land. 
 
 Thou knowest not which shall thrive, 
 
 The late or early sown ; 
 Grace keeps the precious germ alive, 
 
 When and wherever strown. 
 
 And duly shall appear, 
 
 In verdure, beauty, strength, 
 
 The tender blade, the stalk, the ear. 
 And the full corn at length. 
 
192 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 Thou canst not toil in vain ; 
 
 Cold, heat, and moist, and dry, 
 Shall foster and mature the grain 
 
 For garners in the sky. Amen. 
 
 10. The Installation Sermon and Pra.yer. 
 
 11. Responsive Service, minister, and of- 
 ficers and teachers standing : 
 
 Minister — The Church, led by the Holy 
 Spirit, has called you to your responsible posi- 
 tions. It is fitting that you make hearty re- 
 sponse to the following questions : 
 
 Will you seek to adorn the Gospel of Christ 
 in your daily living and prayerfully seek 
 preparation for your teaching ? 
 
 Officers and Teachers — We will study to 
 show ourselves approved unto God, work- 
 men that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly 
 dividing the word of truth. — 2 Tim. ii. 75. 
 
 Minister — What place does the Word of 
 God have in your work? 
 
 Officers and Teachers — Every Scripture in- 
 spired of God is also profitable for teaching, 
 for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
 which is in righteousness ; that the man of 
 God may be complete, furnished completely 
 unto every good work. — 2 Tifn. Hi. j6, ly. 
 
 Minister — Whence is your sufficiency for 
 your sacred task? 
 
 Officers and Teachers — Our sufficiency is 
 of God. For unto every one of us is given 
 grace according to the measure of the gift of 
 Christ. — 2 Cor. Hi. 5 ,• Eph. iv. 7. 
 
Sunday-School Installation Service 193 
 
 Minister — When tempted to become weary- 
 in well-doing, and to cease your work, what 
 may well be your answer ? 
 
 Officers and Teachers — I am doing a great 
 work, so that I cannot come down : why 
 should the work cease, whilst 1 leave it? — 
 Neh. vi. J. 
 
 Minister— Whsit does God say of the true 
 and faithful teachers ? 
 
 Officers and Teachers — And the teachers 
 shall shine as the brightness of the firma- 
 ment ; and they that turn many to righteous- 
 ness as the stars forever and ever.' — Dan. 
 xii. J. 
 
 Covenant 
 
 I propose to be exemplary in life, diligent 
 in study, devout in spirit, regular and punc- 
 tual in attendance, faithful according to my 
 ability, so that I may win, edify, and save 
 my scholars. 
 
 12. Consecration Prayer. 
 
 13. Hymn: 
 
 Lord, speak to me, that I may speak 
 
 In living echoes of Thy tone; 
 As Thou hast sought, so let me seek 
 
 Thy erring children lost and lone. 
 
 O teach me, Lord, that I may teach 
 The precious things Thou dost impart ; 
 
 And wing my words, that they may reach 
 The hidden depths of many a heart. 
 
 1 Marginal Reading. 
 
194 The Work of the Sunday-School 
 
 O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord, 
 
 Until ray very heart o'erflow 
 In kindling thought and glowing word, 
 
 My love to tell, Thy praise to show, 
 
 O use me, Lord, use even me. 
 
 Just as Thou wilt, and when, and where, 
 Until Thy blessed face I see, 
 
 Thy rest. Thy joy, Thy glory share. Amen. 
 
 14. Apostolic Benediction. 
 
Date Due 
 
 #»' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 _, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 
i'l'mi'l?lfIi''iS'il?'i"' S«mn.„.SpM, I 
 
 1 1012 01035 4159