SUNDAY SCHOOLS THE WORLD AROUND MM4ii "^.M^: ■^i^-m mmi^^-i$^} ;^i5J':';;;'''^- M:- ^WM i THE OFFICIAL REPORT OFTHE WORLD^S FIFTH SUNDAY SCHOOL CONVENTION ROME 1907 /. /?./*'- y* PRINCETON, N. J. *^ Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 1505 .W6 1907 World's Sunday-school convention 1907 : Sunday-schools the wor Id around SUNDAY SCHOOLS THE WORLD AROUND The Rev. F. B. Meyer. B.A. Great Britain. President of the World's Sunday-School Association. igo7 — ^^^^'" ""f/i^N JAN 19 1915 v%^ SUNDAY-SCHOOLS THE WORLD AROUND y THE OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE WORLD'S FIFTH SUNDAY-SCHOOL CONVENTION, IN ROME, MAY 18-23, 1907 EDITED BY Philip E Howard ••tOJ- Published by The World's Sunday-School Executive Committee George W. Bailey, Chairman, North American Building, Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. .^\ - . %v Copyright, igo?, by Philip E. Howard IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HER UNREMITTING AND DEVOTED INTEREST IN SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORK THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MRS. ELLA FORD HARTSHORN. WIFE OF THE CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL ASSOCIATION. The Call to Rome For the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention, May 20-23, 1907 To all who are interested in the work oj the Sunday-school throughout the world — Greeting: In the Acts of the Apostles we read that Paul, with his vision of a world opportunity, having determined to visit Jerusalem, said, ''After I have been there, I must also see Rome." In these later days, when that world of Paul's day has grown into a limitless opportunity for the followers of his Master and ours, it is most fitting that the World's Sunday School Convention, having met in Jerusalem, the birthplace of the Christian Church, should gather now in Rome, that world-center where the Christian Church fought an dwon its most notable triumphs. Imperial Rome — with its laws, its customs, its rulers, soldiers, and citizens — made up the environment within which the members of that early company of Christians gave themselves unsparingly, at any cost, to the cause of him whom they loved with a devotion not less than that of the great apostle. The Appian Way knew their footsteps; the Mamertine prison could not shut from heaven their fervent pleadings; the Coliseum ran with their blood and sounded with their dying songs of triumph; the Catacombs closed in upon them with a thick darkness which could not quench the flame of their Christian hope; and the Roman Forum daunted them not at all in its formidable pubhcity, when they must stand fearlessly for the rejected King whose willing bond-slaves they were. Everywhere in the City of the Seven Hills are memorials of that early struggle for the supremacy of Christ, a warfare waged by men and women to whom our debt is immeasur- vi Edward K. Warren, United States of America, President of the World's Sunday-School Convention. 1Q04-1Q07. The Call to Rome able. And there on every hand, in its ancient ruins, in its public buildings, in its cathedrals and treasures of art, Rome holds for any sojourner within its gates a revelation of world-history, incomparably fascinating in its breadth and significance. Even as an earnest religious sentiment drew the World's Fourth Sunday School Convention to Jerusalem, so now it has seemed good to. us — under the guidance, we believe, of the Holy Spirit — to accept the cordial and unanimous invitation of the Italian National Sunday School Committee to hold the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention in Rome. Your executive committee, therefore, officially announces that the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention will be held in the City of Rome, May 20-23 inclusive, in the year 1907, and invites all who are interested in the work and progress of the Sunday-school to be present. For Great Britain: F. F. Belsey, Edward Towxrs, Frank Johnson, William MacDonald Sinclair, J. Monro Gibson, W. H. Groser, Charles Waters, J. E. Balmer, Frank Clem- ents, G. Shipway, C. J. Cuthbertson. For Germany: Count Bernstorff. For Sweden: Prince Bernadotte. For Italy: Henry J. Piggott. For Switzerland: William Burt. For Mexico: John W. Butler. For Canada: S. P. Leet, J. W. Flavelle, Henry L. Lovering. For the Ufiited States: Edward K. Warren, WiUiam N. Hartshorn, H. J. Heinz, John Wanamaker, F. A. Wells, Marion Lawrance, Lucy A. Winston, H. H. Bell, A. B. McCrilHs, W. J. Semelroth, J. D. Haskell. George W. Bailey, Chairman, North American Building, Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. March 26, 1906. vii The International Lesson Committee AMERICAN SECTION Rev. John Potts, D.D., LL.D., Chairman, from 1896-1907 Toronto, Ontario. Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D., Secretary, 105 East 22nd St New York, N. Y. Rev. B. B. Tyler, D.D Denver, Colo. Pres. J. S. Stahr, D.D., LL.D Lancaster, Pa. Prof. John R. Sampey, D.D Louisville, Ky, John R. Pepper Memphis, Tenn. Rev. Mosheim Rhodes, D.D St. Louis, Mo. Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D., LL.D Denver, Col. Rev. Elson I. Rexford, M. A., LL.D Montreal, Quebec. Prof. Ira M. Price, Ph.D Chicago, Illinois. Rev. O. P. Gifford, D.D Buffalo, N. Y. Prin. Wm. Patrick, D.D Winnipeg, Manitoba. Prof. Chas. R. Hemphill, D.D Louisville, Ky. Edwin L. Shuey, M.A Dayton, Ohio. Pres. Wm. Douglas MacKenzie, D.D Hartford, Conn. BRITISH SECTION Rev. Alfred Rowland, D.D., LL.D., Chair- man London, England. W. H. Groser, B.Sc, Secretary London, England. Charles Waters London, England. Edward ToWers Saxmundham, Eng. Rev. C. H. Kelly London, England. Bishop Frank W. Warne, D.D Lucknow, India. Archibald Jackson Melbourne, Australia. F. F. Belsey, J. P London, England. Rev. R. Culley London, England. Rev. Frank Johnson London, England. Rev. S. S. Henshaw Leeds, England. Frederic Taylor London, England . Rev, Prof. S. W. Green, M.A London, England. Rev. Alex. Connell, M.A., B.D Liverpool, England. Rev. Prof. A. E. Garvie, M.A., D.D London, England. Prin. W. F. Adeney, M.A , D.D Manchester, England. Prof. A. S. Peake, M. A., B.D Manchester, England. viii The Rev. Dr. John Potts, Toronto, Canada. Born May 3, 1838. Entered into rest October 16, 1907. Chairman of the International Lesson Committee from i8q6 to 1Q07. Contents PAGE The Boston Meetings and Reception i-g George W. Penniman, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. The Cruise of the Romanic g-20 James W. Kinnear, Pittsburg, Pa., President of "The Rome Pilgrims." The Cruise of the Neckar 20-37 Philip E. Howard, Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. The Convention Itself 38-53 Philip E. Howard. The Claim of the Child 54-70 The Rev. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, London, Eng. A Quiet Half Hour with the Rev. F. B. Meyer, B. A., London, England 70-76 The Sunday School Exposition 76-78 The Rev. Dr. C. R. Blackall, Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. The Footsteps of Paul in Rome 79-1 18 The Rev. Dr. J. Gordon Gray, Rome, Italy. Africa 118-127 Bishop J. C. Hartzell, Madeira Islands. The Home Department 127-136 Dr. W. A. Duncan, Syracuse, N. Y., U. S. A. Quiet Half Hour 136-141 The Rev. Dr. G. CampbeU Morgan. Foundation Truths for Children 141-149 Mrs. Mary Foster Bryner, Peoria, 111., U. S. A. The Sunday School Organized for Service 149-156 Marion LawTance, General Secretary International Sunday School Association, Chicago, 111., U. S. A. The Great Apostle 156-167 The Rev. Dr. G. CampbeU Morgan. The Sunday School as a Missionary Force 168-176 A. C. Monro, London, England. The Oneness of Believers 176-184 The Rev. F. B. Meyer, B. A. The International Bible Reading Association 184-189 Charles Waters, London, England. The World's Sunday School Visitation 192 ix Contents PAGE Reports from the World Field The Work of the Continental Sunday School Mission 193-197 Charles Waters North Africa 197-199 The Rev. J. J. Cooksey, Sousse, North Africa. Austria 199-201 Professor C. J. Haberl, Vienna, Austria. Belgium 201-203 The Rev. Henri Anet, M. A., B. D., Lize-Seraing Belgium. Bohemia 204-206 The Rev. Dr. A. W. Clark, Prague, Bohemia. Bohemia and Moravia 206-209 The Rev. J. S. Porter, Prague, Bohemia. Bulgaria 209-215 The Rev. T. T. Holway, M. A., Samokove, Bulgaria. The Bible Among the Bulgarians 215-218 John G. Setchanoff, Philippopolis, Bulgaria. The Story of Organized Work in China 218-222 The Rev. Frank A. Smith, Haddonfield, N. J., U. S. A. Congo Free State 222-225 The Rev. Joseph Clark, Ikoko, Congo Free State. Denmark 225-228 P. D. Koch, M. D., Copenhagen, Denmark. Egypt 228-233 The Rev. Chauncey Murch, Luxor, Egypt (with words from native pastors). France 233-243 Rev. Charles Bieler, B. D., and Madame Blanche d'Aubigne Bieler, Paris, France. Germany 243-250 Professor J. G. Fetzer, Wandsleek, and Pastor Friedr. Kaiser, Bonn, Germany. Greece 250-255 The Rev. Dr. Demetrius Kalopothakis, Athens, Greece. Great Britain 255-259 F. F. Belsey, J. P., London, England. Hungary 259-264 The Rev. Gyula Forgacs, Budapest, Hungary. X Contents PAGE Italy 264-266 Professor Dr. Cav. Ernesto Filippini, Rome, Italy. India 266-274 Principal Cotelingam, Wardlaw College, Bellary, India, and the report of the Rev. Richard Purges, Secretary of the India Sunday School Union. Japan 274-288 Frank L. Brown, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A. Korea 288-292 The Rev. John G. Dunlop, Fakui, Japan. Korea 293-297 Frank L. Brown. Mexico 298-299 Compiled from reports of the Rev. Dr. John W. Butler, Mexico City, and the Rev. C. Scott Williams, San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Negroes in America 3°o~3°6 Dr. James E. Shepard, Durham, N. C, U. S. A. Norway 306-309 The Rev, J. M. Sellevold, Christiania, Norway. Palestine 309-311 The Rev. A. E. Thompson, Jerusalem. Russia 311-316 Herr John Hanisch, Zyrardow, Russia. Spain 316-317 The Rev. Francisco Albricias, Alicante, Spain. Sweden 318-321 August Palm, Stockholm, Sweden. Switzerland 321-323 G. de Tscharner, Berne, Switzerland. Turkey 324-33° The Rev. Dr. Thomas D. Christie, Tarsus, Asia Minor. United States 33°-3S3 W. N. Hartshorn, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Hawaii 333-335 Represented on the Convention Program by the Rev. E. B. Turner, of Honolulu. The West Indies 335-34° Dr. Frank Woodbury, Halifax, N. S.; W. C. Pearce, Chicago, 111.; Rev. Dr. W. Scott Whittier, Port of Spain, Trinidad. xi Contents PAGE The Significance of the Convention 340-342 The Rev. Dr. N. Walling Clark, Rome, Italy. A Closing Message 342-343 Dr. George W. Bailey, Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. President Meyer's Closing Words 344-346 "Arise, Let Us Go Hence" 346-349 The Rev. Dr. B. B. Tyler, Denver, Colorado, U. S. A. " The Architect of the Amphitheatre" 350-353 Poem by the Rev. Walter J. Mathams, Orkney Isles, Great Britain. Appendix World Statistics of the Sunday School 357 World's Sunday School Conventions Previously Held 358 Officers of the World's Fourth Sunday School Convention, Jerusalem, 1904 358 The World's Sunday School Association, officers elected at the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention, Rome, 1907 359-362 Comitato Esecutivo (Executive Committee) and Local Committees of the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention 362-364 The Program 364-369 Purpose — Policy — Field of the World's Sunday School Asso- ciation 370-371 Resolutions 37^-375 The International Lesson Committee Meeting in London 376-385 A Morning Worship 386-390 The Rev. Henry Christopher McCook, D. D., LL.D. Sc. D., Devon, Pa. U. S. A. Order of Service of International Praise 390-394 Rev. Carey Bonner, London, England. The Apostle Paul in Rome 394-398 An Order of Service for World's Sunday School Day, by the Rev. Dr. James A. Worden, Philadelphia, U. S. A. Cable Messages 398-399 " The Rome Pilgrims " 399 The " Romanic Elementary Union " 399 The List of Enrolled Delegates 400-409 The Report of the Enrolment Committee 410-412 Index 413-420 xii F. F. Belsey, J. P.. Great Britain, Preaident First World's Sunday-School Convention, London, List of Illustrations OPPOSITE PAGE The Rev, F. B. Meyer, B. A Frontispiece . . . ii Edward K. Warren vi F. F. Belsey, J. P xii The Rev. Dr. John Potts viii The World's Sunday School Executive Committee i The Automobile Ride in Boston 4 Off for the Automobile Ride in Boston 6 The "Romanic" of the White Star Line Sailing from Boston, April 27, 1907 9 E. K. Warren, W. N. Hartshorn, Dr. Geo. W. Bailey, A. B. McCrillis 14 The "Neckar" of the North German Lloyd in the Harbor of Naples 20 Delegates on the "Neckar " 26 Missionaries in the Court of the Algiers Mission Band 34 The Methodist Building 38 A Message from the King of Italy 40 President Roosevelt's Letter 43 Pastor Basche, Pastor J. M. Sellevold, Mr. G. Nesse, Rev. Joseph Clark, Miss Italia Garibaldi, Demetrius Kalopothakis, The Rev. E. B. Turner, Mrs. E. B. Waterhouse 44 Delegates Meeting in Coliseum, with Marion La^^Tance Reading the Scriptures 50 The Canadian Delegation 52 A Glimpse of the Exhibit 76 Puteoli, Paul's Landing-place, near Naples 79 Tomb of Sextus Pompeius Justus 80 Tomb of M. Cor\dnus Cotta 82 The Servian Wall at the Porta Capena Gate 84 The Traditional House of St. Paul in Rome 86 The Basilica of the Palatine 92 The Aqueduct of Claudius 104 The Servian Wall on the Southern Slope of the Aventine no Tomb of Caius Cestius 112 Basilica of St. Paul's Church, Rome 116 xiii List of Illustrations PAGE Rev. J, G. Dunlop, Rev. Carey Bonner, Marion Lawrance, Prof. Cav. Ernesto Filippini 150 Missionary Circles" 168 'The King's Bags" 172 A Missionary Contributions Thermometer 176 Missionaries in Attendance at the Convention, with Members of the Executive Committee 193 Delegates from Bohemia 204 Delegates from Bulgaria 210 Delegates from Denmark 226 The Egyptian Delegates 230 Pastor Henri Anet, Pastor Emile Lenoir, Mr. Chas. Lenoir, Madam A. Bieler, Pastor A. Bieler, Mademoiselle Delord 234 The German Delegation 244 The British Delegation 256 The Hungarian Delegates 260 Delegates from India 266 Delegates from Japan 274 Delegates from Palestine 308 Miss Canada Howie, Ghosn-el-Howie, Miss Rubie Howie Mr. Edward Y. Spurr 310 Spain and Portugal 316 The Swedish Delegates 320 Delegates from the Levant 324 The American Delegation 332 The Delegates in the Coliseum, May 23, 1907 350 The Joint Meeting of the British and American Sections of the International Lesson Committee, London, June 19-21, 1907 , 378 "Amen, Hallelujah!" (Words and Music) 394 xiv .Z °^ V = =-|5« C •- ^' "« £ 2 «Q ii J= Z a^ c ^^a c^^ i: « . - « (A i 03 a; S r := -*— ' E z S^ S:| E o .. x: >i 1- -- 1 u ^ <• < u m .. > 3 •S ^ ^ c = ■r - .- ^ 5 X ^-11^^-^ m CU . : C3 c i; u >, T3 3 C/0 _2 ^ ^ - 03 ^ ^ C/) N u. 2 .^ ^ d i u: >- c • X o 5 s^I^ i^-z^'^ 'i -^ ^ y) - o 1/5 ^§1^5 E ■^ i" £ 1 S ^ 5 o ^ t — x: ... rt (L> :• - J5 5 > O o < ■^O o:: .• 5 E ^ ii Q I/) U, -^ ----- ^ ;^ ■O O) Cm-'™ a (/3 X a > The Boston Meetings and Reception By George W. Penniman The presence in Boston, Friday, April 26, 1907, of more than three hundred representative Sunday-school workers of the United States and Canada — scheduled to sail Sat- urday, April 27, on the White Star Line Steamer Romanic for the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention in Rome, May 18-23 — ^^'^s greatly appreciated by the Sunday-school workers of Boston and vicinity. The Boston Daily Globe, April 27, devoted nearly four columns, with illustrations, to a report of the reception accorded the distinguished visitors. The Globe said: "Nearly all the delegates arrived in Boston by Thursday and their advent was made the occasion of an exhibition of that enthusiastic and tactful hospitality with which Boston delights to welcome visitors who come for a special purpose. ''These guests were joined by the members of the Inter- national Lesson Committee, which had been in session here this week at the Hotel Brunswick, and the combined com- pany were taken in hand by a committee headed by Dr. Samuel B. Capen, president of the International Sunday School Convention of 1906, while associated with him v/ere William N. Hartshorn and ten presidents and ex-presidents of Massachusetts Sunday-school organizations and denom- inational clubs. "The first incident was a reception by Lieutenant-Gov- ernor Draper at the State House in the 'Hah of Flags,' followed by an automobile ride through the most beautiful portions of the city. In this the committee had the assistance of E. J. Woolley, prominent in Boston's business circles, through whose influence a large number of automobile dealers tendered the use of some of their best machines for the occasion. Although the streets were dry and the wind high, causing discomfort from dust, the participants voted the ride a success and were greath- pleased with the sightseeing. I I Sunday Schools the World Around ''An informal reception at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W. N. Hartshorn, 54 The Fenway, was tendered the guests. Among those present were: Mr. H. J. Heinz, Mr. E. K. Warren and wife, Mr. F. A. Wells and wife, Mr. Marion Lawrance, the Rev. B. B. Tyler, D.D., and wife, the Rev. Dr. O. P. Gifford, the Hon. John R. Pepper, President W. D. McKenzie, President J. S. Stahr, LL.D., Mr. A. B. McCrillis and wife, Mr. John D. Haskell and wife, and many others. This reception was followed by a reception and banquet at Ford Hall. Here opportunity was given for the delegates to become acquainted with each other, and the hour before entering the banquet hall was fiUed with introductions and the renewal of friendships. "After-dinner speeches were 'hmited to five minutes,' as per announcement, but the bottled-up eloquence could not escape fast enough to give the ten men on the program time, and five of them had to content themselves with applauding the others. "Mr. Hartshorn caUed the assembly to order, and after the doxology and a prayer by Prof. Ira M. Price, the Hon. Robert F. Raymond, of New Bedford, president of the Massachusetts Sunday School Association, was introduced as chairman. "The speakers, in addition to Mr. Hartshorn and Presi- dent Raymond, were: the Rev. Dr. B. B. Tyler, of Colorado, president of the International Convention of 1902; the Rev. Dr. E. I. Rexford, principal of the Diocesan College in Montreal, and the Rev. O. P. Gifford, of Buffalo, formerly pastor of the Warren Avenue Baptist Church of this city. "A vote of thanks for the abounding hospitality of Boston was proposed by the Rev. J. C. Massee, of North Carolina, and carried by a rising vote of the visitors. Among other things, the resolutions said, 'Many entertainers have done excellently, but the Boston Sunday-school workers have ex- celled them all. The courtesies extended have been unusual Boston Meetings and Reception and picturesque. To this delightful day the automobile owners of the city have contributed in a magnificent ride about Boston. We are heartily grateful and pledge renewed allegiance to our great work. We are sure that the fellow- ship of this day will add appreciably to the pleasure of the coming voyage, and the value of the convention.' ''The gathering broke up shortly before 8 o'clock, and all proceeded to Tremont Temple, where a large audience had already assembled. "After an opening service of song led by Charles L. Estey, of Brockton, Hon. Samuel B. Capen, LL.D., the presiding officer of the evening, called upon the Rev. Dr. P. S. Henson, pastor of Tremont Temple, to read the Scriptures, and Prof. Charles R. Hemphill, of Louisville, Kentucky, to offer praver." In his opening remarks Dr. Capen, referring to the presence of the distinguished Sunday-school workers, the guests of the evening said, "They represent one of the greatest movements of all the ages," and he added," Blot out the work which these gentlemen are doing, and what has been done during the past twenty-five years, and you have put back the coming of the Kingdom by a century." To the Reverend Dr. A. F. Schauffler, of New York, Secretary of the Lesson Committee was given the topic "Why the Present International Lesson System?" He said in part: "Time was in the Sunday-school world when every school and almost every teacher did as they did in Israel at a certain time, that is, did as seemed good in their own eyes in the matter of portions of Scripture to be studied. Sometimes in a given school varied helps were used in the same session. "It was noticed by leaders thirty-seven years ago that sometimes the Old Testament was almost entirely abandoned or, at least, not studied. It was noticed that sometimes the lessons got into the Epistle to the Romans, and whenever they got there they never got out. It was confusion worse 3 Sunday Schools the W^orld Around confounded in the Sunday-school world from a pedagogical standpoint. "The result was that before 1872, leaders like B. F. Jacobs, J. H. Vincent, now Bishop, Edward Eggleston, and others of that type got together to see whether some im- provement could not be made along the line of Sunday- school study of the Word of God. That was the genesis of the International Uniform Lesson System. We now are in the outflowering and fruitage of that movement which started thirty-five years ago. ''The evolution of the International Lesson System has made millions and millions pulsate to the great thoughts of divine revelation from Sabbath to Sabbath. This power in uniformity has been felt in the Sunday-school world from California to Maine, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the new world to the old. Thus it is, that every Sunday the vastly major part of the Sunday-school world turns to the same theme in the same book, for the study of the same truth, under the guidance of the same Spirit. " It is not without significance that in India alone, for example, the International lessons are translated into forty different languages and dialects. It is not without sig- nificance that in New Zealand and Australia, Cape Colony and India, Japan, Corea and China, as well as Europe and America, they are pulsating in the realm of Sunday-school thought, to the same purpose and the same desire and the same supreme end, and are traveling along the same path- way. This is what the International system of lessons has been, under the blessing of God, able to reach, and this, by the blessing of God, it shall continue to prosecute to the best of its ability. " Has the International system become outworn ? I am one of those who believe that it has not. Although still international, and still largely pulsating along the same general lines, there will, undoubtedly, be gradations of lessons according to age and intelligence of scholars. 4 '// " Boston Meetings and Reception " Our Lesson Committee, which has sat here in this beau- tiful city of Boston during the last two and a half days, has made up its mind to recommend to the International Con- vention, to be held in Louisville 'next year, a quadruple graded system; first, for beginners, uniform; and then for primaries, uniform among ourselves; then a general lesson for those above the primary ages; and then an advanced course — a quartet which will make sweet music, holding us together, however, with international sympathies, under international guidance, and with international aims in view." Professor Ira M. Price, Ph.D., of Chicago University, a member of the Lesson Committee, presented a clear view of ''The Lesson Committee at Work," and told "How the Lessons are Selected." Of the personnel of the Committee elected at the Denver International Convention, in 1902 — (the Committee being selected for a period of six years — the next one to be chosen by the Louisville Convention in June, 1908) — he said: "The Lesson Committee consists of fifteen men, three from Canada, and twelve from the United States. Denom- inationally, there are three Baptists, three Methodists, three Presbyterians, one Congregationalist, one Disciple, one Episcopalian, one German Reformed, one Lutheran, and one United Brethren. According to ecclesiastical orders there are twelve ordained ministers and three laymen. "As to their present occupation, there are eight who are professors or officials in educational institutions, five are pastors or doing work closely related to the pastorate, and two are business men. Geographically these men are distributed as follows: One in Montreal, one in Toronto, one in Winnipeg, two in Denver, one in St. Louis, one in Chicago, tw^o in Louisville, one in Memphis, Tenn.; one in Dayton, Ohio; one in Buffalo, one in Lancaster, Pa., one in New York City and one in Hartford, Conn. " The Lesson Committee is a composite of nine different 5 Sunday Schools the World Around denominations, with fifteen different points of view on details and but one point of view on essentials. " According to the dictates of the International Conven- tion this committee works under the following restrictions: (i) It must cover the Bible in a course of studies embracing six years' work, or two hundred and eighty-eight lessons. (2) There have been determined for us the kinds of courses for which we must select lessons, viz., a beginners' course, a general course, and an advanced course. (3) There are certain kinds of lessons which we must interject into the general course at specified times in the year. For example, we must provide for one temperance lesson every quarter. In spite of the restrictions laid upon us, we have appeals every year for the incorporation into the scheme of a lesson or lessons on almost every subject on which reforms are being inaugurated or carried out. " After the Committee has carefully gone over the lessons of a given year, they are printed and sent out to seventy-two publishers and lesson writers in all parts of the world, who are asked to send in their suggestions and criticisms for another revision. When we meet the following year all the criticisms sent in are carefully classified by the secretary, taken up and gone over minutely by the Lesson Committee, with the proof lessons before them. I have here in my hands over one hundred and twenty-five suggestions that have come in from Great Britain and India and America for our consideration in the final revision of the lessons for 1909. In our three full sessions, covering forty-eight lessons, we changed and modified thirty-one themes, thirty-three Golden Texts, twenty-two lesson assignments, nine com- mittal verses, and we cut out six lessons and inserted six new lessons. " The lessons we use are the result of the work of a sub- committee of the entire Lesson Committee present on one occasion, of the criticisms of all the leaders in the Sunday- school world, revised by the Lesson Committee, and then 6 Wk ^ S ^ '" ft ^ M E ^ I «l »i 11 hi :s %«; f: Boston Meetings and Reception put into your hands. The entire Sunday-school world has a hand in it, and it is done in as thorough a manner as our Lesson Committee knows how to do it. We do the w^ork just as faithfully and carefully as we know how. In all the work that the Lesson Committee does, its chief purpose and highest aim is to serve our day and generation and to promote the glory of God on earth." An interesting paper on ''The Lesson Editors and Writers at W'ork," prepared by the Reverend F. N. Peloubet, D.D., of Newton, Mass., was read by Prof. Amos R. W^ells, Managing Editor of The Christian Endeavor W^orld, and Associate Editor of "Peloubet's Notes." Mr. Marion Lawrance, General Secretary of the Inter- national Sunday School Association, gave a graphic review of the Association's endeavors in answering the question: "Why Organized Sunday-school Work?" and represented the Executive Committee as an archer, ready wdth a good bow and wath a quiver full of arrows; every arrow^ to be shot at a bull's-eye of the target, and every arrows with a name. He cited as the names of some of these arrows: "Co-opera- tion," "Stimulation," "Education," "Evangelization," "InteUigent Bible Study," "Organized Classes," and many more, adding "and still another that is to be shot after all the others, right into the bull's-eye of our target, the arrow of "salvation," which stands for the saving of all of our scholars and bringing into the church all the members of the Sunday-school. W'e believe that all of our Sunday-schools should teach first of all toward Jesus Christ, and then toward the church, to which the Sunday-school belongs. Mr. Lawrance closed by saying: "It is the purpose of this great committee to shoot these arrows into the very bull's- eye of the target, and they use always and ever the same good bow, and that good bow is ' organized Sunday-school work.' Friends, there is no other agency or agencies that will place these arrows, and all the others in the quiver, where they ought to be, so quickly, so cheaply, and so effec- 7 Sunday Schools the World Around lively as ' Organized Sunday-school Work,' through its fifteen thousand Sunday-school conventions every year, held in every corner of our land." ''What One State is Doing," was told in an entertaining manner by Mr. H. J. Heinz, President of the Pennsylvania State Association. Pennsylvania is carrying its work into every county in the state, every county being organized and holding an annual convention. There are one million six hundred thousand boys and girls, officers and teachers. One-fourth of the total population of the "Keystone" State is enrolled in Sunday-schools. Our state lays especial emphasis on teacher-training. It recognizes that the great demand of the Sunday-school is for trained teachers, a well-prepared course of study, an enthusiastic superintendent, and more students enrolled than in any other state in the Union. Last year over two thousand were graduated. It has divided the state into districts and placed a super- i ntendent in charge of every district. In this way each of the sixty-seven counties comes into close touch with the indi- vidual school. It provides annually over $20,000 for the state work and expends that sum under the supervision of a Board of Directors, who have for years been serving in that capacity and who give as close and direct attention to the work of the organization as if it were a large railroad corporation or mercantile institution. The several counties provided as much more in addition for their local work. Mr. E. K. Warren, Three Oaks, Mich., President of the World's Fourth Sunday School Convention, presented some of the plans of "The World's Fifth Sunday School Convention in Rome," and aroused keen interest in the coming gathering. In the absence of the Reverend Dr. John Potts, of Toronto, Chairman of the Lesson Committee, who was to have given an address on "Arise, let us go hence," the presiding officer called on Mr. W. N. Hartshorn, Chairman of the Inter- 8 The Cruise of the Romanic national Executive Committee, who spoke the closing words of the great meeting. The Cruise of the Romanic By James W. Kinnear, President of the Rome Pilgrims Association. The Sunday-schools of Boston entertained most hos- pitably all pilgrims to the World's Sunday School Conven- tion the day before the Romanic sailed. An automobile ride through the suburbs of Boston was arranged for our benefit, and those who took the ride, for reasons of their own, will not forget it. Mr. and Mrs. Hartshorn tendered us a Inception in their beautiful home on the Fenway, Boston. In the evening a banquet was spread for us at the Ford Building, after which a mass meeting was held at Tremont Temple; and if the good wishes of our Boston friends had anv efficacy a pleasant trip was assured before we embarked. Early Saturday morning, April 27, we were driven to the White Star dock, where we found already hundreds of passengers and their friends crowding the decks of the good ship Romanic which was to be our home for so many days. As the hour of departure approached the whistles blew, the gong was sounded repeatedly, and all visitors ordered ashore. Slowly the great vessel began to move out of the slip away from the dock amid the cheers and tears of pil- grims and friends. After the liner had cleared the heads and we could no longer distinguish our friends, we stood tenderly watching the rapidly receding shores of our native land. Some of us had never placed the great ocean between us and home before, and so you will understand why it was necessary 9 Sunday Schools the World Around for us as the outlines of land grew fainter and fainter to swallow vigorously several times in order to keep our hearts in their proper places. As the swell of the broad Atlantic became more noticeable and land had faded from view, we turned our attention to our traveling companions. What an assemblage of Christian people of all evangelical denominations! Nearly every state and territory in the Union, together with Canada and Hawaii, had contributed to our passenger list. We were a representative crowd. There were old and young, serious and gay; in fact, all sorts, but every w^here the spirit of Christian fellowship prevailed. Hourly w^e expected the gentle swell of the Atlantic to increase in proportion, and many were armed with smelling salts, chewing gum, etc., prepared to meet any swell that might be developed; but the seas continued smooth and the breezes gentle, and no foe worthy of our preparations presented itself. There were nine hundred and ninty-nine human souls on board our ship as we sailed out of Boston harbor. Of these two hundred and forty-six constituted the crew, three hundred and thirty-five first-class passengers and four hundred and eighteen steerage passengers. We had no second-class passengers. All barriers between first and second class passengers on ship-board were removed and all our pilgrims traveled first-class, having exactly the same service in both forward and aft dining saloons. Sunday morning, April 28, we found our good ship in the midst of a dense fog, supposed to be caused by the warm water of the Gulf Stream in which we were then sailing coming in contact with cold strata of air; and the great whistle of the steamer sounded every minute, much to our discomfort. At ten o'clock we assembled in the dining saloon, prayers were read by the ship's Purser, Mr. Rodgers, and Dr. Tyler, of Denver, preached an able sermon from the second 10 The Cruise of the Romanic part of the twelfth verse of the second chapter of Acts, "What meaneth this?" At three o'clock in the afternoon we attended the Romanic Sunday-school in the same place, and at eight o'clock in the evening a song and praise service. Every morning at the hour of ten a praise service was held lasting forty-five minutes. These meetings were well attended. Throughout the meetings the music was in charge of the Rev. E. M. Fuller, of Vermont, assisted by Miss Jean Wormley, of Tennessee, at the piano; by Mrs. Geo. W. Penniman of Massachusetts, contralto soloist; Mr. and Mrs. W. B. Wilson of Rhode Island, in duets; and by a quartet consisting of Miss E. L. F. Gary of Rhode Island, Mrs. Mary Foster Bryner of Illinois, Mr. E. G. Foster of Ghicago, and the Rev. J. L. Peacock of Rhode Island. We venture that never were so many religious and social meetings held upon this steamer during any of her voyages. Everything had been arranged for our comfort on ship- board. In fact, our great ship was verily a floating hotel, but deep down in the hold where the boilers and stokers are located we knew that many men were shoveling the coal which propelled our great ship on its crusade journey, and our hearts echoed- a fervent amen as Marion Lawrance prayed one morning for the officers and men. The bugle calls became a part of our daily life, and we looked forward to them with pleasure. It was not the life of the ordinary transatlantic traveler; we were a band of Christians making the same journey, upon the same mission, to wit, the extension of our Master's kingdom through the medium of the Sunday-school; and there was a bond of sympathy which bound us closely together. In our morn- ing walks, in our social gatherings, while sightseeing ashore, no matter where, we were constantly forming new and de- lightful friendships. After being out of sight of land for so many days we were really hungering for something more substantial than the II Sunday Schools the World Around briny deep, and so when the word came from the captain's cabin one morning that land was in sight we all hastened to the side of the vessel and scanned the horizon in every direction for a glimpse of terra firma. Finally, with the aid of glasses, on the port side we could see an outline which resembled a cloud just where the sky seemed to dip into the ocean, but it grew larger rapidly until we could distinctly see the outlines of hills and mountains. This land was one of the Azores. We passed it by, but were told that the next morning at five o'clock we would drop anchor in front of the island St. Michael, w^here for the first time in seven days we would be permitted to stand upon solid earth. When we stepped on deck Friday morning, May 3, we found our ship anchored in the little harbor in front of Ponta Delgada, a city of 18,000 inhabitants, on the Island of St. Michael. Here we found an interesting people under the Portuguese government and a quaint old town which furnished Chris- topher Columbus a resting-place on his return from his first trip to the West Indies. Here, too, we caught our first glimpse of the extreme poverty which prevails in so many parts of Europe and Asia. After a drive through the narrow streets of the town a little mission church was visited. Here three sisters by the name of Wright from England had founded an independent mission, erected a small Protestant Church, which they had maintained for years. These devoted Christian women have given the best years of their lives to this work, making many sacrifices in order to maintain it, and although, as we afterwards learned, they were hard pressed for money, they did not ask for a cent. This was in striking contrast to the throng of people w^hich beset us clamoring for money wherever we appeared in the streets. The earnestness of these women and their quiet faith that the Lord would provide for them and their work made The Cruise of the Romanic a wonderful impression upon our people, and that evening after dinner, while our good ship was ploughing through the waters bearing us toward Madeira Island where we were to make our next stop, we held a missionary convention in the dining saloon of our steamship, our president, Mr. E. K. Warren, presiding, and in a few moments over one thousand dollars were raised for the mission at Ponta Delgada. Sunday morning. May 5, we entered the bay in frcmt of Funchal. Here we were to receive Bishop and Mrs. Hart- zell who were to journey with us to Rome. You can imagine our disappointment when the city authorities notified us that the city was under quarantine on account of smallpox, and no one could land or be received on board, if we desired proper clearance papers. So, after lying in the peaceful harbor for about an hour without dropping anchor, our ship steamed away toward Gibraltar. We were sorry not to see Funchal at closer range, but we were far more sorry to lose the company of Bishop and Mrs. Hartzell and believed they w^ere keenly disappointed. We arranged to send them a letter, and a purse of something like one hundred dollars for their mission work to make up to some extent for the loss of their trip. We had by this time become quite well acquainted with the officers of the World's Convention and our fellowship with them and the many other Sunday-school workers constituted one of the great pleasures of the trip. Among those sailing on the Romanic were E. K. Warren, President of the World's Convention; W. N. Hartshorn, Chairman of the International Executive Committee; Marion Lawrance, International General Secretary; H. J. Heinz, President of the Pennsylvania State Sabbath School Association; F. A. Wells, Treasurer International Association; and A. B. McCriUis, Treasurer of the World's Convention. Nearly all were accompanied by their families. There were several instructive lectures given on the ship, 13 Sunday Schools the World Around affording pleasure and profit to those who heard them. They were as follows: '^ Madeira " by Rev. J. F. Foster of Louisiana; "Gibraltar and its Place in History," by Principal E. I. Rexford of Montreal; "Africa," Bishop Hartzell; "Naples," Prof. J. I. D. Hinds, Tennessee; " Genoa and Pisa," Rev. S. T. Morris, Michigan; " Rome — The Eternal City," Prof. Ira M. Price, Illinois; "Divine Leadings in the Exposition Enterprise," Dr. C. R. Black- all of Pennsylvania. On the seventh day of May we reached Gibraltar, that natural fortress which Great Britain has now held for over two hundred years. As we looked at this rock for the first time we recognized it at once. It lacked only one thing in order to make it look perfectly natural, and that one thing was the word "Prudential." About the first thing we heard from shore, to our surprise and delight, was that Bishop Hartzell was there ready to join us, and that Mrs. Hartzell was awaiting us at Algiers, the Bishop having succeeded in getting out of Funchal by another steamer. We drove around to the neutral strip of land between the English and Spanish possessions. Here we found the soldiers of these two great nations on picket duty, pacing their beaten paths on either side of the neutral land, watch- ing each other with as much care as if the nations they represented were in active hostilities. And here these guards are maintained while the centuries pass. But we could not leave Gibraltar without a missionary meeting, and so we were driven to the mission rooms where the various missionaries of the city had assembled to meet us. Their work here is mainly among the soldiers and seamen. After an interesting meeting lasting an hour, we raised about one hundred dollars for their work and returned to the Romanic. About one o'clock on the eighth day of May our ship entered the bay of Algiers. Long before we came to anchor 14 The Cruise of the Romanic we could see the beautiful city from the deck. The hills sloped gracefully back from the bay, and as the houses are built of stone and plaster they appeared pure white in the bright sunlight. The city made a fine appearance from the deck of our steamer. You could not distinguish between the palaces and the hovels. After the health officers were satisfied with our record the long stairway was dropped beside the steamer, and one by one we passed down and were rowed ashore. Here for the first time we met the Muhammadan on his native soil and witnessed the poverty and wretchedness of his people. The local missionaries and many who had come in from their posts on camel and horseback to meet us assembled in one of their little mission rooms, and thither about fifty of us were escorted while the rest of our party w^as driven through the city. We have space for only a few w^ords concerning this noble band of men and women who are there on the firing line, giving their lives in the attempt to break down the Muhammadan barriers in order that this people may be brought to a knowledge of our blessed Master. So far they have had little encouragement. There have been, of course, some converts, and we hstened with much pleasure to some of them as they testified of their new life and of the joy of their Christian faith. But no perceptible break has been made in the ranks of Muhammadanism, and yet these noble men and women, veterans as they are in the work, with little encouragement, and receiving only a scant living, toil on. Such faithfulness and perseverance must win in the end. We will never forget our visit to this little mission, nor the inspiration received from Miss Trotter, Mr. Cook, and the many others who are giving their lives to this work. After our visit to the mission we were escorted through the Muhammadan quarters of the city. We shall not attempt to describe the wretchedness we witnessed as we saw this people in their daily life. 15 Sunday Schools the World Around You must not understand that all of Algiers is in this degraded condition. The city aside from the part known as the Arab quarter, where white and black huddle together in miserable hovels, is very beautiful. The French govern- ment has done much for Algeria, and the French Methodist Church, a small organization, is maintaining a mission in Algeria. The other mission posts visited by us, important as they were, could not be compared with the mission at Algiers. Here the work to be done was so great and the workers so few that our hearts went out to them. We spent an hour driving through the better parts of the city and a little time in shopping, and returned to our steamship home late in the evening tired and hungry; and while satisfying our hunger in the brilliantly lighted saloon, with every one relating the experiences of the day, and with the orchestra playing its finest, we steamed out of the harbor of Algiers and bade adieu to the African continent. That night as we steamed away from Algiers we held another missionary convention in the dining saloon of the Romanic. Our president, Mr. Warren, told us of a friend of very limited means who had given him a small *sum of money to contribute to the various benevolent causes which might be presented during our cruise. Mr. Warren stated that when he himself had tried to decide what he ought to give, the amount this friend gave from his scant allowance bothered him greatly. This proved contagious; that friend's benevolence bothered many of us, and we had to raise the amount of our own contributions to get rid of him. When our offerings were totaled we found that $5,100.00 were raised for the missions in Algeria. We supposed we were on a Sunday-school excursion, but found we were on a great missionary tour and were associated with men and women v/ho had been trained in the art of giving. After relating our experiences and offering prayers in behalf of this great mission work, we joined hands around the dining saloon and sang, with light hearts, 16 The Cruise of the Romanic " Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above." A meeting of the women to organize the Romanic Woman's Algerian Mission band was called. Airs. E. K. Warren was elected president and Miss Miller, of Balti- more, secretary and treasurer, and they raised about $800.00 in order to put two extra women missionaries in the field. But there were still greater things in store for Algeria. Bishop Hartzell called a meeting of the Methodists on board the Romanic to consider the question of establishing a Methodist mission in Algeria. About fifty responded. They organized by electing C. C. Stoll, of Louisville, Ky., chairman, and W^. G. French, of San Francisco, Cal., secretary. They adopted a resolution recommending that the Methodist Episcopal Church take up the work in Algeria, and in support of that resolution a special subscription was taken. Through the efforts of Bishop Hartzell, ably as- sisted by Mrs. Hartzell, nearly $50,000.00 was secured. This fund was not raised entirely among the Methodists, but many pilgrims from other churches contributed to the fund. Upon another afternoon a Sunday-school convention was held. There were many short addresses and exper- iences upon the subject, "Organized Sunday School Work and What it has Done for me." Mr. Marion Lawrance then presented the needs of the work, and a number of life memberships in the International Association, at one thousand dollars each, were subscribed for, and before the meeting closed $11,000.00 was raised for the International Sunday School Work. After two nights and one day in the blue Mediterranean, early on Friday morning. May 10, we sighted sunny Italy and, fmally, Naples in the distance on the cliff, a large and beautiful city. Soon after we entered the fine harbor in 2 17 Sunday Schools the World Around front of the city and dropped anchor. Immediately our ship was surrounded with peddHng boats, boats with divers, musicians, dancing girls, and numerous other small craft. An hour or so later we were transferred to the shore, where carriages were waiting to give us a three hours' ride through this beautiful city. Naples is a large city filled with street venders and beggars. Wherever our carriages would stop we were at once beset with them. We visited the National Museum, the Aquarium and the ruins of Pompeii on the first day of our stay at Naples. On the second day we made a trip to Baiae, the old watering-place of the wealthy Romans. We had a long, dusty ride, past the tomb of Virgil, through the long tunnel, visiting the crater of an old but not entirely extinct volcano and the ruins of several temples. One of the most interesting places visited was the little city of Pozzuoli, which was formerly known as Puteoli. This was where St. Paul first landed in Italy, as recited in the 13th verse of the 28th chapter of the Acts. We stopped at a strictly Italian inn for our first strictly Italian meal, consisting of rolls, macaroni, little fish, potatoes, salad, fruit, cheese, and Poland water. Who will ever forget the Poland water? At seven o'clock, Saturday evening, May 11, we steamed out of the harbor of Naples, and for a long time from the deck of our steamer we watched Mount Vesuvius and the lights of the city, until darkness finally shut them out. The next day was Sunday, and as usual we had our Sunday services. Dr. Stahr of Lancaster, Pa., pre:iched; on Sunday May 5, Dr. Rhodes of St. Louis preached to us. About six in the evening we reached Genoa. There was a throng of people at the dock tarrying to see the arrival of the steamship. A large steamship of the German Lloyd Hne was just leaving the harbor, and so there was much to occupy our attention. We did not want to land until morning, but the steamship The Cruise of the Romanic company was more anxious to part with our company than we were to part with the good old ship which had brought us so far. We were required to go ashore. So after sixteen days of travel by water, visiting many inter- esting cities and seeing many strange sights, after forming many friendships which we trust may be as lasting as time itself, we took our final departure from the Romanic and were soon located in the various hotels of the old but beautiful city of Genoa. Aside from being the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Genoa is most noted for its campo santo, or cemetery, as we would call it. Nowhere did we see so fine or so many modern sculptures in marble. Tuesday, May 14, we started by special train for Rome, stopping long enough at Pisa to visit the leaning tower, of which we all rem.ember seeing pictures in our early geog- raphies. We climbed to the very top, rang all its bells, and wondered how the old tower had stood so long without tumbling over. We reached the Eternal City about 10:30 that night, and as we were driven to the Hotel Quirinal we were astonished to find a modern, up-to-date city, brilliantly lighted, electric cars passing to and fro, and in every way resembling a modern American town. The clerk at the hotel spoke English quite as well as we did and at once assigned us to commodious rooms on one of the upper floors. Our rooms in the hotel chanced to be facing a large theater. The performance was still going on. We could hear the orchestra and the occasional applause of the audience, and soon the crowds came out to their carriages, motor cars, and other vehicles; and we could not help wondering whether this was Rome, the city of ancient ruins of which we had been studying and reading all our lives, and whether it was taking on again the prestige and glory of ancient times-, and whether another fall awaited it. But sleep soon banished all such thoughts. 19 Sunday Schools the World Around We awoke to find that we were indeed in the Eternal City, and that we were a part of the largest Protestant gathering which ever assembled in Italy. The Cruise of the Neckar By Philip E. Howard. They were pilgrims on their way to Rome, swinging slowly into the great highway leading to the open sea. They were Sunday-school men and women and children from the four quarters of the globe, outward bound to the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention. But on that bright morning on the Hudson, when the gang-planks had been housed behind the white gates of the Lloyd dock, and the faces of cheering friends were growing dimmer as that widening distance from dock to ship grew wider, not all roads led to Rome just then, but every httle road and by- path led straight back to the receding pier-head, where loved ones stood with flags and flowers and handkerchiefs fluttering in the fresh breeze. The Neckar bowed her way into the stream, and turning slowly, bore away down the harbor, while we of the ship's company watched that distant pier-head, where others were turning shoreward as we turned seaward, they to take up our work, and we to gather the fruits of their self-sacrifice. We had hardly cleared the Hook before we began to realize that the one hundred and fifty-four cabin passengers on the Neckar were not unlike one big family. As the ship straightened out on her course, and the land became a gray mist on the horizon, the ship's company in the cabins began to find itself; and because there was a common bond and a common purpose, the finding was done without the selfish- ness which spoils goodfellowship and dulls the edge of enjoyment in travel. We gathered for morning prayers in the lower dining- saloon on Sunday, with glad and thankful hearts. Each one 20 The Cruise of the Neckar of us had received from the World's Sunday School Execu- tive Committee a beautiful copy of the Jerusalem Manual of Worship, Rome Edition. Our leader was Dr. George W. Bailey, of Philadelphia, Chairman of that Committee, and the meeting was a /^ra^'er-meeting. It is one thing to talk; and it is another thing to lead. Dr. Bailey led us in a meet- ing that amounted to nothing less than a spiritual experience. God's will our will was the thought of it all. The room was crowded. There was scarcely time in the brief twenty minutes of service for all w^ho desired to speak a word or offer prayer. In the large dining-saloon we held our morning church service. Swivel chairs were pews, the swaying, lifting deck was the floor of our house of worship, and the oblong, brass- bound ports in the low-studded room were the cathedral windows in two colors — the blue of the sky and the deeper blue of the sea. The Reverend E. E. Braithwaite, of Massachusetts, preached from Galatians 3:23-26, the Rev. W. T. Shattuck of the same state offering the opening prayer. The Neckar Sunday School met at half past two on that memorable Sunday, organized by departments and classes, with the writer as superintendent. It was a long w^alk to school for teachers and scholars alike. Allan Sutherland of Pennsylvania, and Will R. Stuck of x^rkansas, were associate superintendents. The secretaries were Harry L. Parkinson, of Pennsylvania; J. K. Campbell, of Michigan, H. W. Meyers, of Louisiana, and Miss Bessie E. Chapelle, of Pennsylvania; the treasurers, Copley O. Meacom, of Massa- chusetts, and W. C. B. Moore, of West Virginia, two of those who were successful in securing a ticket for the round-trip under The Sunday School Times plan; librarian, John B. Meyers, of Louisiana; Primary Department, Miss Mabel Norris and Miss Florence B. Kohler (another Times worker), of Pennsylvania, and Miss Bertha L-. Howard, of Michigan; Home Department superintendent, Mrs. E. 21 Sunday Schools the World Around B. Waterhouse, of Honolulu, assisted by Miss Louisa Myers, of Louisiana, and Mrs. Oliver L. Watson, of Illinois; chorister, W. G. Landes, and pianist, Mrs. W. G. Landes, of Pennsylvania. What other Sunday-school held on April 28, unless it be the Romanic School, could say that its scholars had come so far to attend its session ! It was a cosmopolitan company about the tables. We studied the International Lesson for the day, and, preceding this study, Mrs. Layyah Barakat, a native Syrian, known throughout America by her lectures on the Orientalisms of the Bible, gave us a glimpse of the Oriental setting of the lesson. The Home Department superintendent, from Hawaii, and her Visitors called upon those who were confined to their staterooms, while the lesson study was in progress. And when school was about to close, the benediction was pronounced by the Rev. J. G. Dunlop, of Japan. Nothing was more beautiful in the first session of the Neckar Sunday-school than the birthday recognition, when Miss Grace Bailey and Miss Annie Schlatter, of Pennsyl- vania, came to the "platform" and received a Chautauqua salute, while we sang "Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love." Nor was the session lacking in recog- nition of up-to-date Sunday-school standards; for one scholar who heard his teacher say that he didn't feel prepared to teach the lesson, promptly said, "Then I guess I'll go to another class," — which he did! On that evening we held a praise service in the main dining saloon, singing hymns in German and in English. The Rev. Dr. C. Golder, of Ohio, the Rev. J. A. Solandt, of Massachussetts, and Mr. E. T. Moore of Ohio made addresses, and Mr. H. H. Mercer, of Pennsylvania sang a solo. Our mid-ocean morning prayer-meetings were led by Prof. De Forrest Ross of Michigan, by Mr. Mercer, and by the Rev. R. W. Thompson of Pennsylvania, and we were introduced to the Azores by evening travel-talks from the Rev. W. T. McClure of Mississippi, the Rev. 22 The Cruise of the Neckar D. W. Chipman of Nova Scotia, and the Rev. R. C. Cleckler of Georgia. Our week-day evenings in the dining-saloon have developed talent amazingly. Mrs. Barakat gave us an address that one delegate aptly called ''an Oriental poem" on the "Palm Tree of the Desert;" Mr. George T. B. Davis, the devoted young apostle of personal work in the Torrey-Alexander missions in England and America, spoke to us on our own duty toward this work of hand-to-hand soul winning; Mr. Allan Sutherland, of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, read an intensely interesting paper on some of the great hymns of the centuries, more fully treated in his recent book, "Famous Hymns of the World." And for the sake of the many young people on board (of course the older ones didn't care espe- cially about it I) there was an entertainment of such remark- ably good home talent that we w^ere applauding and laughing until nearly ten o'clock — which was late for a Neckar meeting, under the law set forth by the Cabinet to whom was given the conducting of our meetings. And who can ever forget our unique " newspaper " not printed, but read aloud! Here, as elsewhere, it is the inconspicuous, the unseen, that counts. There is a small room half-way down one of the long passageways, and in that room toward sunset day by day you might find, if you should enter, a little group of men upon their knees. And when the prayer is ended, the men very naturally get to talking over the central work of the Kingdom — individual work. More than one man in steerage and crew and cabin has already felt the touch of a hand outstretched to help him, because of that small group of men down on their knees. ***** It was a cloud at first, lying low upon the eastern horizon, then the faintest hint of a sharper outline than the edge of a mist, and as the sun climbed higher, its rays fell full and clear upon the seaward crags and rolling hills and towering peaks of St. Michael's in the Azores. We had crept along 23 Sunday Schools the World Around under the shadow of Pico Island during the night, hfting its head more than seven thousand feet above the sea, and falUng sheer to the sea-bottom two thousand feet below, a huge volcanic cone uplifted by titanic forces of earth's deeps. Lights from the shore had sent their slender gleam over the dark waters to us as we passed, and the spire of Pico was a shadow against the stars to the north. But now St. Michael's was coming to us out of the sea, with no shadow of darkness about it, and Ferraria Point gave us welcome. Above the ragged fringes of the island were soft and pleasant fields on rolling foothill land, not unlike some glimpses of the Irish coast-country, completely covered with thrifty farms, set apart by deep hedge-rows, and bearing aloft in the morning wind huge windmills, busy with their tasks in the early hours of the day. We rounded the bold breakwater of Ponta Delgada, and the hoarse bellow of our signal startled the waterfront to life. It was a breezy morning. Volcanic rock skirting the shore spouted little jets of foam as the harbor swell came inshore. The white and blue and pink of the square-built, red-tiled houses rose above the black of the rocks in brilliant color. From the inner bend of the harbor fussy little launches hurried toward the ship, and shore boats of broad beam came down the wind, the Portuguese longshoremen resting idly on their sweeps, while the blades hung just above the water, catching the fresh breeze as impromptu sails. It was a good fifteen minutes' pull to the quay. Our three oarsmen were stroked by a sturdy, brown-skinned fellow, who might have been one of Clark Russell's fo' c'sle hands. I could not resist the temptation, so I laid hold of the sweep with him, and ''hipped" for the crew, until we sent the stroke to a lively clip, to the great glee of the laughing Portuguese and the mock consternation of the passengers. And the opportunity for exercise was so genuinely golden that Dr. Bailey, too, was soon involved with this motley crew, and bent to the oar his energetic muscles. But that 24 The Cruise of the Neckar is a way he has when any one can be helped by his hand on the oar in any kind of task. We rounded a sharp sea-wall of masonry, and glided into the landing-place. A crowd sat or stood along the sur- rounding steps and walls, and many windows in the white- washed and pinkwashed and blue-frescoed houses held little groups ot onlookers as the Americans climbed the landing steps to be met by their guides. They say that the Public Gardens are the great sight of St. Michael's. It may be so. In those gardens there is a vast variety of plants and trees, and flowers in profusion. But we saw another garden where other flowers are cherished into bloom, a garden in which we of the pilgrimage saw much to be remembered. It was the little white church of the Evangelical Mission, with its company of devoted members, old and young, as they mingled with the pilgrims in a meeting of welcome and worship. If you were one of a hundred evangelical Christians in a city of thirty thousand persons of other faith, would you not welcome with gladness a hun- dred or more evangelical Christian workers from other lands ? The mission church and its day-school is the outgrowth of a work begun in 1882. Antonio Patrocino Dias and Henry Maxwell Wright were the pioneers in the work, with Miss Louisa Wright and her two sisters, Mary and Ellen, the three sisters still carrying on the mission. Within the church building our party from the Neckar were greeted with addresses of welcome, and some of our company. Dr. Bailey, of Philadelphia, the Rev. J. B. Ganong, of New Brunswick, the Rev. J. A. Solandt, of Massachusetts, and Mr. and Mrs. Landes, of Pennsylvania, took part in the service. The front of the room and the platform were crowded with children and young people, and one small American girl in our party enjoyed the meeting exceedingly, because she had an uninterrupted half-hour's quiet play on the floor with two barefoot Portuguese boys, whose unshod feet in church excited her liveliest interest. Sunday Schools the World Around When the three noble women whose hves have been put into the mission stood before us and we sang ''Blest be the tie that binds," and when Miss Louisa Wright, with shining eyes and the face of a saint, gave us a message as Christian workers, I am sure that on this mid-ocean outpost of Chris- tian progress we saw the real gardeners of St. Michael's. The next morning at breakfast the doctor left the table hurriedly. By and by word came to a few that one of the Italian passengers in the steerage had reached the end of his voyage. They say his family awaits him — his, wife and his little children — in Italy. He is to be laid to rest at Gibraltar, and when the steamer reaches Naples, who knows how unspeakably deep will be the grief of those who look for his coming? I hope that in some other landing-place, beneath a sky more peaceful than even the Italian sky, that little family may be reunited. On Sunday, May 5, the spirit of speakers and hearers was never more sensitive to the messages of the day. To hear the Rev. Gust. F. Johnson, of Rockford, Illinois, tell with fine simplicity the story of his life, was to hear a chapter out of the book of God's redeeming power over the lives of men. To hear the Rev. J. G. Dunlop, of Japan, the Foreign Secretary of the new Sunday School Association of Japan, tell the story of Japan's progress toward Christianity, was to hear a remarkable chapter out of the book of missionary miracles. And it was a privilege to attend the second session of the Neckar Sunday-school, under the superin- tendency of Mr. H. G. Shaw, of Newark, New Jersey. The birthday of little Olive May Smith, of Pennsylvania, was recognized with the Chautauqua salute. Our services for the day closed with evening worship, with addresses in Ger- man and in English respectively, by F. W. Rueckheim, of Chi- cago, and by the Rev. J. E. Byrd, of Mt. OHve, Mississippi. While the convention was thus really in progress, the two 26 The Cruise of the Neckar ships were nearing Gibraltar. They did not speak each other, though the Neckar was close upon the wake of the Romanic. We were prepared for our little visit to Gibraltar by travel-talks on Monday evening from Mr. Dunlop, the Rev. J. A. Solandt of Massachusetts, and the Rev. R. W. Thompson of Pennsylvania, Mr. Charles Mayer of Cin- cinnati, presiding; and by our prayer-meeting the next morning, led by Mrs. J. W. Lake. Tuesday morning we caught our first glimpse of the coast of Spain, and of the steep, tremendous bluffs and mountains of the African coast. First a sandy shore to the north, low dunes and beach hummocks, then Cadiz, nestling white among the hills, then Trafalgar (can you hear the boom of Nelson's guns over the waters yonder?), then Point Tarifa, whence the Moors once watched like eagles to levy tribute upon passing ships, and hence our word ''tariff;" but no Gibraltar, even though we had entered the Straits, and Africa loomed dark to the south. Above the heights of Tarifa another higher, jutting crag crept along the sky-line, and we began to see Gibraltar— only began; for it does not leap into view, as the lion couchant of the familiar pictures. You come upon it gradually, a huge, looming, towering mountain, like an island near shore, sloping toward land and toward sea, lying athwart your vision as you swing slowly in toward the bay which lies to the west of the rock. And you do not see the lion until you have gone ashore and over to the north of the rock. Enormous is a word not to be slipped in without consid- eration. Gibraltar is enormous, overwhelming. As your ship rounds into the bay, you follow with amazement the rough outline from Europa Point to the signal station on the top of the rock, and down again over the plainly visible obsolete galleries to the noi;th, and the houses of the town along the northerly and westerly slopes. It is not from the west a bare and forbidding pile, but a craggy mountain, with trees and shrubs and flowers clinging to its sides. You 27 Sunday Schools the World Around do not see what is behind the greenery. It is forbidden to remove any part of the foKage, for Gibraltar must not be thus unmasked by ignorant or wilful hands. Who knows how many guns would rain fire and iron out through the thick branches of trees, from galleries by no means obso- lete, out through the pleasant flowery terraces, if Gibraltar should be affronted? Once on shore, you are on British territory. The white- robed Moor at the landing stage, the excitable Spanish cab drivers, are in the picture, but the background is British — solid, trim, complete to the eye, though the making of Gibraltar never is ended. The Captain of the Port, and the English and Scotch brethren from the rock are all courtesy and heartiness. They had risen earlier than the sun to receive the Romanic, and now in mid-afternoon their kindly zeal was not abated. Up from the water-port we hurried in a swaying carriage behind a vigorous pony, into the narrow, smooth, and spot- lessly clean streets. Here are sailors and soldiers from the four corners of the world; here the turbaned, barelegged, and sandaled Moor moving with silent dignity through the crowd of military and naval men, and wide-eyed, inquisitive tourists. The streets twist and turn sharp corners, climb steep preci- pices, wind along through charming gardens, or close to the stone walls of fine barracks and public buildings, many a roadway being cut in the face of the rock, and buttressed and walled against disaster. Solidity and thoroughness meet one on every hand. We paused at the foot of the Alameda, the parade and public playground. Boys are playing cricket. Soldiers in khaki are strolling about. We climb the steps at the head of the parade and stand beside the monument to General EUiot, the great defender of the Rock. He was a daring fighter, and yet so tenderhearted that when he burned the besiegers' barriers to the north of the Rock, he tried with his own hands to save some of the helpless Spanish soldiers 28 The Cruise of the Neckar from the fury of the flames. As we stand before his monu- ment, Httle children are clambering over the guns on the terrace, and playing their harmless, happy games along the flowery paths. I believe the General would like that afternoon scene, and that the fighting blood in him would be stilled as he smiles upon the children at play over the guns now silent. . We drove to Lenia, the wTetched Spanish town beyond the neutral ground. Beggars hung expectantly along the dusty road, running feebly beside the carriages in hope of alms. Beyond us stretched a high wire net-work fence, designed to keep tobacco-lade ned dogs of the Spaniards from crossing into Spanish territory with smuggled tobacco from Gibraltar. Back on the great Rock once more, we had a glimpse of the mission work for sailors and soldiers. More than four thousand soldiers are stationed here. Some fifty thousand men pass through the station every year and scatter to the four corners of the world. It is a tremendous missionary opportunity on the Rock, now the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet, and of the Second Cruiser Squadron. At one time or another nearly every ship in the British navy will call at Gibraltar, sending a steady stream of blue- jackets and marines into the town and out again. They are by no means neglected. There is the King Edward VII Soldiers' and Sailors' Institute, begun in 1877 as the Gib- raltar Soldiers' Institute, on the plan of those at Aldershot and Woolwich, with Captain and Mrs. C. H. Hill now as its superintendents; the Salvation Army Naval and Military Home, in charge of Staff-Captain George H. Souter; the "Welcome" Soldiers' and Seamen's Home, in charge of the Rev. A. B. Sackett; Soldiers' and Sailors' Mission Home, with Miss Renfrew as superintendent, and W. Marshall as soldiers' missionary; Gibraltar Seamen's Mission, whose president is the Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop of Gibrahar. These institutions do everything within their power to make 29 Sunday Schools the World Around the sailors and soldiers feel at home within their hospitable doors, very much as our Young Men's Christian Associa- tions do. The Neckarites met in the "Welcome" in the evening. On my way to the meeting-room, I talked with Robert Vining, a square-jawed, stocky young sailor from the "Black Prince," about the work. His face lighted up when I asked him if he was a follower of Christ. He said, "Yes, sir," very heartily, and then he added, "I think I would never leave the ship when here unless I could have a place like this to come to." And his feehng for the "Welcome" and other similar places is shared by thousands of cour- ageous young fellows who dare to live a clean life on ship and shore. The meeting that night brought together for the first time the denominational and other leaders in Gibraltar in a united service. The Very Rev. D. S. Govett, M. A., Dean of Gibraltar, Church of England chaplains, Wesleyan and Presbyterian chaplains, and a Salvation Army Captain, sat upon the platform and extended a generous greeting to the Americans. There were brief addresses and words of brotherly congratulation, and as the meeting closed we stood in silence while the venerable dean, a tall and distinguished figure, gave us his benediction. No one in that meeting can ever forget the dignity and the tenderness of that blessing. We passed into the brightly-lighted streets and made our way to the water-port. Our Gibraltar brethren had made our visit memorable, while we inquisitive Americans had pKed them with questions, and had shown our appreciation in such other ways as we could. One of the young chaplains said wonderingly to one of our party, "Are you Americans always like this, — so optimistic, so energetic? Or is it the vacation spirit that possesses you? You never seem depressed. You know we have here what we call the levanter, — a cloud that hangs over the Rock and makes us all gloomy. Do ;yoz^ ever have such an experience ? " Oh, 30 The Cruise of the Neckar thoughtless guests that we were! The American is an optimist, but he has his levanter — sometimes. He doesn't mean to let any one know much about it, and its cause is not always apparent. Some of us felt the touch of its shadow when we had to leave these noble fellows working out the Master's will for hearts that are often as hard as the Rock itself. The chaplain was cheered by our assurances that we were not always quite so happily effervescent, as he presently saw, when the shore friends and the x\mericans gathered by the landing and sang some of the old, sweet parting hymns together. Just as the tender started from the pier, my sailor friend, Robert Vining, and I clasped hands over the rail. I wonder where we shall meet again? He stood with those on the dock who sang and cheered as we pulled out into the bay. Search-lights cast their beams toward Algeciras, sweeping the bay, and picked out sharply ship after ship at anchor. They are the keen-eyed silent watch-dogs of the night. They look down from tower and wall, piercing the darkness with their revealing gaze. And far above thejn hangs a tiny light over the Rock, where the signal-station stands ready to speak round the earth. We slipped away into the soft Mediterranean night on an even keel, and the lights of Gibraltar fell astern. I wonder if those youngsters playing on the Alameda guns have gone to sleep in their small beds, and what Bob Vining is thinking as he takes to his quarters on the ''Black Prince" in the dry docks ? ***** After Gibraltar, Algiers. After the night pierced witli searchlights from the Rock, the broad day flooding the ship, not with seas, but with sunshine, and the waters around us a deeper blue than the sky. We could see for hours the broken, mountainous coast of the Dark Continent. Dol- phins sported about the ship. The land played tricks with us, running back into the haze to the south, and then standing 31 Sunday Schools the World Around out again into the open, like a ship beating her way to eastward. At prayers we followed a responsive service prepared by the Rev. Dr. H. C. McCook of Pennsylvania, not among our company, yet one of the leaders of America's pioneer Sunday-school heroes. The " Neckarites " became athletes in the afternoon, under the leadership of a committee headed by Allen W. Blake, of Massachusetts, and the after-deck presented a scene rivaling the Olympic games. The names of the con- testants, especially in the tug-of-war, are mercifully omitted. In the evening we heard th»-ee illuminating talks on Algiers, — on its history by E. T. Moore, of Ohio; on its religious life by the Rev. Randall Lookabill, of Baltimore; on its points of interest by the Rev. W. T. Shattuck of Massachusetts. At ten o'clock that Wednesday night we caught the first beams of the great revolving light on Cape Tenez, standing two hundred and ninety-two feet high, one of the magnificent French electric lights, and visible thirty-four miles away. At one o'clock the gleam of that light on the clouds could still be seen from the bridge. They say these French-made Hghts are the finest in the world. Isn't it significant that Louis Sautter, head of one of the great French lighthouse concerns, has stood pre-eminent as a leader in Sunday-school work in his own country? In the quiet of the early morning the Neckar slipped past Cape Caxene, and by the time we were astir the ship was rounding the Mole; then Algiers lay white and gleaming before us. It was Paris along the quays; Jerusalem to the right; Cadiz to the left, and far on the heights of Mustapha Superior it was all greenery and color, villas and palaces, and the fine rolling country of the Sahel Hills. Once on land we drove on rock-smooth roads through Algiers the superb, and Algiers the odorous and unclean. Here, seated on a rock jutting out from above the roadway, 32 The Cruise of the Neckar is an Arab in faded robes, sewing earnestly on a garment he holds across his knee. There, by the roadside, are two beg- gars, tall, almost powerful in build, with their soiled head- gear and ragged robes, drinking, and laughing as they drink, from a bubbling fountain. They seemed to be laughing toward us, if not at us. But they were smiling delightedly at Mr. Cuendet, our missionary companion, he who has translated the Bible into the Kabyle tongue. "They are some of my beggars," said Mr. Cuendet in answer to my look of inquiry. ''They are glad to see me. I started a work for them, believing that if our Lord were here he would begin with them." "And what is the name of those men by the fountain?" I asked. He studied them closely for a moment, and then shook his head dubiously. " I'm not sure," he answered. " They are many, you know, and their names are much alike. But," he exclaimed eagerly, "I have all their names in a book." I would like to have seen that book. The names hardly distinguish the poor fellows from one another, yet they are written in at least one book, which may yet be a record of new life for them, homeless w^anderers that they are. And so primitive is their knowledge, so simple their views, that often as Mr. Cuendet passes along the street, he is addressed not by his own name, but by the name of his Master. The beggars may forget the missionary's own name. They do not forget his Master's. Is it not something to remind men of that name, and not of our own, when they merely meet us by the way? In a lovely garden on the upper slopes of the town is the Musee National des Antiquites Algeriennes. One figure in the collection drew us thither, — the recumbent plaster cast of Geronimo, that young Christian who in the sixteenth century was thrown by AH Pacha into a concrete mold, and in that dreadful death bore witness to his faith. In that block of concrete used in the walls of a fort, the form 33 Sunday Schools the World Around of the martyr was cast in the surrounding stone, and in 1853 the block was opened, and a plaster cast was made by the sculptor Latour. The light strikes down to-day through the high windows upon the white form as it speaks in unmis- takable lines of the agony of that terrible hour centuries ago, and its witnessing for the faith still goes on. To the foreigner, the center of interest in Algiers is the Arab quarter, that closely-built, densely-populated, be- nighted part of the city, where the streets are hardly more than six or eight feet wide, and are, in more than one place, nearly overbuilt with jutting windows. Little sunlight touches the pavements of stone, save at high noon; less light seems to shine in the faces one sees peering out from dark shop-doorways, or turned watchfully up and down the narrow canyons of the steep and crooked streets that wander brokenly up the hillside. In the heart of it all is an Arab house, where Miss I. Lilias Trotter and ten other workers carry on a mission work under the name of the Algiers Mission Band. On the first floor is a meeting-room. It was once a Muhammadan mosk. It is a little room about fifteen by twenty feet, its roof arched and vaulted, supported by heavy pillars, and lighted by a single narrow skylight over the platform. Small lamps are hung on the pillars, and the walls are whitewashed, after the Arab fashion. In that small room ninety of us gathered, some standing, some seated on the stone floor, others on benches around the wall, and hstened eagerly to the mis- sionaries' stories of their work, and not less eagerly to the personal experiences of dark-?l^inned converts who were willing to give up everything for the Master. To one of these, Omokrane Baiha, Mrs. Howard handed her birthday- book after the meeting, with a request for his signature. His face lighted up as he gladly complied with her request. There was a look about him and a bearing that marked him as different from other young Arabs whom we had seen lounging in doorways, or strolling along the pavements. 34 The Cruise of the Neckar Had he seen other visions than had come to them? As he wrote his name, Mrs. Howard read, just opposite to it in the little book, words which seemed to have been written especially to tell the experience of the young convert in his new allegiance: " No king so gentle and so wise. He calls no man his subject ; but his eyes, In midst of benediction, questioning, Each soul compel." We went up the narrow stone stairs, and into the upper rooms of the house, opening into the typical court of the Oriental dwelling. The missionaries served Arab coffee and sweets there and in another room. Around the clois- tered sides of the court w^ere hung missionary maps and specimens of native handiwork, while a giant negro, in turban and white garments, — Belad, black as night, a con- vert out of the Soudan country, — waited upon us smilingly. Behind a curtained doorway we learned that native women were at work, and with them little children w^re singing. It is sometimes hard to be a man. Only women were sup- posed to be admitted to the rooms beyond the curtain. But at the suggestion of one of the missionaries, the conventional barriers were removed for the time being, and some of us were led into the little temporary w^ork-rooms where the women were weaving, or preparing the native couscous, a delicious stew of meat and rice, for the guests of the day. In the center of the group along the wall sat a woman young in years, whose large eyes and gentle face revealed a sweet and lovely spirit within. And she had been horribly beaten by her husband when she was mourning by the side of her dead child. Islam has its disadvantages for women and children ! The life and the land of the people are scarred by its blight wherever it holds sway. Beyond the room in which the women worked was one in which children worked — and sang. They are the hope of the missionaries. Among the children the chief work is 35 Sunday Schools the World Around done. They are the material through which the Hght will yet shine for North Africa, a land where in the third century there were no less than five hundred and eighty bishoprics along the coast from Cyrene to the Atlantic. The visit of the Rome delegates to Algiers resulted in the raising of about fifty thousand dollars for missionary work in North Africa, — but that is a story worth telling by itself. The Arab quarter at night is tabooed territory for the foreigner. Yet some of us went there after dark, and climbed the steep streets, not gruesomely dark as one might suppose, but lighted with Welsbach lights! We were eyed curiously by many a tall and silent Arab, shufHing softly by us in the shadowy defiles. The tender was waiting for us at the quay when we re- turned to the water-front. Our little party went on board the small steamer, but Dr. Bailey and I lingered on the shore. We could see the lights of the Neckar out in the harbor. Behind us was the city, brilliantly lighted along the water front, and reaching dimly away into the shadows of the night where home-lights twinkled among the trees of the hillsides above the town. It is easy to fall to the level of the hunter for human curios when a stranger in so strange a land. It is easy to forget the soul of the Arab, the Kabyle, the lonely men from the desert Beni Moussa, who never bring their women to Algiers, and whose labor is bent ever toward a prosperous home-going. Dr. Bailey beckoned to me silently, and we walked a few paces along the quay among the great mounds of merchandise awaiting shipment. *'See!" he whispered, pointing to a heap of clothes on the ground in the shadow of a pile of goods. I looked, and the mass became a man, sleeping soundly, — sleeping after his day's work, a roustabout, a stevedore, probably; not a mere heap of curious Arab garments, but a man. Has he a home ? When the dawn arouses him, what hope will stir within him as he opens his eyes to a new day? Who would care if he should never awake? We did not disturb him, but he disturbed us. It is well that the heart of the Christian 36 The Cruise of the Neckar * thus be compelled to restlessness under a keen sense of the world's need. The last whistle of the tender sounds, and we are soon rounding the towering bow of the Neckar, with the com- fortable glow of her cabins shining upon us as we reach the embarking stairs slung by her black sides. There is the laughter of friends along the decks, the display of the day's purchases, and then the slow swing of the ship as her anchor comes in, and her engines throb once more with Hfe. We pick our way out by the buoys, and make for the open sea, while the lights of Algiers sink into the darkness far astern. For the missionaries in the Arab quarter a new light has been lighted to-day in the visit of the i\mericans. Perhaps, too, some of the missionaries may know that sleeping man by the quay, and his name may be in their book. Algiers to many of us was a climax of the voyage to Italy, especially in its missionary aspects. On Friday Mr. Geo. T. B. Davis led our prayer-meeting, and Mrs. E. B. Water- house of Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, spoke on work in the Sandwich Islands. Mr. Albina, Clark's tour conductor, in the afternoon spoke on travel in Italy. In the evening the Rev. J. B. Ganong, of New Brunswick, Dr. Bailey, and the writer spoke on organized Sunday-school work. On Saturday morning the prayer-meeting was led by the Rev. Dr. J. T. McFarland, of New York City, and Dr. Andrew C. White, of New York, offered prayer. In the evening resolutions of appreciation were offered to Dr. Bailey for his devoted and tactful leadership; to the oblig- ing Captain Harrassowitz, his officers and crew; to Mr. and Mrs. Landes for their most welcome musical help on the whole voyage, and to the excellent band of the ship. Nor could we forget the sweet music of the "Neckar Quartet," Messrs. Landes, Solandt, Meyers, and Mercer. We an- chored in the Bay of Naples on that evening, and early on the following morning, May 12, we were among our hospi- table Italian brethren. 37 Sunday Schools the World Around ft The Convention Itself By Philip E. Howard Picture to yourself a fine stone office-building of majesti- cally simple design, occupying a corner of a broad and busy thoroughfare, with crowds of men and women of many nations thronging its corridors and splendid church audito- rium. Then let your imagination take you back thirty-seven years to 1870, when, along that same street on the twentieth of September, marched the battle-worn, victorious Italian troops, the Bersaglieri, who had entered Rome through a breach in the Aurelian wall, on their way to the Quirinal Palace, where liberty and unity were to be proclaimed to the land. Past the corner where the stone building now stands, within eye-shot of the palace, the troops marched triumph- antly, and with them came a man drawing a cart of Bibles for distribution — a book before that day prohibited within the city walls. And now in that corner of the Via Venti Settembre rises the imposing Methodist Building, with its large audience-room for Italian services, an American church, Sunday-school room, Epworth League parlors, apartments, offices, and a fine printing establishment. It was in this building that the great convention met, with eleven hundred and eighteen delegates, from thirty-seven countries and great divisions, representing forty-six denom- inations— delegates whose mileage would average nearly nine thousand miles. It was a distinctively Sunday-school convention, mission- ary in spirit and personnel. From its inception, ''The Sunday-school and the Great Commission" was the domi- nant theme throughout. The convention was kaleidoscopic. Around the gallery of the VN^hite auditorium were flags of many nations; in the crowded seats were Egyptian preachers with their red fezes; white-bearded, keen-eyed American business men from the States, some of them round-headed like the emperors of Rome's golden era, and, like the emperors, leaders of men; 38 bj: c c: o 03 6 t1 c ^ ^ H - The Convention Itself here the blue-eyed Teuton close beside the olive-skinned, black-eyed Italian, or the alert, clean-cut Frenchman; here a sturdy Briton, and close beside him a slender Portuguese; there a missionary from Palestine or Turkey or Bulgaria or the Congo, and here a quick-witted, bright-eyed Canadian, or an earnest, eagerly-listening Greek. Was there ever such an audience ? South Africa and Saskatchewan, Greece and Georgia, France and Finland, Turkey and the Transvaal, Palestine, Mexico, Norway, Scotland, Argentine Republic, Hungary, and Ireland and Wales and Japan and Poland and Mexico and the Isle of Man — and all singing the same hymns, worshiping one God and one Saviour, and one in their determination to make the most of the Sunday-school as the great evangelizing agency of our day and all days. On Saturday morning a reception was given in the Hotel Quirinal to the missionaries and Committee members, and in the evening, a banquet was given by the President and the Executive Committee to the Italian Local Committee. The evening of Saturday w^as devoted to greetings on behalf of various countries and bodies represented. Prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. J. C. Massee, of North CaroHna, U. S. A. President E. K. Warren, of America, whose wdt, heartiness, and tact, and freedom from formaHty all through the meetings, had much to do with the effect of the sessions, introduced the Reverend Henry Piggott, B.A., President of the Italian National Sunday-school Committee, as chairman for the evening. The representation on the platform then was typical of every meeting, for greetings were brought by Dr. Hail, of Japan, Campbell Morgan, of Great Britain, Mr. D. Ballantyne, of Scotland, Principal CoteHngham, of India, Pastor Basche of Germany, and Edward K. Warren, of North America. An enthusiastic reception was given the young American Ambassador, the Hon. Lloyd C. Griscom, who heartily welcomed his fellow-Americans to Rome, and generously invited all the delegates from every land to meet him at the Embassy on Wednesday afternoon. 39 Sunday Schools the World Around In opening the first session Mr. Warren said: "Beloved representatives of the organized Sunday-school work of the world in Rome assembled, to hold the World's Fifth Sunday School Convention, greetings to all! It is a matter of great gratitude which I want to express for you as well as for myself personally, that from all parts of the world, some of us even from the uttermost parts, we have journeyed in safety and in health, so far as we are advised; and under such favorable conditions we are permitted to meet in this the Eternal City, — Rome. Great is the thank- fulness which we all feel for this privilege. It gives me great pleasure to present to you as the presiding officer of the evening, the Reverend Henry Piggott, President of the Itahan National Sunday School Committee." Mr. Piggott said that his first duty was a very pleasant one — to send on behalf of the Convention a telegram to the King of Italy, which read as follows: ''The World's Fifth Convention of Sunday-schools whose every energy is con- secrated to the moral and religious education of the young, on initiating its labors, sends to your Majesty, the King, its fervid and respectful salutations and invokes the divine blessing on all the royal family. Signed, E. K. Warren, President World's Fifth Sunday School Convention." To this' the King responded through the Minister of Public Instruction in the message on the opposite page. Mr. Piggott earnestly commended the noble work of the Italian General Secretary, Prof. Ernesto FiHppini, and recognized the remarkable character of the great convention in purpose and opportunity. "Sunday-school work is winning the w^orld to Christ" he said. "That is your pur- pose, and you are here to study methods. The methods and strategies of yesterday are not for to-day. You have your eyes open to the movem.ent of humanity, to the education and progress of the race, and you have com.e here to study how best to attach your methods and strategies to all this movement and progress and education under the world's 40 e *? r '^ \ ^ ^ t^"--^ X -.^ , ^ --^ ^ * V ^ V X> t. ^S.i ..^ ^ .^ i ■>. IMS .-•V 1 'K. I : I ^ ^1 4 ^ \ ^ vV V, ~ u — w > 3 = i- ll §^ ^ c °--d attend Sud school, that he might be in harmony with his Sunday school neighbors all of whom attended. . Sw York City has many Departments numbering ^ome X ooo each; so has Boston, Chicago, and many small r c t^s a'nd even towns like Opelika Ala have from oo to x, ooo "Home Class" members. Atlanta has a Police Uepari mtt LoSlle, Ky., a Trolley Department, and the lady I2Q Sunday Schools the World Around superintendent is here in Rome. Hospitals, homes for the aged, orphan asylums, prisons, reformatories, all have had remarkable "Home Class" work done in them. In this very city, as my address to-day before the German and Italian Conferences shows, Peter and Paul carried on the ''Home Class" work of visitation, teaching and preach- ing, in the homes of this old "Eternal City." This work helps to make better homes, better fathers and mothers, better boys and girls, and better day-school teachers. Some one has said that every boy and girl has a right to demand of the community in which they live, the oppor- tunity to become as good a man or woman as their natural possibilities will permit, and the "Home Class visitor" is pledged to help every home, every mother, father, boy, and girl, and teacher to do their work better. I wonder if you ever read that most beautiful of all modern tales of child hfe, "The Bonnie Brier Bush," where Maister Jamieson, the old Scotch schoolmaster receives a letter from Geordie, the student, in the University of Edinburgh, telling him that he had passed his examina- tions and taken a medal at the university. With this letter in one hand and his old walking staff in the other, he hurries up the hillside, as he never hurried before, cutting a thistle blossom at every stroke of his cane, till at last he stands on the top of the hill by the side of the cotter's Httle home, by the side of the "Bonnie Brier Bush" and the seat where, alas, too soon Geordie, the student, is to pass his last summer days away, by the side of Margaret, the mother. What a picture is this — the stern old school- maister and the loving mother, talking together about the boy in the university! Looking into her eyes he says, " It's ten years ago at the brak up o' the winter ye brought him down to me, Mrs. Hoo, and ye said at the schule-house door, 'Dinna be hard on him, Maister Jamieson; he's my only bairn, and a wee thingie quiet.'" The old school- maister had never forgotten the mother's request, and his i.^o The Home Department own pledge to deal tenderly yet justly with the wee laddie, so lovingly placed under his care, and later, when Geordie lay dying in that same humble little Scottish home, he sent for Maister Jamieson, and after some touching farewell words, prayed in a low, soft voice with a little break in it, ''Lord Jesus, remember my dear maister, for he's been a kind freend to me and mony a puir laddie in Drumtochty. Bind up his sair heart and give him licht at eventide, and may the maister and his scholars meet some mornin' where the schule never skails, in the kingdom o' oor Father." And who can doubt but that Geordie's prayer was answered, and Jesus was good to Maister Jamieson, when he saw him in the shining city, as he will be good to any of you who are good here below to the boys and girls under your care. " Sow in the morn thy seed, At eve hold not thy hand, To doubt or fear, give thou no heed, Broadcast it o'er the land." Dr. Duncan said at Italian and German Conjerences on this Work. Beloved Co-workers, Greeting: When Moses was making laws for the life of a people which he was to build into a nation of famihes, he wrote in the Book of Deuteronomy as follows: "Thou shalt teach them dihgently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and v;hen thou liest down, and when thou risest up." So it came to pass, that under this command, every house held a Mosaic Home Class, taught daily by the father, sup- plementing temple and synagogue ritual, building families into a people, and that people into a nation, so that to this day a hundred persecutions and dispersions, with their baptisms of fire and blood, have not been able to wipe out 131 Sunday Schools the World Around a race, a nation of families, whose religious faith had been taught in family home classes, at every Hebrew fireside. Christ himself, at Nazareth, was thus taught in the home, and so he was able in the temple to amaze the scribes and Pharisees by his knowledge of the Scriptures, and in the wil- derness he resisted the temptations of Satan by quoting thrice from the Old Testament: ''It is written, It is written. It is written." During his ministry he sent out seventy disciples, by twos, that they might carry the gospel to the homes of the people, and bade them remain with those that received them, but to remove the dust from their feet where they were not kindly received. He did this ''that his house might be full." The apostles followed the same plan later, and we are told in Acts 5:42, that when they were permitted to go free, though commanded to refrain and be silent, "daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ." We are told that so successful was this house-to-house visitation and temple teaching, that they brought hundreds of their sick and laid them in the streets, that, in passing by, the shadow of Peter, the apostle, our first Home Class Visitor, might fall upon some and, perchance, heal them. Many modern Home Class Visitors have likewise been a blessing to the sick and needy as they have visited the homes of the poor. Later, in Acts 20:17, we find the heroic Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, at Miletus, on his way to Jerusalem from this very city of Rome, holding a seashore review of his two years' work at Ephesus with his Home Class members from that Gentile city, many of whom afterward, no doubt, w^re cast to the wild beasts by Nero's order in the theater at Ephesus, as Paul himself later met death here at Rome, outside the city gates, by the order of that same cruel tyrant. Listen to Paul as he tells them how that for "the space of three years" (Acts 20:31) he ceased not to warn every one night and day, with tears, and taught them " publicly, and 132 The Home Department from house to house" (Acts 20:20). Paul was the second great apostohc Home Class Visitor. Dear old apostolic feader! no wonder the faithful Ephesian elders threw their arms around your neck, and wept bitterly because they should see your face no more. "Behold," he says, "I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost wit- nesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, that I might finish my course with joy, and testify the gospel of the grace of God." And later, here in the old Eternal City of Rome, who can doubt but that these two great apostles, with the old-time friendship restored, renewed their house-to-house visitation, daily visiting and teaching, in every house, Jesus Christ and him crucified, until at last, Paul beyond the gates, and Peter in Nero's garden, where the great cathedral of St. Peter now stands, they won the victory and earned the martyr's crown, laid up not only for them, but for all those who love and await his appearing. I stood yesterday at both places with a meek and reverent heart and bared head, and thanked God for their examples as leaders in this blessed work of touching the homes and lives of the common people. Carey Bonner, our great musical leader in this convention, told us that ninety per cent of the hymns of the early Chris- tian Church were hymns of the home, written for and sung in their morning devotions and evening vespers; and Dr. Gray, in his two great lectures before thfe convention, told us that in those days, here in Rome, the old dotnicile or domicilium, with its' center and open court, was the place where the early disciples, as families and churches, met and held their services of song and gospel, worshiping and teaching. They had no other basilica but their homes. They had no temple, either in Jerusalem, at Ephesus, or here at Rome. They had to match home against temple. So here in Rome, to-day, with three hundred and sixty-five 133 The Home Department churches and cathedrals against your score or more of churches, you have, at least, 10,000 Protestant homes open to you, and many times that in Italy and France. The little family Home Class, of the order of Moses, taught by the father or mother, and organically connected with your existing schools, or little neighborhood classes, where the neighboring children can be gathered together on a Sunday morning, and study the lessons under some teacher or Home Class Visitor, officially selected, will help you solve your difficulty, as it helped Peter and Paul in apostolic days. Your beloved Italian Secretary, Signor Odoardo Jalla, who is acting as my interpreter, was present in 1891 here in Rome, when I met with the ItaHan Sunday-school National Committee at the second sitting. I have here his official report of that meeting, which I came from Naples to attend , at the invitation of Bishop William Burt and others. Dr. H. Piggott, President of the Italian National Committee, Rev. Dr. J. Gordon Gray, of Rome, Italy, Rev. Drs. Prochet and McDougal, of Florence, were present. Your work was then in its infancy and had neither Bibles nor lesson helps. In this printed record which I hold in my hand, on ''The Sunday-school Literature for Italy," dated Rome, Italy, May 18-23, 1907, folio twelve, he says: "In the autumn of 1891, at^ sitting of the Sunday-school National Committee, we had the pleasure to have with us Dr. W. A. Duncan, of Syracuse, New York, 'Father of the Home Department,' who proposed a plan to provide funds for the publishing of an 'Illustrated Leaflet' to be dis- tributed every Sunday, for helping the children to learn their verses at their homes. "In order to cover part of the expenses for printing, he generously offered to help 1000 lire annually (and an equal sum to Dr. Clark, of Prague, Bohemia, for a similar pub- hcation in Prague, to be called 'Pomucka' or the 'Home Study'). He presented this generous offer as a Christian 134 The Home Department offering to the land of Columbus, in connection with the fourth centenary of the discovery of America. He also gave us then a whole series of colored illustrated leaflets used in America, to attract and please Italian children, and a set of Dr. Peloubet's and Dr. Hurlbut's lesson helps for the use of the Itahan Lesson Committee. These leaflets, so precious to our scholars, have numbered 5,000 and 6,200 yearly copies from 1892 to this day, and have entered that many Itahan Homes annually ever since, as Home Class, or Home Department literature." These good secretaries, Odoardo Jalla and Dr. Fihppini, will help you. Signor Jalla has already promised to edit a monthly Home Department column in your Sunday-school reading paper, and I have given him, to aid him in the work, all these Home Department requisites which I hold in my hand, and the three best books on history and methods, viz. : Dr. M. C. Hazard's History and Normal Methods, fifty cents, issued by The Pilgrim Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A.; Mrs. Flora V. Stebbins' new book on "The Home Department of To-day," just issued by The Sunday School Times Co., Philadelphia, Pa., price twenty-five cents, which is the best of its kind to date; and a little Blue Book by C. D. Meigs, of Indianapolis, Ind., U. S. A., of which 125,000 have been sold, price five cents each. Dr. Blackall has to-day kindly promised Signor E. Filippini, Italian Sunday-school Secre- tary, all his splendid Home Department exhibits from all the denominational houses in the United States for your use. Those samples will give your Committee everything we have, and these you can revise and remodel so as to serve Italy best. They are the result of twenty-five years of success- ful experiment and development along these Home Depart- ment lines in the United States, and are worthy of careful study. The following resolutions were passed by the Italian Conference and delivered to Dr. Duncan, personally, before leaving Rome: 135 Sunday Schools the World Around Rome, Italy, May 21, 1907. W. A. Duncan, Ph.D., Rome. Dear Sir: The Italian Conference desires to express to you its high appreciation for the important address you delivered this morning on the subject, ''The Home Department of the Sunday-school," and desires also to assure you that we will call the attention of our National Committee to this impor- tant subject, and will ask this Committee to study how we can adopt in Italy the same methods. On behalf of the Italian Conference, Carlo M. Fireen, Secretary. Quiet Half-Hour Led by G. Campbell Morgan Our Master, we are gathered about thee as were the seven beside the Sea in the morning light long ago, and we are as full of frailty as were they, and thou art as full of love and power. We come to thee this morning, and we thank thee that we are at least able to say to thee with one of them of old, ''Lord, thou knowest that we love thee." And though our love be as yet but the warm human emotion, we thank thee for this measure of it, and we do desire to rise into that higher love all full of the light and passion which is forever- more held by principle and truth. And so we pray thee to lead us to that higher height. Help us to see how patiently willing thou art to answer this prayer, and if we have been afraid, and have become contented with our lot for very fear that we cannot reach the higher, speak to us the word which will at once rebuke and yet encourage us. O Lord and Master of us all, whate'er our name or sign, we pray thee in this half hour that we may see no man, save Jesus only. Oh, to hear thy voice and to see the light 136 A Half-Hour with Campbell Morgan of thine eye, and be anew assured of thy tenderness and thy power. This we ask in thine own name. Amen. I want this morning to turn your attention, beloved, to a passage with which I am sure you are all familiar, and which, therefore, I am not going to read. It is to be found in the Gospel according to John, the end of the thirteenth chapter and the first of chapter fourteen. It is a story of that last conversation that Jesus had with his own disciples. And may I say, first of all, that this message came to my heart with great comfort yesterday morning, as I sat here with you and listened to Mr. Meyer. I felt in my deepest soul something of fear as he spoke to us. We all thanked God for the word; we need to be reminded of that higher love which our Lord is seeking to create in our experience, and till we arrive at which he never can be perfectly satis- fied, and therefore we never ought to be satisfied. And yet I think I voice the consciousness of some of us when I say that as we thought of that agape, that highest love of all, we all were afraid, conscious of our ow^n failure and of our own weakness and of our own frailty. And it is because of that fear which was in my own heart — not for your sake, but for myself — and because I felt there wxre others who might share that fear, I want, if I may, to bring you back to the thing that happened by the Lake; one of the things that reveal the process by which our Master dealt with the B ©anergic character and made it what he would have it be. In this instance we have a remarkable illustration of how much we have suffered by the dividing of our Bible into chapters. To begin at the fourteenth chapter is to break in upon the middle of the speech of Jesus. "Let not your heart be troubled." We miss half the beauty and half the glory of that grand word because we do not read it in intimate connection with that which precedes it. Our Lord has gathered his own together, and here we have what we have come to speak of as the "Pascal discourses." He is telling them of his own going; he is about to tell them of 137 Sunday Schools the World Around the coming of the Spirit; he is about to show them the mag- nificence of that vital relationship existing between himself and them by the coming of the Spirit, and in the midst of this first section of the discourse he is interrupted by Peter and Thomas and Philip and by Jude. It is a perfectly natural and beautiful conversation. But unless we remem- ber these disturbances, these breakings in upon the con- versation of Jesus, we shall miss its power. Christ is telling them that he is going away. He had been talking to them for some weeks, even months, concerning the necessity for his cross, and there had come a sense of distance; they were afraid of him — afraid of the strange things he was saying to them. And now, gathering them together in the upper room, he is going into greater detail. He teUs them that he is going away, and Peter first breaks in upon the conversation with this question, "Lord, whither goest thou?" That is Peter's question. And Christ answers him by saying, "Whither I go thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards." And Peter looked at him and said, "Lord, why cannot I follow thee even now? " Just here is the best thing Peter had ever said to this moment. Don't charge him with boastfulness. "I will lay down my hfe for thee." What did Jesus say in answer to that? "Wilt thou lay down thy life for me? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, the cock shall not crow until thou hast denied me thrice. Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house, are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." You ask me where I am going. " I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am ye may be also." That was Christ's answer — not merely "before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice" — that was the first part of his answer. He con- tinued; there was no break. He did not say, "Chapter fourteen. Let not your heart be troubled." I know the 138 A. Half-Hour with Campbell Morgan number of the pronouns differs here. He is speaking to Peter, then, ''let not your heart be troubled." You remem- ber another occasion when Jesus changed the number of the pronouns. "Peter, Satan hath desired to have you, but I have prayed for thee (singular) that thy faith fail not." But the singular number does not exclude all the other disciples from the prayer of Jesus. So here the plural number does not exclude Peter from the comfort of this. Now, brethren, it seems to me that that story read quietly bears its own message to you. Peter's question was geographical: "Lord, where goest thou?" Presently Thomas broke in and said, "We don't know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Philip says, "Lord, show us the Father and that sufhceth us." Christ said, "None of you ask me whither I go," but that is what they had been asking. That is to say, Christ was hmited, unable to say his deepest and best to these men because they were unable to understand. Their questions were questions of pure love and pure devotion. Their questioning marked their devotion to him, but, my brethren, it was a love on the lower level. How did Christ deal with these men ? Again we single Peter out. Christ said to him, "Peter, you do not yet know yourself. There are things within you of which you are unconscious. Right there within that nature of yours is that which presently will make you deny me before the cock crow; before the light of another morning breaks upon the world you, Peter, devoted to me, earnestly meaning what you say, that you are prepared to die for me, — before the light of another day breaks, you will have denied me thrice. Peter, I know the very worst that is in you — I know it perfectly. Let not your heart be troubled. You have asked me where I am going: I am going to the Father, and I am going to prepare a place for you." Reverently let me say this, for if there is one thing that is being borne in upon my heart and soul, it is Christ's majestic and audacious claims for himself. He looked into the face of 139 Sunday Schools the World Around a man and said, you have within you the making of a traitor, and before the day break, I know that the evil thing in you will master the good, and you, honestly intending to die for me, will deny me, but I will see that you reach the place that I have prepared. I will come again and receive you in spite of the worst in you. I will realize the best in you. I know the worst, you will deny me. I know the best, that great devotion that is prepared to die for me. And, knowing the worst and the best, Peter, I have but one thing to say to you; trust me, and I will master the worst and realize the best, and I will put you at last by my side in the light to which I go. My brothers and sisters, I think that perhaps a multipK- cation of words would be out of place. That is the message that came to my heart yesterday morning with comfort. I pass it on to you, as a word out of my own inner spirit. Oh, the comfort of it! The comfort of knowing that he knows me. In my own life I am less and less inclined to criticize the failure of my brothers and sisters. There was a time when I could preach about Judas as I cannot do it now. I have found the making of a traitor in my own blood, and I have come to the deliberate conclusion that if I had been with him in those last days, I would have left him before these men did. But, oh, the comfort of knowing that he knows the worst in me, the undiscovered thing in me which may flame up into treason — vast reaches in this marvelous personality of mine that I know nothing of this morning. I do not know myself, but he knows me, and he knows the worst that is in me. And this is the thing that comes to my heart as an evangel. Oh, such an evangel! He looks at me this morning and says ''Trust me. I know not only the worst; I know the best, and I know that in your heart, in spite of all your failure and the possibility of evil that lurks within you, there is the love that is low; it is burning, and I can make that little flame of love that often manifests itself in smoke into the white clear love that 140 Truths for Children burns and never fades. I can bring you and put you fault- less before the presence of my Father's glory. Let not your heart be troubled." May we not take that as a message to ourselves? And yet, brethren, you remember Mr. Meyer's word yesterday morning. Did you not hear it all day? It rang in my heart and soul hour after hour when none other heard, " Then we ought to love." Then where is my responsibihty ? ''Let not your heart be troubled, ye beheve in God, trust me." And this morning, so far as my eyes are open to see between this poor frail self with all its possibilities of evil, and the white resplendent light of the Father's presence, there stands that One mighty to save, strong to deliver, who quenches passion's fires and breaks the chain of sin and sets me free, and I have none other that I can do but to trust him. May God help us all to trust. Foundation Truths for Children By Mrs. Mary Foster Bryner ''And the king commanded, and brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundations of the house." Nothing but the best would do for the founda- tions of that house, because Solomon was building a temple unto the Lord. "We are building day by day Temples the world may not see. Building, building every day, Building for eternity." And we are to desire that we shall so build that our sons may be corner-stones, and our daughters polished after the' similitude of a palace, that they may be living temples for the indwelhng of his Spirit. The best years for foundation building are childhood's years. All enter life through childhood's portals; all do not 141 Sunday Schools the World Around live through youth, and adult years. The Sunday-school membership includes, about half of it, the children under their teens. And often we hear it stated that about one- third of the Sunday-school may be found in the classes under ten years of age. We sometimes say the average Sunday- school life is from seven to ten years in different sections of the country. Are we retaining the children? The original topic was, ''Making Foundation Truths Plain to Children," which naturally divides itself into three parts. We must understand the foundation truths, therefore we must study the Bible. We must understand the children, therefore we must study the child. We must know how to make these truths plain, so we must study the methods and principles of teaching. The foundation truths will be found in God's Word. To every parent and teacher we would say, "Know thou the truth thyself, if thou the truth wouldst teach." Every one of us must live this truth, for childhood studies the acts of the teachers and parents more than the Acts of the Apostles. The summary of the truths that should be made plain to children might be gathered under three heads: God^s relation to us; Our relation to God; Our relation to one another. The first thing that the helpless little child must learn who enters life, is the relation of those around about him. Somebody feeds, provides, cares for, loves that little child, and in return, the child learns to give his love. ''God is love." "We love him because he first loved us." "God cares for us." "We will give thanks unto the Lord." God guards and leads. We will learn to follow where he leads. God forgives. We will try to do right. God is good to us; we will try to please him. We may find some of these truths very profoundly stated in some of the Epistles, but we also find them in such simple language that the youngest child may appreciate these simple truths. May 142 Truths for Children I read to you a few such as I have been gathering in our beginners' course for the very youngest children who attend our Sunday-school. In the Sunday School Exposition you will see a good deal of material that is marked under that head. Here are a few showing God's relation to us. ''God is love." I want you to notice that none of them have more than seven words. "Lord, thou art our Father." "The Lord is good to all." "The Lord is my shepherd." "He careth for us." "All things were made by him." "God shall supply all your need." "God loveth the cheerful giver." "He loved us and sent his Son." "His name was called Jesus." "He went about doing good." "Jesus said, Come unto me." "Learn of me." "Follow me." "Suffer httle children to come." "He took them in his arms." "Behold, I make all things new." "I am with you always." Could we express God's relation to us any plainer than in those simple Bible verses for these children ? Here are a few showing our relation to God. "We love him." "Pray to your Father in heaven." " Lord, teach us to pray." "Lord be thou my helper." "Teach me thy way, O Lord." "We ought to obey God." "I will not forget thy Word." "Praise waiteth for thee." "I will sing unto the Lord." "Serve the Lord with gladness." "Rejoice in the Lord always." "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving." "All have sinned." "Christ died for our sins." "I will be sorry for my sins." "We shall all be changed," and a few others that show our relation to one another. "Honor thy father and thy mother." "Children, obey your parents." "Let us love one another." "Little children, love one another." "Love thy neighbor as thyself." "Go, teach all nations." "Go ye into all the world." "Freely ye have received, freely give." "Be ye kind one to another." "Christ also pleased not himself." "Let us do good to all." 143 Sunday Schools the World Around Each one of those little texts, almost a sermon in itself, is a foundation truth for the children. We have the memory work for these children that brings before them these three thoughts continually. You will find in the Exposition some of the slips that show the work recommended for the children to do along that line, and to make them pleasant and attractive we sometimes get up these Httle memory diamonds, and as fast as the children learn, perhaps the Lord's Prayer, the twenty-third Psalm, the first Psalm, and passages of that sort, it is mentioned on one of those little memory diamonds; and I have seen on Promotion Day these children of Primary age with these Bible truths bound about their necks showing what they have learned. But after we have the foundation truths, we must also learn that they are to be taught to children, so we must study the child nature and needs in order that we may provide the nurture. The admonition to us is, ''Train the child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." It has been easier for us to give the admonition than the nurture many times. The children are not all alike. As we read of Bible children we find this so. Of John the Baptist it was said, "What manner of child is this?" Of Samson, "How shall we order this child?" Of Samuel, "As long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord." Of Timothy, "From a child thou hast known the Scriptures," and Jacob appreciated childhood, for as he was traveling he said, "Lead on softly according as the children are able to endure." And the children appreciate that Jesus was once a child, "And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man." For each period of childhood, we find there are different possibilities and hmitations. The first three years are open to impressions from the Sunday-school— impressions of this kind: The Sunday-school loves me. The Sunday-school remembers me. The Sunday-school wants me, pretty soon, 144 Truths for Children for a scholar. And that is the teaching of our Cradle Roll. If you could be in some of our schools you would hear the children welcoming those babies of the Cradle Roll. "Another new baby we welcome to-day. To him 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." And then you would hear those childish voices, "Heavenly Father, hear our prayer; . Keep within thy constant care This dear baby thou hast sent, To its loving parents lent." But the possibilities increase as the children grow a little older, and they may learn through the simple story, through the picture, through the songs, and through the conversation. The child must depend upon others for all that he learns, because he cannot read for himself. And we have our beginners' work for the very httle children. We remember that Paul said, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, and understood as a child, but now that I am a man I have put away childish things." But some of us adults have put the childish things so far away that it is hard for us to appreciate the limitations and the possibilities of the very young chil- dren. They are limited in experience, limited in knowledge, limited in power of attention and concentration, but in simple ways we find that they can absorb the foundation truths and live them out day by day. We find then, the next group of children who can read, who are attending school, and we ought to take advantage of this growing possibility. And we find again another group who can not only read, but who can write, and the Sunday-schools that are using this ability of the children to put down their own impressions of foundation truths are finding that those children will retain them better. We 10 145 Sunday Schools the World Around find in the Exposition books showing the work done by the children. In these you see the Kfe of Christ, or the Hfe of Abraham, or the life of John as it has been written down by those boys and girls who have the ability to put down the impressions that have come to them as they have been studying. Every child should have a copy of the Bible for himself, that he may read and study these foundation truths. I am glad that among the party on our ship was a boy whose class will be promoted from the Primary Department in about three weeks, but because the boy was coming on the trip his pastor and teacher presented him with a Bible before he started, and it tells the name of the Sunday-school from which it comes. That boy is interested in his Bible because it comes from that teacher, who has marked it with ribbons to help him understand the divisions of the Bible. We read of men who centuries ago traveled many miles that they might lay their best gifts at the feet of a little Child. To-day those who study childhood, and are bringing to childhood their best gifts, may also be called wise. Those measures which provide for the child physically, intellect- ually, spiritually, are the measures that will grow the strongest. Parents and teachers, "Up to us sweet childhood looketh, Heart and soul and mind awake, Teach us in thy ways, O Father, Teach us for sweet childhood's sake. In their young hearts, soft and tender, Guide our hands good seed to sow, That its blossoming may praise thee, Praise thee, wheresoe'er they go." But if we understand the truths, we must understand the children. We must understand how to make these truths plain to the children. Make the work interesting. The 146 Truths for Children teacher is the pivotal point between the book to be taught and the children to be taught. It is not enough that we should teach these children to know, we must also train them to do. There are oppor- tunities to-day for teachers to -learn more about methods and the principles of teaching. We find them in institutes, in conventions, in summer schools, in reading courses, etc., that have been provided. We are helping these boys and girls to be temples. We need to give them training along the hne of the best Christian citizenship, and for that reason the temperance work has a place in our Sunday-school training. Teach them early to repeat something like this: "My body is a temple, To God it does belong. He bids me keep it for his use. He wants it pure and strong. "Whatever harms my body I will not use at all. Tobacco is one hurtful thing, And so is alcohol. "Into my mouth they'll never go. When tempted, I will answer no. And every day, I'll watch and pray Lord, keep me pure and strong always." Some are here at this Convention who remember our motto of the International Convention held at Toronto almost two years ago, "Winning a generation for Jesus Christ." In' every country we must win the children. Children are naturally winsome wherever we may find them. Do any of vou doubt it as you have seen the children of the Azores, or' at Algiers, or in sunny Italy? Those Httle children that come up to you with a smile and touch your hand, would do almost any Httle favor for you. Would 147 Sunday Schools the World Around it be hard to win those children? And they are bright children. Well do I remember a Sunday about three years ago, when this room was filled with the children from the Sunday-schools of Rome, and although the talk was to be given to them through an^nterpreter, they were so bright that they would not wait for the interpreter to tell them what was being said but they counted up on their fingers and gave the answer without any interpreter. And I have found the children bright in all the lands that I have been privileged to visit. We sometimes think of that child in the midst. And perhaps we think of the sweetest one in our home or in our Sunday-school class. But did you ever stop to think it might have been a child of a darker hue, a child in a fisher- man's home, a child of Palestine, perhaps not in its best clothes, but playing about the floor. It was such a one that the Master picked up in his arms and said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." ''He took them in his arms and blessed them." "He shall gather the lambs in his arms." "God bless the little children Wherever they may be, Far out on the hills and prairies Across the boundless sea." May every one of us be able to say when we appear before our Lord, "Here I am, and the children whom thou hast given me." "The bread that comes from heaven needs finest breaking; Remember this All ye who offer for the children's taking, Nor give amiss. The desert manna, like to coriander With honeyed taste Was gathered at the word of the Commander With cautious haste. 148 The Sunday School Organized A small round thing, and not in loaves for eating, The manna fell. Each day the wondrous miracle repeating As records tell. ■So break it small, the bread of God, life-giving; The child is small. Unskilled in all the strange, great art of living, That baffles all. Be mindful of these little ones and feed them With living bread. But break it for them, as you gently lead them To Christ, the Head. With skill, and pains, and loving forethought tender, Provide the fare. Remember that their powers at best are slender, For whom you care. 'Young souls, immortal, claim your constant tending. To these be true. Be sure to give the bread from heaven descending. Naught else will do. Mix not with earthly things that cause destruction, Yet, break it fine. Nor let them lose for any selfish reason Their measure due. Remember, for their portion in due season, They look TO YOU." The Sunday-School Organized for Service By Marion Lawrance This is a day of organization. Organization is a magic word. The business of the world is organized; poHtics is organized; the professions are organized; hkewise the institutions of learning and philanthropy; and the Church must organize or lose out in the race. There is no other way to keep up with the bristling, throbbing, high tension of our day. 149 Sunday Schools the World Around Organization produces the result for which it stands with the greatest efficiency and rapidity, and with the least expenditure of money and labor. Organization is system, method, economy; the lack of organization is confusion. A Sunday-school is organized for service only when it is doing the work for which a Sunday-school exists, in the best manner, in the shortest time, and with the largest results. Let us consider very briefly seven of the essential marks of a Sunday-school which is organized for service. The Sunday-school is a Church service. Indeed, it is the Bible teaching and studying service of the Church. It should be given the dignity and importance of a Church service and the members of the church should all be con- nected with it, and this is possible. Its ministrations should extend to all in the community where it exists, whether they are attendants and members or not. A Sunday-school, therefore, is not thoroughly organized for service unless it is systematically endeavoring to reach those who are not in attendance, by means of house visitation, personal soHcitation, the Home Department and the Cradle Roll. It is a sin for a school to be smaller than it can be. I. This is involved in the "Go" of the Great Commission and no school will either grow or glow until it learns to go. Invitation then, systematic, regular, persistent, personal invitation, is one of the marks of a Sunday-school which is organized for service. II. The Sunday-school stands for the teaching of God's Word. Indeed, almost every other feature of the Sunday- school revolves around Bible teaching as a center. But if we are to teach the Word we must know the Word. This requires Bible study, intelligent Bible study, and a good deal of it. We must know likewise the methods of impart- ing instruction. The laws of teaching are fixed and they are within our reach. We must also know something of the mind we are to teach. This requires much study and 150 The Sunday School Organized painstaking application on the part of the teacher. It therefore follows that if a teacher would do the best work he must be especially trained and prepared for it. Fortunately, we need not seek in vain for help in either of these directions, for the books on Bible study, the art of teaching, and psychology are numerous, inexpensive, and many of them very choice. There should be a systematic, continuous effort on the part of every school to train its own teachers from its own ranks. It takes time, patience and hard work; but the Sunday-school that neglects to prepare its teachers does so at its own peril. The difference between drudgery and pleasure in Sunday-school teaching is largely a matter of preparation. Preparation, therefore — preparation and training of the teacher — is another mark of the Sunday-school which is organized for service. III. Our Lord has told us to carry the gospel message to the corners of the earth and to every creature. Evidently there is no escape from this sweeping command. The mis- sionary spirit is the very life blood of the Church. No church can live and thrive without it. No Sunday-school can prosper which endeavors to live within its own small compass. The only salvation for the Church, for the Sunday-school, or for any Christian man or woman, is to get a vision of the world through the eyes of Jesus Christ. It is for this we are met in the old ''Eternal City" to-day. It is for this that hundreds have crossed continents and seas. They love the work to which God has called them, and have gathered here at great expense of time, money and strength, that better methods may be devised for carrying the gospel, through the teaching of the Bible to the children and young people, to the men and women of every land on the face of the earth. The Sunday-school is just beginning to wake up to its Sunday Schools the World Around responsibility and opportunity in missionary enterprise. Missionary endeavor is the short cut to true success in all Christian work. We are told to carry the gospel to every creature, everywhere, and we can do it, by God's help, or he never would have mocked us by telling us to do it. This is practically the sum and substance of my message to you to-day. In the words upon our printed matter for this Convention we read that significant truth, "It is the whole business of the Church, and it is the business of the whole Church, to give the whole gospel to the whole world as speedily as possible." The Church of Jesus Christ is out for business or it has no business to be out. Our Sunday-school scholars should know of the great interests of the Kingdom of God in all parts of the world. There should be specific missionary instruction given to them. "No information, no inspiration." Even the boys and girls should know the conditions among the boys and girls of other lands. They should be given the privilege of carrying or sending the gospel to them. A new day is dawning in Sunday-school work, and we are coming more and more to realize that the church and Sunday-school which honor God by endeavoring faithfully to fulfill his last and great commission will have the choicest blessings at home. There is no other way. Jesus said (John 12: 26), "If any man will serve me, him will the Father honor." The evangelization of the world is the Church's plain duty and privilege. The church or Sunday-school (or individual for that matter) which will "make a little cake for God first," will have all it can use at home. It is proverbially true wherever it has been fairly tried that the churches and Sunday-schools which are doing the most to carry the gospel into all the earth are doing the most at home. Nothing will put life into a church so quickly and so thoroughly as for that church to carry the gospel of Hfe and light to others. This is true evangelism. 152 The Sunday School Organized Evangelization — the evangelistic spirit, which seeks to save the world, is another mark of the Sunday-school which is organized for service. IV. If, however, the gospel is to be carried to the ends of the earth, somebody must be sent to carry it, and those who are sent must be provided for. This means that our offerings in the Sunday-school must be largely increased in order that the cause of God should not suffer in other lands. We have many uses for the money that is given. But can it be used in any other way where it will do so much, and work so fast, and go so far as in the missionary efforts of the church? Our Sunday-school members are not trained to give as they should be. ''Train up a child to give a penny and when he is old he will not depart from it." In many schools giving is not one of the cardinal virtues. Proper habits of giving formed in youth will be a blessing to the givers, for the right kind of giving is a means of grace. Giving in Sunday-school work should be generous and it should be in proportion to the ability; it should be regular and systematic. A generation of boys and girls raised up to give in this manner through the Sunday-school will soon wipe out all of the debts on our missionary societies' books, and greatly multiply the number of missionaries in the home and foreign lands, besides putting vigor into the work at home. Giving is a Christian virtue. Giving — generous, systematic, intelligent giving is one of the marks of the Sunday-school which is organized for service. V. Right ideas in regard to all of these things we have mentioned come only through intelligent instruction in the Word of God. It is there we learn the gospel principles underlying invitation; the preparation of our teachers that they may be workmen that need "not to be ashamed;" the great fundamental principles of missionary endeavor, and that act of practical Christian worship which we call giving. 153 Sunday Schools the World Around Our scholars must know God's Word; they must know it through and through. "Ye shall know the truth," said the Master. The teaching in our schools should be of much higher order than it is. We need not teach less about the Bible but we should teach more of the Bible. Many of our scholars have at best but a hazy knowledge of the Bible. Our teachers, therefore, must not only be trained but they must actually do the work of instructing the scholars along the line of Christian living and service. Teaching is the finest of the fine arts. Instruction in the Word of God is one of the marks of a Sunday-school which is organized for service. VI. He who said, "Ye shall know the truth" said also in the very same breath, "and the truth shall make you free." There is no real merit in knowing God's Word un- less its precious truth is applied to the heart and life so that the new life is begun and the old life is broken off; so that Jesus Christ is recognized as Saviour, and the Christian warfare entered upon never to be laid down until we are called hence. God's Word faithfully taught, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, will or should lead our scholars into the kingdom. It ought to be the reasonable expectation of those in charge of every Sunday-school that the scholars shall be saved. It should not be a strange thing to hear the question of the jailor to Paul coming from some scholar to his teacher at every session of the school. And yet there are thousands of Sunday-schools which pass an entire twelve months without a conversion. In our country it takes six Sunday- school teachers a whole year to bring one soul to Christ. This result cannot be satisfactory. It should not be satis- factory. It is God's will concerning all the members of our schools that they should be saved. Let us, dear friends, put first things first and let nothing in our Sunday-schools interfere with the spiritual life and effort which leads our scholars to salvation. If, as Drummond said, "Love is the 154 The Sunday School Organized greatest thing in the world "—winning souls for God is the greatest work in the world. Salvation is another mark of the Sunday-school which is organized for service. VII. To be saved, however, is not the end. Many are saved no doubt who amount to but little to the cause of God in the world. It is amazing and alarming to notice what a small percentage of our church members are actually doing efficient service for the extension of God's Kingdom through the church or Sunday-school or any other way. It is equally alarming to know how many there are who fall away from their first estate because the salvation of the scholars has been made the chief thing in the Sunday-school rather than building them up in strong Christian character and fortifying them for the battles of life and for service. To be saved is to join the Christian army. To be edified or built up in strong Christian character for service is to have taken training under the tutelage of Jesus Christ himself. One of the weakest points in all of our church and Sunday-school life is that the precious souls which surrender to the claims of Jesus Christ our Master are too often left to grope their way in the dark without the nurture and kindly admonition and training they need to fit them for his service. This is the place of greatest leakages in our churches. It is well-nigh criminal to urge scholars to confess Christ, and then send them forth into the worid without the Christian's armor. When our scholars have accepted Christ they should be taught how to bring others to Christ; they should be taught how to use the Bible as food for their souls and in defense against the arrows of the evil one; they should be taught right methods of prayer, meditation, and Bible study. Those who are especially fitted for it should be trained for the teacher's office that they may enter into service better qualified than their teachers were. This will add great strength, not only to the individual, but to the Sunday-school ^55 Sunday Schools the World Around as well, and indeed, to the whole Church. Building up stalwart Christian character, setting before the scholars the privileges of service; endeavoring to instill into them the desire to be themselves workmen, efficient, trained; for these things every Sunday-school should stand. Edification or building up every convert in strong Christian character is another mark of the Sunday-school which is organized for service. All of these things we have considered are in greater or less degree within the reach of every Sunday-school, every- where. Not all can attain to the same degree of efficiency because of the circumstances under which they exist; but all can endeavor to keep close to the One who has promised to be our guide and helper. Invitation, preparation, evangelization, giving, instruction, salvation, edification. Let us keep these things in our hearts and ponder them well, for they are the marks, and the essential marks, of every Sunday-school which is thor- oughly organised for service. The Great Apostle By the Rev. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan ''I am not a whit behind the very chief est apostles" are words used by Paul in the midst of boasting of which he was evidently ashamed, but which was necessary in defense of truth. There is no surer sign of modesty than the absence of mock modesty. When a man is able to boast in vindica- tion of his appointment to service by his Lord he proves his humility. The greatness of Paul as an apostle is now conceded, yet during his exercise of the apostolic vocation he had per- petually to defend his right to the title. In his letters, sometimes with a touch of satire, he defended his apostleship against the misunderstanding — that is the kindest word to use — of the other apostles. In the Galatian letter he 156 The Great Apostle declared that he went up to Jerusalem and gained nothing from them. He referred to those whom he found there as persons "who were reputed to be somewhat," then absolutely denied that they ministered to him in any way, either by original authority, or subsequent counsel. He received his gospel from his Master. He received his commission from him. He did his work under his immediate direction. He remitted his case and cause to his judgment. In defense of his apostleship he always adopted two lines of argument. First, he insisted upon his divine appoint- ment. Second, he claimed that the fulfilment in his ministry of the true apostoHc function proved that divine appointment. Wherein lay the greatness of this apostle? The simplest and most inclusive answer to that inquiry is to be found in a statement of the deepest facts of his hfe in their relation to Christ. I desire now to make that statement quite briefly and only by way of introduction, for I propose another method of approaching the subject. I cannot, however, entirely pass over these fundamental and inclusive matters. The greatness of the apostle was created in the first place by the absoluteness of his surrender to Jesus. On the way to Damascus, surprised, startled, and stricken to the earth by the revelation of the living Christ, he in one brief and simple question handed over his whole life to Jesus. "What shall I do. Lord?" The greatness of Paul as an apostle is further to be accounted for by his attitude, consequent upon that sur- render, toward all the things of his former life. "What things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ." Finally, his greatness is to be accounted for by the resulting experience, which he crystallized into one brief sentence, "To me to live is Christ." These things being stated and granted, I desire to con- sider certain attitudes of the mind of this man which reveal the strength which made him the great apostle, the pattern missionary for all time. These attitudes of mind are 157 Sunday Schools the World Around revealed, not so much by the formal statements of his writings as by the incidental and almost unconscious utterances thereof. I particularly desire to make clear my own discrimination between these two things. In his letters there are certain paragraphs which are formal statements concerning himself. I do not propose turning to these for this reason — I say this with all respect to Paul, and with recognition of the fact that these are inspired writing — men do not reveal themselves in their formal utterances half so clearly as in their incidental words. I have recently been going through the writings of Paul and gathering out some of the incidental things he uttered concerning himself. I propose to take seven of them, without any set sequence or order, hoping the effect may be cumulative, helping to an understanding of the attitudes of mind w^hich made this man a great apostle. The deepest thing in human personahty is not mind, but spirit. The spiritual life of Paul commenced when he said, ''What shall I do, Lord?" was continued when he said, "What things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ, " was perfected as Christ was formed in him and shone out through his life. That is the spiritual fact. I desire now to deal with the mental, that is, with the atti- tudes of mind which were natural to him, and which were baptized by the Spirit into life and fire and power. In the midst of his classic passage on love, he declared, "Now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." Comparing love with knowledge, and showing how knowledge passes away, the richer and fuller for ever more making obsolete the smaller and the incomplete, by way of illustration he wrote, "Now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things," or more literally, "I have made an end of childish things." In that declaration there is revealed an attitude of mind, consisting of a sense of proportion. It is a recognition of the fact that the ways of a child are right for a child, but that the ways of a child are The Great Apostle wrong for a man. There are men who when they become men do not put away childish things. There are people who make advance in certain directions, and carry up with them into the new region of their life things which ought to have been left behind. Should the butterfly cling to the shell in which it had been but a grub, what disaster! When it became a butterfly, it put away the things of the former life. "Now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." That is to say, toys gave place to tools. Playtime was succeeded by worktime. Instruction began to express itself in construction. This is a principle of greatness in all Christian service, and lack of it is inimical to progress. It is a sense of proportion and readiness to answer new conditions whenever they arise. My second illustration is taken from the Galatian letter, *' I conferred not with flesh and blood." That is a revelation of the sense of spiritual compulsion. He had already declared that he had received a double unveihng of Jesus Christ. Mark the twofold fact. Christ was unveiled to him, and in him. He had seen a vision of Christ external to himself on the way to Damascus; and he had seen a vision of Christ as part of his inner, deepest, and profoundest life. That vision, that unveiling of Jesus Christ, became the master principle of his life. In a moment all the lower motives were cancelled. The spiritual truth breaking in upon his soul by the revealing of Christ to him and the re- vealing of Christ in him, came not only as light but as fire, not only illuminating, but destroying every other motive that existed within. Now mark the fine scorn of his word, "I conferred not with flesh and blood," that is to say, material motives at their very highest and best were for ever more out of court and out of count. "I conferred not with flesh and blood," quite literally, I did not take advice with flesh and blood, I did not take counsel with flesh and blood, did not seek the guidance of flesh and blood. First, his own flesh and blood. Sunday Schools the World Around He never took counsel with his material life from the moment when God revealed his Son in him. He took counsel with the revealed Son. He did not take counsel with the apostles of flesh and blood. He took counsel only with the spiritual truth which had broken upon him through the inner and spiritual conception of Christ. Turn to another of these declarations, "I know how to be abased and I know also how to abound." That is a sense of detachment from circumstances. Did ever apostle pass through more varied circumstances than this one? Was ever man less affected by them than he was ? This is not the detachment of absence. That is the ascetic, monastic ideal which is anti-Christian. The man who says, I will escape the possibiHty of abasement, the possibiHty of abundance, by hiding myself from the common- place affairs of life, is not realizing the apostolic ideal, which is ability to stay in the midst of circumstances of abasement, and to dwell amid abundance. Neither is it the detachment of indifference. It is not the stoicism of the Greek which steels the heart and says, abasement shall not affect me, abundance shall not appeal to me. Far from it. It is rather the detachment of mastery and of use. ''I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound." I am not afraid of abasement. I will not escape from it. I am not afraid of abundance, I will not avoid it. I do not imagine that in the hour when my Lord gives me abundance there is something wrong in my inner life. "I know also how to abound." I know how to suffer hunger. I know how to suffer need. Abasement without dejection. Abun- dance without tyranny. That is one of the greatest sen- tences Paul ever wrote as revealing his absolute triumph in human life. It is the picture of a man so absolutely detached from all the circumstances of his life that he was able to take hold of them and press them into the making of his own character, and what is more, into the service i6o The Great Apostle which his Master's will had appointed. This is one of the statements of Paul of which I hardly dare to speak, so Ifttle do I know it personally, so difficult do I find it to be. Where was the secret ? How was it this man could say such a thing? Follow right on and he tells you. ''I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me." It is the Christ- centered life. That is the spiritual fact. I only refer to it that we may find the secret of this mental attitude which is so difficult, nay impossible, to cultivate, which can only come as Christ within becomes in very deed the Master of the whole life. Whenever Christ does become the Master of the life, you will find a servant who says, I cannot hurry from abasement, "I know how to be abased." I do not fear abundance, 'T know also how to abound." You cannot turn my feet out of the way of his commandment by hunger, I know how to suffer hunger. You cannot quench my zeal for his service by giving me fulness. I know how to be filled. I am so detached from circumstances that I can master them. I come now to the very heart and center of the references which reveal his greatness as an apostle. In that wonderful Roman letter — introducing the subject of the salvation of God — he made three personal references within the compass of a few phrases. ''I am debtor. . . . I am ready. . I am not ashamed." '' I am debtor," the gospel is a deposit which I hold in trust. ''I am ready," the gospel is an equipment so that I am able to discharge my debt. ''I am not ashamed," the gospel is a glory, so that if I come to imperial Rome, sitting on its seven hills, I shall delight to preach the gospel there also. In each case the personal emphasis reveals the sense of responsibility. '' I am debtor." Here you touch the driving power of the man's life. Here you find out w^hy he could not rest, why the very motto of his missionary movement w^as "the regions beyond"; why he traversed continents, crossed seas, and entered into perils on perils. He felt that while anywhere there was a human II i6i Sunday Schools the World Around being who had not heard the evangel, he was in debt to that human being. " I am ready." I suppose you have all read what Artemus Ward said about the American war. He said he had already donated several brothers and cousins to the war, and he was prepared to donate a few more. How many of you have donated other people to missionary enterprise? Paul said, *'I am ready." *'I am not ashamed." You tell me we must cancel the capital I. Yes, nail it to the cross and let it emerge in resurrection glory. In the same letter I presently find this man writing another revealing sentence. "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ." I do not know that there is anything other than silence possible in the presence of that. There have been endless attempts made to account for it, and to explain it, usually to explain it away. It has been said that the apostle did not really mean that he wished he were accursed from Christ. Then in the name of God, why did he write it? If language means anything, he meant exactly that. "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh." How is this to be accounted for. It can only be accounted for by declaring that it is the mental attitude which grows out of the fulness of spiritual life, of which Christ is the fountain. Again, go back in memory over the argument. He had stated the great doctrine of justification. He had dealt with the great doctrine of sanctification. He had climbed up out of the unutterable ruin of human sin until he had come to that height at the close of the eighth chapter in which he said that nothing can "separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Imme- diately the shout of personal triumph merged into the cry of a great sorrow, "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake." How are we to account for it? Only thus, he is now speaking with the tongue of Christ, feeling with the heart of Christ. He 162 The Great Apostle is a man surcharged with the Christ-life. It thrills and throbs through every fiber of his being. If that be so, I have no further difficulty, for he who knew no sin was made sin for me. Here is a man in whom his life is dominant, in whom the Christ passion is moving and burning. What is the mental attitude now? Utter and absolute self-abnega- tion. ''I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ." It is the sense of compassion. I turn to another passage which stands in almost brutal contrast to the one at which we have just been looking. "I resisted him to the face." Who is this that he resisted to the face? Peter. Why did he resist Peter to the face? Read the story carefully. Not because Peter had been preaching a false doctrine. He had done nothing of the kind. Peter, to whom had first come the commission to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, having come down to these Gentile Christians had sat down at the table with them quite naturally. But there came down certain men from Jerusalem, and when they came Peter declined to sit down with the Gentiles. Paul calls his action by the right word, dissimulation, positive dishonesty. I pray you notice carefully what this means. Paul saw that Peter insulted truth in the commonplaces. He would never have insulted truth in a great crisis. Peter argumentatively and theologically would have defended the liberty of the Gentile quite as eagerly as would Paul, but under stress of con- ventionality he conformed to the false thinking of the Judaean visitors by refusing to sit down with the Gentiles. Paul's anger here is a finer revelation of loyalty to truth than any lengthy treatise. I will put that in another form. His attitude toward Peter is the supreme vindication of the honesty of the Galatian letter. Had he written his Galatian letter, a powerful treatise in defense of the Hberty of the Christian, and yet had lightly passed over Peter's dissimu- lation, I would have been compelled to doubt his sincerity. Here again, I remind you of the principle enunciated at the 163 Sunday Schools the World Around beginning of this study. A man is revealed in the common- place thing, not in the crisis, Paul, when he saw Peter violating truth in the commonplace, resisted him to the face, because he was to be blamed. An apostle violating truth in the commonplace is not to be excused because he is an apostle. In all probability Peter was one of those to whom Paul referred as those who were ''reputed to be somewhat." The "somewhat" that he seemed to be could not save him in the presence of this man in whom the truth reigned supremely, who would not deviate by a hair's breadth from loyalty to it. No man is great who excuses the violation of truth in the commonplaces of hfe. ''I resisted him to the face." One more illustration, "I must also see Rome." That was not the feverish desire of the tourist. He was himself a Roman citizen, and was conscious of the far-reaching power of the Roman empire. He knew full well how the influence of the capital city spread out over all the known world. He was perfectly well aware that the Roman highways extended in every direction, and Roman rule was everywhere. It was the strategic center of the life of his age. "I must also see Rome." I must go to Rome, and from that great center send forth this self-same evangel, this gospel message. It is exactly this sense of method which the Church has so perpetually been in danger of losing. Take one illustra- tion of what I mean from home missionary work, and another, a living one at this moment, from the foreign field. The home illustration is to be found in the perpetual habit the Church of God has had of abandoning some building at the center of a vast population. When the Church of God abandons some strategic center it is because she has not the apostle's sense, "I must also see Rome," I must be at the heart of the world's movements, I must take this gospel into the very center where the tides of life are throbbing, and from which the influences which make or mar men are 164 The Great Apostle proceeding. Take the other illustration, from the foreign field. If the Church of God did but know its day and opportunity it would fasten its attention at this hour upon Japan. China is waking from her long, long slumber, and the question of the politician is not the question of the Christian. The question of the pohtician is, What shall we do with China? The question of the Christian is, What will China do with us? for I beheve the Christian man climbs to the highest height and sees things more clearly. That is the question of the future. Remember finally China is not going to be influenced by us. If she desires Western civihzation she will certainly choose to take it from her neighbor and kin, Japan. If we did but know the hour of our visitation and opportunity, we should evan- gelize Japan, and especially in the centers of learning, for from them are going forth the men who will presently effect the moulding of China. The Church to-day ought to be restless through all her Missionary Societies, and her great cry ought to be "I must see Japan." It was a great sense of method. It was the word of a man who thought impe- rially in very deed and truth, and who knew that to be at the center of empire with the message of the gospel was to affect the uttermost part of the earth. Let me gather up in brief sentences these sayings and their values. First of all, I find a sense of proportion which made him willing to pass on into new light and new conditions and forget absolutely the things of the past. "Now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." Then I find the sense of spiritual compulsion which made him magnificently, even satirically, independent of the counsel of flesh and blood. 'T conferred not with flesh and blood." Then I find that splendid detachment from circumstances which meant mastery of circumstances. " I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound." Then I find that sense of personal responsibility which made him say, " I am debtor . . . I am ready . i6s Sunday Schools the World Around I am not ashamed." Then I find that overwhelming sense of compassion which made him say, "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ." Then I find the sense of stern loyalty to truth which made him resist Peter to the face — " I resisted him to the face." Finally, I find that sense of method which made him put into a sentence the burning desire of his heart as he said, "I must also see Rome." Truly this was the great apostle, the great pattern for all time of those who would desire to be apostles, messengers, missionaries of the cross of Christ. Yet I am compelled to return to the fundamental state- ments with which I began. If these are the mental attitudes, what is the spiritual fact? "To me to live is Christ." So that as I look at Paul, the apostle, the missionary, the last thing I have to say is not of the great apostle, but of the great Christ, the One who took hold of this man, and revealing himself within him, unveiling his glory to his inner consciousness, drove him forth, and made him such as he was. Christ diffused through Paul will not help us. It is good to see Paul, to know what Christ can do; but we must indeed get to Christ himself if we would enter into fellowship even with Paul. If the vision of the great apostle shall drive us to his Lord, then how great and gracious will be the result.* If we will but make his surrender, "What shall I do, Lord?": if we will take up this attitude toward the things we have counted best, counting them but loss that we may win Christ: if we will but enter into the expe- rience which he expressed in the words, "To me to live is Christ:" — what then? First, he will not make us Pauls, but he will make us his own. Though he may never send us over continents and among such perils, all that matters nothing, for it is local, and incidental merely. He will send us where he would have us go, and he will make us what he would have us be, and through us — oh, matchless wonder of overwhelming grace — the light of his love may shine, and the force of his life may be felt. i66 The Great Apostle We cannot have this Christ-hfe within us without having clear vision, and without having driving compassion, and without having the dynamic which makes us mighty. We cannot have Christ within us and be parochial. Christ overleaps the boundaries of parish, society, and nation, and his clear vision takes in the whole world. If Christ be verily in us we shall see with his eyes, feel w^ith his heart, be driven with his very compassion. " 'If I have eaten my morsel alone!' The patriarch spoke in scorn; What would he think of the Church, were he shown Heathendom, huge, forlorn, Godless, Christless, with soul unfed, While the Church's ailment is fulness of bread, Eating her morsel alone? " 'I am debtor alike to the Jew and the Greek,' The mighty apostle cried; Traversing continents, souls to seek, For the love of the Crucified. Centuries, centuries since have sped; Millions are famishing, we have bread. But we eat our morsel alone. " Ever of them who have largest dower Shall heaven require the more. Ours is aflfluence, knowledge, power, Ocean from shore to shore; And East and West in our ears have said, Give us, give us your living Bread. Yet we eat our morsel alone. " Freely, as ye- have received, so give. He bade, who hath given us all. How shall the soul in us longer live. Deaf to their starving call, For whom the blood of the Lord was shed, And his body broken to give them bread, If we eat our morsel alone?" 167 Sunday Schools the World Around The Sunday School as a Missionary Force By a. C. Monro From or through the Sunday-schools and Young People's Societies in Great Britain the Baptist Missionary Society receives one-fourth of its annual income, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, one-fifth of its annual income, the London Missionary Society over one-seventh of its annual income. The total contributed through the young people, to these three societies, and I take it they are representative of all others, amounts to roughly not less than ^^^65,000 annually. These figures show that some societies work the Sunday- school mine to greater profit than others. I give these figures to bring before you the fact that the Sunday-school is a force — a potent force — in the missionary world to-day. But it is nothing like the force it might be made. What the Sunday-school, working up to the summit of its possi- bilities could do for foreign missions, it has not yet entered into the mind of man to conceive. Create missionary interest and enthusiasm, translate them into effort, wisely lead, and the Sunday-school will provide men, women, and money enough to banish all present burdens weighing on our Societies, and send them along with new and added power to spread the light of the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am going to tell the simple story of what a Sunday-school has done, and is doing to-day for missions. It is necessary that I should first give you some details of the school whose doings I am to describe, and when I say "school" please understand I mean Christian Endeavor Societies also, for they share to the full in all the work recorded. It is situated in the Southeast of London, in the^ Borough of Camberwell and in its ParHamentary Division of Peckham. When I have mentioned that fact no vision 168 As a Missionary Force of exceptional riches will rise to the mind of any one who knows the neighborhood. ''Poor Peckham" is an aUitera- tive colloquialism with far too much truth in it. It is known as Rye Lane Sunday-school and is the Sunday-school of the Baptist church w^orshiping in Rye Lane Chapel. It has fifty -four teachers and about^nine hundred scholars on the books, with an average attendance of about five hundred and fifty. Close on three hundred of the scholars are over fifteen years of age. The young people of the school belong to the working class and the lower middle class, and wealth has no representatives, either among the scholars, teachers, or officers. It has to be confessed that neither in its building or its methods is it up to modern Sunday-school requirements. There is, however, in the school, life, love, unity, zeal, and it is blest with a pastor in touch and sympathy with the young people, always ready to encourage, strengthen, and lead them in earnest effort to extend Christ's Kingdom. The account I am to give you will refer only to the past eight years of the school's history. Up to 1898, the school had raised, mainly by the aid of the ancient and serviceable missionary box, something like ;^8o, per annum. In doing as much as this there was a general sense of satisfaction and a comforting consciousness that we were doing very well. If pride had no place, yet we felt we w^ere meeting all reasona- ble expectations, while some even thought improving the position was among the impossible things. About this time, however, the Lord himself was at work in the school, and we knew it not. He had sent his servant to prepare the way, as is his wont. That servant was the earnest, devoted, large-hearted teacher of the Young Women's Bible Class. Upon her heart the burden of the heathen had been laid, and she shared it with her class. They talked and planned and worked and prayed, thus generating a spirit of interest and enthusiasm that, when the door was opened, filled the whole school. 169 Sunday Schools the World Around The opening of the door came in the selection by the Baptist Missionary Society, of a well-known old scholar of the school, as a missionary to China who had just finished his college course and done good work as a student pastor. The teacher referred to immediately brought to the superintendent, and then to the teachers'-meeting, a sug- gestion that the school should undertake his support. The suggestion was well received, and a special teachers'-meeting was called to decide the matter. This was full and enthusiastic, agreeing unanimously: i. To undertake his support. 2. To do it as an additional missionary effort, that is, in addition to anything we were doing as a school, so that it meant much more than doubling our annual con- tribution. 3. To raise the money by the circle and share system. It was thought well to aim at ;^i5o per annum (although £120 was the real amount required). It was decided, therefore, to form a Missionary Circle of one hundred shareholders, each share representing £1. los. 4p. per annum. Within a fortnight from the date of the meeting, and without a single soul being asked personally, one hundred and ten shares were taken up, ten more than was asked, for friends came and said, ''put my name down." Eighteen months later, when a second missionary, an old scholar too, was sent out, the same happy experience was repeated. Such was the beginning of the new era of missionary work in Rye Lane Sunday-school. It proved no temporary wave of enthusiasm, it has stayed eight years, and is as strong as ever to-day. The school soon had to mourn the loss of its first mission- ary. After three brief years of service, brilhant in their promise, he was called to his heavenly home. Another, however, was chosen, a lady this time, and she is in the field now. To give an idea of the growth of the movement, I shall 170 As a Missionary Force just catalogue the foreign missionary undertakings and doings of the school to-day. It supports: Its own missionary representative in China at a cost of £80 per annum. Its own missionary representa- tive in India at a cost of ;^8o per annum. Both of these are members of Rye Lane Church, and one is an old scholar of the school as well. The Unking of our efforts with individuals known to the church and school has been a source of great strength, and I would especially emphasize it. It supports: A native preacher in India, at a cost of £15 per annum. A native preacher in China, at a cost of £15 per annum. A school in China for thirty girls, at a cost of £2. los. per annum. A bed in a Chinese hospital, at a cost of £$ per annum. An orphan girl in India, who is being trained to become a Bible Woman, at a cost of £5 per annum. The following amounts in addition to those for definite purposes were also raised and handed over last year: To Baptist Missionary Society, £7 14s. 9P-, to Baptist Medical Mission, £35 8s. 9p., to Baptist Zenana Mission, £29 i6s., to Continental Sunday-school Mission, £5 5s. Further, three large boxes filled with toys and useful and fancy articles are sent, two to India, and one to China, each Christmas. As need has arisen, the school has sent out to its repre- sentatives as helps in their work: A harmonium, a type- writer, cash to buy a donkey, gramophone, two accordions, etc. The amount raised for foreign missions by the school last year was £314 7s. loip., and another £103 5s. lip. was raised for home work and philanthropic purposes, making a total of £417 13s. For the eight years the total raised amounts to £3,094 19s. loid. of which £2,364 7s. loid. was for foreign missions. So much, and yet so little! So httle! and yet so much, 171 Sunday Schools the World Around that if only all schools did proportionally the same, it would mean progress beyond imagining in missionary enterprise. The various methods of collecting the money thus dis- tributed, were: 1. The old-fashioned Class Boxes were passed round the classes every Sunday. It is worth noting that in spite of all developments they realized when they ceased to be used, as nearly as possible the same as they did eight years ago. Their day is over now, however, and on Sunday, October yth, 1906, was inaugurated our new method of collecting bv "The King's Bags." Time prevents my explaining this new method, but it has produced an increase of over fifty per cent in our afternoon collections. In its first six months of working our afternoon collections have totalled £36 i6s. as against -^2/^ 12s., in the corresponding six months of the previous year. In addition to that benefit, the collection is lifted into an important place as an act of worship in the afternoon service — the gift becomes as the prayer and the praise. 2. There are home boxes. These are of two sorts, one of an ordinary shape for the Congo, and the other a pill box shape for medical missions. 3. "Do Without Bags." The "Do Without Bag" is a small silk bag carried in the pocket, into which is put any money the bearer has refrained from spending on luxuries, the "fair fruits of self-denial," in fact. 4. A sale of work held annually at which the Christian Endeavor Societies take a leading part. 5. Special collections taken when open school is held, and at pubHc meetings. 6. And, most important of all, the "Missionary Circles." To this method I would invite your earnest attention. It reveals the power of the penny, and has wonderful possibili- ties in it. A Missionary Circle is the combination of a certain number of persons who promise to give or collect one penny per day for specified missionary purposes. This 172 DQ As a Missionary Force amounts to 7s. yd. per quarter or 30s. 4d. per annum, and represents one share in the Circle. For instance, for the support of each of the lady missionaries there is a circle of sixty shares, which represents £90 and as the amount required is £80, allows for the expense of working the circle and possible failures in keeping up shares. The shares are promised by individuals or classes, who are then enrolled and form the circle. Collecting cards are next issued which have to be returned with the cash quarterly. The fresh card is sent out before the quarter ends, and so serves as a reminder that the share installment is due. There are three Circles at work in the school, two for foreign missions, and one for a home missionary effort. So far I have dealt with material contributions. They are not all, nor the most important that is given, however. The training of the young in missionary interest and enthusiasm; the passing on to the Church a generation realizing their responsibilities to the heathen, and eager to meet them; the prayers of teachers and scholars banded together in daily intercession; the throbbing heart of sym- pathy with the workers in the field,^ — ^these are contributions far-reaching and valuable beyond any cash estimate. There is a missionary atmosphere in the school. The gong that calls the school to order and attention is a constant reminder of the mission field — it is the gift of our church missionary on the Congo, and is hung from two teeth of a hippopotamus that very nearly ended that mis- sionary's career. Enlarged framed photos of the school missionaries are hung in prominent places. Large charts are also on the walls showing at a glance the financial position of each circle. In a prominent position there is a missionary thermometer, nine feet high which records and shows the rise and fall of the weekly contributions. The thermometer has done excellent service and has helped the King's Bags much. 173 Sunday Schools the World Around It has been copied in neighboring schools too, and been equally effective in increasing interest and collections there. There is an Honor Board, on which are inscribed the names of old scholars or church members who have been, or are now, in the foreign field. The amount collected in each class is read from the desk quarterly. Letters are read regularly from our own missionaries during afternoon school. There are Missionary Scrap Boards in School and Class rooms. These are boards covered with green baize, on which are pinned cuttings from illustrated and other maga- zines, or indeed anything that bears on the missionary question. There are Missionary Study Classes. This is a new and specially informing method of increasing interest and has ''caught on." There are already four classes meeting weekly, with a certainty of more to follow. The classes meet in the house of some friend, and the number attending is limited to twelve. In connection with the sending out of boxes for Christmas gifts, we have competitions for the best-dressed dolls, the best painted texts in Chinese or other languages, and the best made toy, etc., and then there is an exhibition of the beautiful things sent in. There are "Correspondence Circles," each member of which undertakes to write to a missionary once a month. There is a "One by One" League whose members take a personal interest in, and pray daily for, a native child in India or China. The name of the child allotted is sent by a school missionary. Arrangements are made to give missionary lessons to classes whose teachers desire it. This is found to be more effective than frequent addresses from the platform. From the desk the missionaries are prayed for every 174 As a Missionary Force Sunday, on nearly every occasion their names being mentioned. A special Young People's missionary prayer-meeting is held on the fourth Sunday evening of each month. In the selection of hymns for the school anniversary services one or two missionary hymns are chosen, and, indeed, on every occasion in connection with the hfe of the school its missionary work has always a front place. Missionary literature is regularly distributed, and there is a real, live, up-to-date missionary library with books that are read. As to management and control, this is in the hands of a committee formed of teachers and senior scholars, w^hich is appointed annually. All the missionary work is under its care. It reports monthly to the teachers'-meetings, and its decisions (unless when power is given to act) have all to be formally approved by the teachers. The superintendent is ex-ofhcio chairman, and the chief secretary is the mis- sionary secretary of the school. It is only right to say that the present holder of that office is the personality of the organization. Under God, the work accomplished is largely due to his talent, devotion and zeal. From the Young Christians' Missionary Union the school has received invaluable counsel, help and inspiration. I would recommend any school desiring to go forward on missionary lines to get in touch with this excellent society at once. The development of foreign missionary effort has meant great increase in missionary and philanthropic work at home as well. Specially would I ask those with a fear in their heart that working for the heathen abroad might impoverish and stultify home effort, to note this, — the school is raising at the present time eight to ten times more for home work than when it started on its foreign missionary enterprise. And this is not all, for efforts that cannot be measured 175 Sunday Schools the World Around in cash are constantly being made by individuals, classes, societies, and the whole school, to help and bless the sick, the sinful, and the poor of the neighborhood. Its intense interest in missionary work has not made the school lopsided either. This is proved by the fact that at the present moment it holds the Challenge Shield for the best Senior Sunday-school choir in the local Sunday-school Union with which it is affiliated. Also the Challenge Shield for the largest entries and best results in the local Sunday-school Union scholars Scripture examination. To the church it has meant gain to have passed into its membership young people taught in the principles of systematic Christian giving, and trained in the practise of them. And best of all, in the spiritual work of the school the blessing has been very marked. Last year forty-five of the scholars were baptized and joined the church, and the spirit of prayer and earnest Christian enterprise among the young people stirs and cheers the heart. In Rye Lane, at any rate, experience has shown that the best way to quicken life and service in the Sunday-school is to develop interest in, and effort on behalf of, foreign missions. The Oneness of Believers By the Rev. F. B. Meyer, B. A. It is quite clear that from the first Jesus Christ anticipated that his people should be one. And during his human hfe he uses three distinct analogies. He said that his church was to resemble the home, in which there are brothers and sisters, and the play of many dispositions. He said that he would build his church not on Petros, the apostle, but petra, the testimony that the apostle gave to his Deity, the one church against which the gates of hell should not prevail. And third, he left the upper chamber on the eve of his death and saw the vine twining itself around the 176 A Missionary Contributions Thermometer. The Oneness of Believers trellis work, and he compared his church to the vine with its infinite variety. These three images I present to your notice. The unity of the family, the unity of the building, the unity of the vine, and I might add the unity of the flock, for there is no doubt that the King James translators yielded to their ecclesiastical bias when they said, ''There is one fold and one shepherd." I cannot think so badly of their Greek as to say they did not know that the "one" stood for flock — many folds, but one flock. Ultimately in his high-priestly prayer, the Master said, "Father, I will that my people should be one; that they may all be one; that they may be perfected in one; that they may be one even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be one in us." I want to lay hold of that for a moment, for it is the keystone of the arch which I desire to build over the chasm of time — the arch of unity. The unity of the church on earth finds its model in the unity of the Divine nature, and you will allow me to make the point here that the unity of God is the unity which is compatible with variety. The first principle w^ith the Christian and with the Jew and with the Moslem is, the Lord our God is one. And I shall never forget hearing from the white mosque overlooking Benares, with its myriads of deities, the voice of the muezzin caUing out in the still air, "There is no God but the one God." But in the unity of God there is the variety of function and purpose — Father, Son and Spirit. The Father designs, the Son executes. The Father sends; the Son is sent, and the work of the Spirit is diverse. The Father is the light; the Son is the far-driven beam; and the Spirit is color. And you must see, therefore, that if the church resembles the unity of the Deity, it must be capable of an almost infinite variety. And this is the unity of the believers of all time and of every climate — the unity of the one church, with the variety of the form in which it exemplifies itself. Now, that, of course, excludes the idea of uniformity. 12 177 Sunday Schools the World Around And we shall never understand God's conception, which, like the soaring Alps, rises snow-capped above all the tumult and turmoil of the valley, until we have learned to dis- tinguish between uniformity and unity. A brick or a heap of bricks, is a uniformity, but a house with its variety is a unity. A pole or a collection of poles is a uniformity, but the tree from which the pole is taken, with its variety of branch and fruit, is a unity. A collection of snowflakes is a uniformity, but a snow crystal is a unity. And if you want to think truly and accurately to-night, and I am sure you do, you will have to dismiss from your mind the thought of uniformity — for God is not uniform — and introduce the conception of variety in unity, which is the true and Divine thought. We must, therefore, put out of our thinking to-night the uniformity of an ecclesiastical system. That was the dream of the Roman Catholic Church — that all mankind should worship under the one Pope, utter the same prayers, and belong to the same ecclesiastical system. Then by fire and sword those ecclesiastics who had that conception endeavored to put it into effect, and before the breaking of the morning of the Reformation it seemed as though the Roman Catholic conception of uniformity prevailed all through Europe and the world. And in the words of the Assyrian adage one might have said, ''As one gathereth eggs, I have gathered all these around, but none moved its wing or peeped." But it was the uniformity of death, for the whole of Europe was as though it w^as frost-bound by one terrible paralysis of spiritual decay and death. But out of the ecclesiastical system came the uniformity of doctrinal agreement. I know in my country a body of Christians that have based their oneness on the idea that all men should think alike. As well may Charles the Fifth make all his watches and clocks strike alike, for the Hght of truth strikes the facet of the human mind at a different angle. My doxy and your doxy will never be in perfect 178 The Oneness of Believers sympathy. There always will be the one man who thinks as the Calvinist and the one who thinks as the Arminian — the man who lays stress upon the grace of God, and the man who lays stress upon free will, and you never will in this world be able to secure absolute uniformity of thinking, and if you did, it would be the paralysis of thought. But when you have put out of your thinking the uniformity of an ecclesiastical system, and the uniformity of similar intellectual conceptions, you come back to what I started with, the conception — God's conception — of unity, which is consistent with variety, and that is the unity of life. See that body — a human body — there is variety from the heart to the blood disc, from the lung to the nerve — infinite variety of articulation and function, yet the body is one. Take the tree. There is variety from the root hidden in the earth to the tip of the bough and leaves which make music in the wind, and the nuts that fall upon the forest floor — infinite variety, but it is the variety which is con- sistent with the unity of life. Take the Bible, the living Book. There is variety of authorship — prophet, priest, psalmist, king, saint, sage — variety of style — prose, poetry, proverb, history. It has the variety of age. Some of those words were written when the pyramids were new, and others when pagan Rome was crumbhng beneath corruption, and yet the Bible is one. So with the church. Some prefer the method of the Methodists, and others the freedom of the Congregationalists. Some prefer to live under the crozier of an archbishop, and others under the mild sway of a Salvation Army lass. Some pray best when they can shout most, and others pray best when in the Quaker meeting they are absolutely still. But amid all the variety, thank God there is the true unity of life, for there is one body, because there is one Spirit, one God, and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all; ''One hope, one faith, one baptism," is the unity of life which is consistent with an infinite variety. 179 Sunday Schools the World Around Now, take one other step, and this goes deeper than all. We have seen the model of our unity in God's nature, which, though one, is diverse and varied in function, that it is the unity and variety of all living things which abhors uniformity, for uniformity is always death, whilst unity is consistent with the fullest and richest life. Now we come deeper than ever to understand the unit of this unity. It is the attitude of the believer to his Lord. For first, every believer is in Christ, and second, Christ is in every believer. First, every believer is in Christ — in Christ's hands. He holds them as he holds the ocean. In Christ's heart. It is engraved there with indehble letters. In Christ's person, for you and I, every one, stand before God in him. In Christ's grace, as a tree in the soil, or as a building deeply rooted in the rock. Stay for a moment; fix that; don't let us leave it. Understand that wherever you may be, what- ever your emotions, whatever your consciousness, that if you desire Christ, if your nature goes toward God, if you have the faith that touches the hem of Christ's garment, you are in him, the living Christ, and in him you stand eternally before God. But the other is true. Christ is in the believer as the steam is in the cylinder; as the blood is in the veins; as the sap is in the branch. "What, know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates ? " As the sponge is in the water, and the water in the sponge, we are in Christ, and Christ is in us forever. But see, if you as a believer are in Christ, and Christ is in you, what is true of you is true of every other believer. He may belong to the Roman Catholic Church; he may belong to the Greek Church; he may belong to the Quakers who have no church; he may belong to the Salvation Army, which is becoming a church, but whatever that man's name and sign may be, if he is in Christ and Christ is in him, hejs one with me in the body of Christ, and I am one with him. There are some true believers in Christ in the Roman 1 80 The Oneness of Believers Catholic Church. There are some true believers in Christ in the Greek Church. There are some true believers in Christ who are in no church at all. They may not own each other. The hand may say to the foot, I have no need of thee, but it does not alter the fact that since each is in Christ each is a member of the other, and five minutes in heaven will settle the whole thing. I have mixed more than most men with men of every ecclesiastical and no eccle- siastical relationship. I have often felt that they looked down on me because I haven't the orders (I have not stooped beneath the Bishop) and was just a simple Free Churchman, and I was rather thankful I had come of a purer stock. I have always felt that one day I should have my revenge, if revenge is possible in Paradise. They shall confess to me that they didn't know the width of God's great church, which is as broad and wide as the universe itself. God never asked us whom we would like to have as a brother or sister. We woke up one day and found that such and such, a disagreeable or an agreeable person, was attached to us for the remainder of our mortal life; we were never asked about it. If we had been asked we would have chosen somebody else's sister or brother with great comfort. In God's conception to-day, brothers and sisters, we are one with all those who call him our Father and who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Saviour. I begin to think it is a blessing that we are so various. What would be more miserable than if all the world were Baptists! I confess that with all their agreeable traits, I am glad I am not compelled forever after to live with Baptists only. They are as good as plums in the Christmas pudding, but it wouldn't do to have a pudding all plums. Do you realize that all the world probably receives a truer con- ception of the gospel because every distinct regiment in the great army has its own special banner and presents its own side of Christianity? This body of Christians contends for a specific side of truth, and this for another, Sunday Schools the World Around and probably the whole glory of the gospel comes out best by every color in the prism keeping to itself. If all were red, where would be the white light, or blue. There would be no pure beam of light. It is because every distinct color in the rainbow keeps to itself that we get the full-orbed glory of the day. Baptist, remain Baptist. Be a good Baptist, and be thankful that you are next door to a Metho- dist. And you Quaker, be a good Quaker, a true mystic, but remember how much you may gain from the Salvationist, or even the high Anglican. Let each be true to its traditions and communicate with the others. Think for a minute of this indissoluble union. The Legates said to Savonarola, "I cut you off from the. church militant and from the church triumphant." Savonarola might have said, " You cannot do either," but he didn't ; he said, "From the church mihtant you may, but from the church triumphant, never." When a man comes to you and says, ''you schismatic," the word we discover means division — a schismatic is a man who divides from the church. The question is, what church ? If the church is the Catholic Church and we are not in it, it may apply to us, or a church that has certain holy orders and we are outside of it, it may apply to us, but we hold that the word schismatic is true only of those who divide from the one holy Catholic Church, of which Jesus Christ is the head, and, therefore, nothing but apostasy from Christ can make you schismatics. We are one with each other. I don't know if you have in America what we have in the Strand, London, but those of you who have visited London may have met coming along the Strand a number of board carriers. Each man bears aloft a letter, and if only they keep hne, which they don't always do, as you advance down the street to meet them, you are able to spell out the word or the sentence which the advertisement desires to impress upon your mind. The various churches or sects, or denominations, are marching through the world to-day, every one bearing 182 The Oneness of Believers its own characteristics, and when you put all the charac- teristics together, you get the full message of salvation for "* Andhstly, I believe, brothers and sisters that some of us have been making a grave mistake. . We have been antagonizing the Roman Catholic; we have been antagomz- ing the Greek Christian; antagonizing those who don t agree with us, instead of believing that there was a common unity between us, and trying to discover the points o agreement rather than those of discord. I believe that if the churches that I address to-night would only endeavor to find the points of agreement in one another, and remain churches as they appear, we should do a great deal to manifest the true unity of the body of Christ-one bread, one cup, one faith, one purpose, one baptism one Lord. In our hymns and in our worship we are one. The church, like the New Jerusalem, has many gates and many stones in its foundation, but there shines out the one glory, God, tlie one bride of Christ. Behold her as God sees her. Behold her, and go forth from this place to smg her glory and unity. And remember when you sing the glory and the unity and blessing of other denominations than your own and of other churches than your own, you are most certain to get blessing for yourselves. It is when the member cares for other members that it is healthy I have found in my own ministry that supposing I pray for my own httle flock! God bless me, God fill my pews God send me a revival, I miss the blessing, but as I pray for my big brother Mr. Spurgeon, on the right hand side oi my church, God Wess him'or my other big brother, Campbell Morgan, on the other kde of my church, God bless him, I am sure to g a blessing without praying for it, for the overflow o the cups fills my Uttle bucket. Again and again I have seen it n my Ufe, a church forgetting the unity of the body seeking to gain. for itself wealth and success and missing hem; but directly a church, remembering the umty of the body, 183 Sunday Schools the World Around seeks the blessing and success of the other members of that body, itself becomes healthy and strong. Remember, remember, there is coming a time, my friends, God hasten it, when the wonderful movement which I am addressing here to-night will be but a sample and specimen of a wider movement. In some vast convocation a mission will meet some day, my friends, in a Colosseum built big enough to hold us, and from the north, south, east, west, will come a great multitude whom no man can number, of all nations and kindred and people and tongues, singing the same songs, though with a different accent, loving the same Lord, redeemed by the same blood. This shall be the beginning of a unity which shall pass throughout the whole universe. The universe means unity. And God shall sum up in Christ all things which are in heaven and on earth, even in him to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. The International Bible Reading Association By Charles Waters "All scripture inspired 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" (R. V.). So wrote the great Apostle from his Roman prison, and with martyrdom close at hand, to his beloved Timothy. And we who are gathered in the same city from far and near are here as witnesses to the truth of that statement, and to avow our love for the Scriptures which have been handed down to us as a treasure to be jealously preserved and carefully handed on to the generations to follow. Believing that the Scriptures are all that Paul said, and that they "are able to make wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus" we do well to devote our- selves to the teaching of them to our children as the most precious knowledge they can attain. May our visit to the 184 The I. B. R. A. city crowded with memories of the great Apostle to the Gentiles send us back to our homes and to our work, with a resolve to be more than ever earnest in our work, so that we too may be able in our measure to say in the end, " I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith." The subject of my paper is a society formed for the purpose of promoting the daily study of those Scriptures recommended by the Apostle Paul. The International Bible Reading Association (familiarly known as the "I. B. R. A.") has for its ideal an open Bible in every home. It is a great imagination, and may seem to be beyond the reach of effort; but the object is one which must certainly be in accord with the Divine Will, and ''nothing is too hard for the Lord." And even if it be that our eyes may not see the accompHshment of our ideal, we still have the satisfaction of knowing that every step taken is something gained and is itself a definite good; so that we have not to wait for the final result before realizing some degree of satisfaction and blessing in homes consecrated and hves illumined by the love of God. The plan of the Association is to use the International Lesson verses for reading in the early days of the week, and to select for the other days such parts of the Bible as may best throw light upon the subject. In making the selections, two objects are kept in view — to instruct — by comparing Scripture with Scripture and to influence by striving, as far as the subject permits, to make every week's readings lead up to spiritual teaching. This is known to Bible students as topical study, and it is not open to the charge of being "hop, skip, and jump" or of being without method. The idea of the International Bible Reading Association originated in a small Committee gathered in 1879, to con- sider methods of promoting the spiritual success of Sunday- schools, but it was not until the close of 1881 that it was taken in hand and the organization definitely formed. When started with the vear 1882, the plan found ready 185 Sunday Schools the World Around acceptance, and in the first year ii,ooo members were enrolled. It was evident that the little sapling had struck root and the twenty-five years which have since passed have witnessed the deepening of its roots and the spread of its branches, until to-day it includes nearly a milhon of daily Bible readers. Our great Bible Societies have done splendid work in broadcasting the seed of the Word of God among all nations, and the International Bible Reading Association has followed as a practical ally, to impress the truth that the Bible is not only to be possessed but is to be read in the home as well as in religious services, and every day as well as on Sunday. There is need to emphasize this truth in the circumstances of to-day when the surfeit of Hterature of all kinds, so much of it pernicious rather than helpful, tends to sweep aside the noblest of all literature and to give it a back place in our thought. The Bible is the most widely circulated book in the world, and yet how many who possess it are unable from want of practise to find their way in it, or to say with the Psalmist, ''Oh, how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day." We have had in London a merchant who styled himself a "Universal Provider," but the International Bible Reading Association makes no such pretentious claim in regard to Bible study. Its great concern is to ensure the daily use of the Bible by young people and busy men and women, in the full conviction that a most helpful habit will thus be formed, and that the experience will lead to fuller and deeper study of the Word of God. It does claim, and the experience of twenty-five years fully justifies it, that by its simplicity it is adapted to, and finds acceptance with, the great body of people who would not consider a more elaborate scheme of study, and by that means is accomplishing a vast amount of good which would not be secured by methods which might perhaps seem to be more suitable by biblical students as such. It brings the Bible and its teaching into contact with the daily i86 The I. B. R. A. life of the family or the soHtary Hfe of the individual, and has in very many cases been the incentive to family worship, a practise all too uncommon even in Christian homes. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that in many thousands of homes to-day there is an influence exerted which was lacking before the introduction of the International Bible Reading Association. The importance of such an influence is undoubted, and the agency which fosters it proves itself worthy of the practical interest and support of all true Christians, and especially of Sunday-school workers. The Association is based on the broad foundation fact that the Bible is acknowledged by all evangehcal churches as the basis of their faith and practise. It favors no denomi- nation, but rather seeks to let the Bible speak for itself. In this it may fairly claim to have succeeded, inasmuch as its members are connected ^vith churches of more than fifty different names. ; This is possible without any sacrifice of principle, and the fact is of great interest because it indicates a practical idea in which there is to some extent secured that unity of spirit for which our Lord himself prayed— "that they all may be one." It would occupy too many of the precious minutes of this Convention to give even a selection of the numerous tes- timonies which have been received from almost every land. It must suffice to say that these testimonies prove the suitability of the plan to the child and the veteran, its adaptability to the Sunday-school, the home, the factory, the workroom, the military camp, the sailor's cabin, the hospital, the asylum, the poorhouse, the orphanage, and circumstances of every kind. They show that it has helped the minister and the Sunday-school teacher and that it has been a source of comfort to the sorrowing and afiiicted, companionship to the lonely prairie dweller and the isolated missionary surrounded by heathen barbarism. I can testify to the value of the prayers of many who cannot work, but who on their beds are dailv praying for a blessing on our 187 Sunday Schools the World Around efforts. They also prove the fact that the Bible has been appreciated and understood as it was not before, and, best of all, that in many cases it has opened the way for the seeker to the Saviour, and so brought salvation to the peni- tent soul. The great majority of the members of the Asso- ciation are naturally those who read the EngHsh Bible, but there has always been a readiness to enter any field where there is any hope of success, and its readings are now issued in thirty languages. It follows that in addition to the English-speaking members in many parts of the world, the daily portions are being read by Welshmen, Swedes, Nor- wegians, Danes, Finns, Russians, Letts, Dutchmen, Germans, Bohemians, Hungarians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Syrians, Moors, Chinese, Kaffirs, Basutos, South African Boers, Samoans, Rarotongand, Argentinos, Bra- zilians, Costa Ricans, Nicaraguans, as well as the various peoples of India, who are reading in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Gujerathi, Urdu, Oriya, Kanarese, Malay alam, Karen, Tamil, Telugu and Sinhalese. Here again is exemplified the unity of purpose and the fusion of tongues which in a measure is remedying the confusion of Babel. To-day it is my great joy to greet friends from all the countries represented in this Convention in which are members of our Association — comrades not only in weekly but daily study of the Word of God. The central organization of the Association consists of a small Committee with the Honorary General Secretary and a staff of paid clerks who keep the records and distribute the Membership cards, etc., to the branches. Some twenty thousand letters are received and dealt with in the course of the year, and fifteen millions of various cards and leaflets are sent out to seventy or eighty different countries. The next unit is the District Secretary, of whom there are about eighty in Great Britain and abroad. These are chiefly in large centers of population, and distribute supplies to branches in their localities. i88 The I. B. R. A. The Branches are formed in connection with Churches, Sunday-schools, or other organizations, and are worked by the Branch Secretaries who enroll members and issue the cards of membership. Of these there are 13,000. There is thus a living bond uniting every part of the great company, exerting its influence from center to circumference, and reflecting in encouraging testimony from the outer circle to the center. Strong emphasis is placed upon the idea of membership of the organization because experience proves that it is a bond which holds the interest and so helps to strengthen the habit of daily Bible study which the mere purchaser of literature would not do. . There is the sentiment of comradeship extending its influence into all parts of the world, and reminding its members day by day of the great company, who though they may not meet in one place or ever see each others' faces, are yet gathering about the Book, drawing from it inspi- ration, instruction, and help in the daily life, and prompt- ing the frequent prayer in which you are asked to unite, "God bless the members of The International Bible Read- ing Association." REPORTS FROM THE WORLD FIELD "The World's Sunday School Visitation." A Sunday School Missionary Tour Around the World, January to July, 1909. Your Committee to whom was referred the question of a world-wide tour, in the interests of the work of The World's Sunday School Association, report in favor of the proposition, and suggest: 1. That the tour be known as " The World's Sunday School Visitation." 2. That the object shall be to confer and co-operate with the Sunday School workers, especially in Japan, India and China, for the purpose of extending and im- proving the work, and encouraging the workers. 3. That the visitation party should be composed of practical Sunday School workers, willing to bear their own expenses, and who are ready to give their time and efforts for the extension of the kingdom of Christ through the Sunday School. 4. It is suggested that a Committee of five be appointed with full authority to make all necessary arrangements for the visitation. Signed: J. C. Hartzell, Africa, Chairman. H. J. Heinz, U. S. A. Carey Bonner, England. W. N. Hartshorn, U. S. A. Marion Lawrance, U. S. A. 192 The Work of the Continental Sunday School Mission By Charles Waters As an introduction to the messages to which you are about to hsten from representatives of Sunday-school activity in the countries of Europe, it will be appropriate that a brief statement, dealing with the relations of the British Sunday School Union to this enterprise should be given. At a comparatively early period in its history of more than a century, its sympathetic attention was directed to certain isolated pioneer efforts on behalf of the spiritual interest of the children of Europe. Thus, in the year 1815, a grant of ;^io was made to a French pastor whereby the first Protestant Sunday-school in France was commenced at or near Bordeaux, and from time to time as the movement spread to other parts of the country similar help was given. x\gain in 1828 a small grant was instrumental in opening up Sunday-school work in Denmark, while help w^as given, mainly in the form of books, to other countries — notably Germany and Norway. It was not, however, until some years later, following upon the first Sunday School Convention held in London, in 1862, when stirred by the earnest pleading of Mr. Albert Woodruff of Brooklyn, that the Committee of the Union seriously turned its attention to the idea of an active Sunday-school propaganda for the continent of Europe generally. With an exchequer already overdrawn, the proposal to embark upon such an enterprise, involving considerable expenditure, appeared alm.ost quixotic, but so impressed was the Committee with the urgency of the call to action, and the immense possibilities for good arising therefrom, that it was felt impossible to hold back. A special Committee of the Sunday School Union was consequently appointed in 1864, to initiate and carry on the 193 Sunday Scliools the World Around work of what has ever since been known as the Continental Sunday School Mission. A fund was started and the first appeal issued for raising the means necessary to promote the enterprise. The general pohcy of the Mission may be thus summar- ized: By correspondence with Christian men on the Conti- nent the evident needs and conditions under which the work could be done in a given country were ascertained, with a view to the appointment of a qualified worker as Sunday- school missionary, should such a course be calculated to assist in the spread of the movement. This assurance secured, the friends on the spot were encouraged to seek out such a man, able to press foiward the spiritual claims of the children, irrespective of creed or denomination. Local committees, representative as far as possible of all shades of evangelical belief were then formed whose business it was to direct and supervise the journeys of the missionary, receive his periodical reports and forward them to the Com- mittee in London. A monetary grant was then made for the support of the missionary on the condition that a proportionate amount was raised by the local Committee. Endeavors were made to enlist the interest and co- operation of the Continental churches in what was, in most countries, a new effort. This was not altogether an easy task and in the early days especially much indifference, and even opposition, had to be encountered and overcome, requiring considerable tact and much patience on the part of the workers. The ultimate end in view was the founding of Sunday School Unions, and the handing over of the enterprise when consolidated to their sole charge and support. The first country to receive the support of the Continental Sunday School Mission was Germany. Mr Brockelmann, of Heidelberg, was appointed as missionary. He continued his labors with the greatest devotion and with much success 194 Continental Sunday School Mission until the close of his useful hfe in December, 1892. This was quickly followed by a grant of half salary and traveling expenses for an agent in France under the direction of the Paris Sunday School Society, and the engagement of the Rev. S. Janlinus Cook as an agent for a portion of the year as missionary in Switzerland. After the lapse of ten years the Continental Committee was enabled with thanksgiving to review^ the progress of the enterprise. The three missionaries had increased to seven. In France the work of Pastor Weiss had resulted in a wider sympathy with the aims of the local Committee, which reported a then total of nine hundred and sixty Protestant Schools, while in Germany the movement had enlisted even the attention of the Throne — the Queen paying a personal visit to one of the schools, and much of the opposition of the clergy and civil authorities had been overcome. In Holland, also, the Sunday-school idea had been wel- comed, and much energy was put forth in the endeavor to embody it in practical effort. The Netherlands Sunday School Union, formed in 1866, reported five hundred and twenty schools with about 58,000 scholars. In Sweden and Norway a beginning had been made, destined as was evident in later years, to excelled the most sanguine hopes of its promoters. Further progress had been made in Switzerland and a beginning in Austria. At the close of a second decade, the number of Sunday- school missionaries had further increased to sixteen, while encouraging advance had been made in the provision of Sunday-school literature, magazines and Scripture leaflets being published in many countries, plates for which were supplied by the London Committee, these silent messen- gers proving a means of blessing not only to the children but to parents in many a home circle. During this period Italy itself had received the Sunday- school, beginning at Spezia and Milan. Occasional visits were made to the Continent on behalf 195 Sunday Schools the World Around of the Committee and resulting from one of these, the Union formed in Berlin was reorganized and subsequently a new Union at Hamburg. In order to obtain a more intimate knowledge of the con- ditions under which the work was being done, and still further the development of the Sunday-school system, the London Committee in 1885 appointed a "traveling super- intendent" of the Mission. His official labors extended over a period of ten years, during which time he visited all parts of the field, and accomplished much in the direction of improvement in methods and organization, as well as in the imparting of encouragement to Sunday-school workers. The name of Mr. Thomas Edwards is still a grateful rec- ollection in many Sunday-school centers in Europe. Forty-two years have passed since the Sunday School Union Continental Mission was inaugurated and the record of work accomplished shows abundant evidence of the Divine approval and blessing. To-day it is helping to maintain twenty-one Sunday-school missionaries and agents in France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Russian Poland, Baltic Provinces, Norway and Sweden, in each of which countries Unions are established, while negotiations are in progress whereby we hope that ere long similar work on organized lines will be undertaken in Hungary, Bohemia, Russia proper, and Portugal. Attention has also been given to the work in Spain so far as the present conditions allow, to Austria and Belgium. Through all these years the work of the Mission has been made possible by the gifts of teachers and scholars of the Sunday-schools of Britain. Reviewing generally the present position, we may con- fidently say that the Sunday-school idea has developed to such a degree as to show that the system when properly understood and efficiently worked, is capable of becoming one of the most, if not the most, fruitful of all fields of 196 North Africa Christian 'activity, adapted to satisfy the spiritual needs of the youth of all nations. The messages to which you will listen, by men who have been captivated by the aims of the movement and the experience gained therein, will abundantly show this. While we "thank God and take courage" from what has been done in the past, we realize that there is very much land yet to be possessed, for in some countries there is even yet no organized effort for the promotion of the movement. It is our conviction that with Europe really evangelized, the world at large w^ill soon be evangelized and brought under the sway of Christ. Our hope is in the children and they are with us. Let us all — representatives of man3^ nations and speaking different tongues, but constrained by the love of Christ, unite our forces in consecrated effort to hasten that time when the children, not only of Europe but of every clime, shall crowd to his arms and be blest. Mission Work in North Africa By the Rev. Joseph J. Cooksey The North Africa Mission is endeavoring to evangelize the countries of North Africa — from Morocco to Egypt — five countries of vast extent, a coast Hne of three thousand miles and a Moslem population of over twenty millions. The Mission has already eighty-five workers, but in view of the vastness of the country, and the teeming populations, they are a mere nothing, and only serve by contrast to bring out more vividly the appalling need. The Mission is interdenominational, and evangelical, and nearly every branch of the Church is represented, all working harmoniously along broad scriptural fines, holding Christ as Head in all things; it is not supported by any one denomi- nation, but looks to God in faith, and to his people in firm 197 Sunday Schools the World Around expectation that spiritual, self-denying work will commend itself to all who know the love of Christ. The forms of work are varied, and the Mission is alive to seize every new opening for fresh enterprises; men and means alone hinder the development of one of the finest fields of missionary service in the world. We approach the people by means of medical missions, served by both men and women doctors. Vast numbers of patients pass through their skilled hands yearly. The preaching of the Word is the end served by this work and this is supplemented by a large amount of lay dispensary work, especially in Morocco, and Tripoli: besides, we manage a well equipped hospital in Tangier (Morocco) one of the greatest blessings to that dark land. We open Bible shops in which the Scriptures are sold and given, using also colportage where permitted. We hold growing'classes for youths, women, boys and girls, and of the latter, despite every conceivable opposition, we have in our classes over 1,500 under Bible instruction — no mean thing for such a land as this, where every child has morally and spiritually actually to be fought for. Cannot we follow this up, by sending in a number of efficient lady workers, and thus lay hands upon Islam at the bud? The problem of Islam will be solved when we start to do something ade- quate, and cease talking of its great difhculties. We travel among the people — most of whom have never heard of Christ, and to whom the gospel is a strange story! We preach where possible, openly in our bookshops at evening gatherings, we visit cafes and shops, and personally tell of Christ to those who will converse, and then we send our ladies to the Moslem homes, and amid their prison-like seclusion and depraved surroundings, we tell them of the love of God to woman in Christ. We have an organized Spanish work in Tangier, and the children are being rapidly gathered in, and a similar work among Italians in Tunis, where also the small church is x\ustria steadily growing, and the work among the young very promising. In Algeria, our work among the French children, though vet in the bud, is full of promise. In fine, the Mission is doing its utmost by every possible agency to grapple with the awful need, and the gaining of converts from every section, in steadily growing numbers, is rewardmg them for their patient faith, and steady work, in admittedly, one of the very hardest mission fields of the whole world. Christians of America and Britain! Will you take up this burden with us? Shall this land, which once boasted thousands of Christian churches, and could gather five hundred and eighty Bishops to deliberate upon its work, in that glorious third century, shall that land we ask, now blighted and ruined by Moslem invasion, be left Christless, or shall again, as of old, his praises sound forth, beginning with the children, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. It can be done. God has given freely of his Spirit. When we give as freely of our lives, and money, as supple- mentary instruments in his hand, it will be done. Sunday Schools in Austria By Prof. G. J. Haberl Among the twenty-seven miUions who inhabit the countries of the Austrian Crown, there are only 500,000 Protestants, belonging to the German, the Greek and the Polonian nation. They congregate in two hundred and sixty communities and one hundred and fifty affiliated churches. No more than one hundred and one Sunday- schools with 5,151 children and two hundred and seven lay-teachers were numbered in 1903. Newer statistics are not made; no doubt there is some increase. But on the whole, Sunday-school work has not outgrown its first poor beginnings. That important work is meeting with many difficulties; most of the pastors, whose parishes embrace many miles 199 Sunday Schools the World Around of land, feel unable to take upon themselves a new task. But actually there is only one obstacle everywhere, opposing this work: Ignorance. Our Christian communities do not know that they do not do the tenth part of what they ought to do for their children, and that they thereby charge themselves with an immense responsibiHty. Poor and shallow religious school instruction, rendered difficult moreover by the diaspora situations, and a catechumenical instruction just as insufficient, is all our congregations believe to be due to their children. The natural consequence is that the young people are without sufficient support in the temptations of the world, and most of them become ahenated from the Lord Jesus and his Church. There are exceptions, of course, especially in some country communities — God be praised. But in general, the religious instruction of our children is at its worst. There should be an indefatigable agitation by speaking and writing for Sunday-school work in all the Protestant communities. Urged by the Sunday-school Committee in BerHn, some friends in Vienna organized, in 1902, an Austrian Sunday- school Association. In connection with the union of the Young Men's Christian Associations we engaged, in 1904, Pastor Wangemann as agent for both Sunday-school and Young Men's Christian Associations. The Sunday-school Union, London, and the "Verein fur Forderung der Sonn- tags-schulsache in Deutschland," BerHn, granted one- half of his salary, a friend of the Young Men's Christian Association in America gave the other half. But this dear friend did not renew his quota, and Pastor Wangemann quitted us in December, 1905. Since then no new agent has been appointed. We could not find the man for this important and difficult service. Our Association could not display much activity in the last year, all its members being engaged in special work. Still the work should be done with full energy! 200 Belgium May God raise up a man willing to give himself especially and entirely for Sunday-school work in Austria! We do not doubt that our brethren in England a^nd America would gladly provide for his support. May the dear brethren assembled at Rome take our land and its wants into their hearts and into their prayers! Belgium By the Rev. H. Anet The keynote of Sunday-school work in Belgium is the missionary spirit: the Sunday-schools are one of our best agencies for the evangelization of. our clerical and free- thinking countrymen. We have to fight against two diver- gent forces; on the one side, the indifference of unbelief; on the other side, superstition, intolerance and ignorance. The preaching of the gospel is especially needed, but also specially difficult. Though enjoying one of the most liberal constitutions of the world, the Belgian people do not know what freedom is; they are burdened by the double despot- ism of the priest and of the atheist labor leader. Many are seeking after righteousness and truth, but few dare to come into the evangelical meeting halls. Practically all the children of the Protestant families, between three or four and fifteen years of age, are enrolled in the church Sunday-schools, and many in the Thursday schools, held on the holiday afternoon of the pubhc schools. But our aim is to reach the child in the street, the child of the industrial slum.s, and by him his family. That is the reason for the missionary Sunday-schools or kitchen Sunday-schools. Three things are necessary: a room, teachers, and children. The room is lent by members of the church, plain w^orking people whose only room downstairs is kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, mostly kitchen. As a rule, they won't accept one cent for light, fire or trouble, which they are giving freely, nor for mud nor dust which they receive with equal generosity. 20 1 Sunday Schools the World Around x'\mong many others, I know two poor widows with large families who were glad to say like Lydia: "If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there." A few rough benches or simply some boards put on chairs is all that is needed; this system pre- vents sleeping, but is sometimes dangerous — the chair may be moved, the board fall, and a dozen of thickly seated boys and girls slip to the ground. If this is the only noise and trouble during the lesson, the teacher ought to be quite satisfied. In one place, young rascals, set on by the priest, came and broke the windows with stones. The teachers are mostly members of the Young Men's Christian Associations and Young Women's Christian Associations, in connection with nearly all Belgian con- gregations. They are clerks, shopkeepers or oftener working people — coal-miners, ironworkers, factory-girls. They have not always much education, but they are good singers, and singing is the great feature of the missionary school. Having no holiday on Saturday afternoon, they devote their only free time on Sunday afternoon or evening to teaching the gospel to a mob of restless little ones. Some teachers have to walk two, three, or four miles and back. Many of the so-called Sunday-schools are held on week-days at six or seven o'clock P. M., the children having finished their day school or their work, for many are employed in the mines and factories at the age of twelve years. One young man leaves his work at 6 o'clock instead of 8 o'clock every Tuesday in order to teach in a missionary school, thus losing a part of his salary. The children are generally eager to come; they invite each other. The great attraction for them is the singing; they are very good at music. They like also picture-rolls and the leaflets which are given to them, taken home and read by the parents. Many families have been converted by the children. But persecutions are often at hand. The Roman Catholic 202 Bekium '& clergy is hindering our work as much as possible. A Httle girl attending the nuns' primary school was punished because she had been seen at the Protestant school: during playtime she had to kneel in a corner with arms up and stones on the hands; but she came again. A small boy was repeatedly whipped by his father, an unbeliever; but he also came again. Many missionary schools have been closed because the priest had made house-to-house visitation telling the parents that they would lose their employment (not empty threats in many places), that their children should not be received at the first communion, a public shame even for nominal Catholics who never attend the Mass. In spite of all the difficulties the number of missionary schools is increasing every year; in 1906, fifteen new schools were established — the Christian Missionary Church of Belgium has one hundred and four Sunday-schools and Missionary schools with 4,100 scholars, of whom 1,775 ^^^ from Catholic families. The two hundred and ninety-six teachers are organized as a National Federation. In com- parison with the statistics of 1880, we find an increase of 46 per cent in the number of schools, 69 per cent in the number of scholars, and 91 per cent in the number of teachers. The Established Church, Union des Eglises evangeliques ptotestantes de Belgique has twenty-eight Sunday-schools with 2,500 scholars. For this church, Sunday-schools are mere individual enterprises of the pastors or the local con- gregations; the teachers have no federation. Of these twenty-eight schools, four are German-speaking, ten Flemish-speaking, and one is conducted in English and Flemish. Our experience in the evangelization of Belgium is, that the Kingdom of God is for little children, and that the coming of this Kingdom is greatly helped by the work and faithfulness of the little ones. 203 Sunday Schools the World Around Bohemia By the Rev. Dr. A. W. Clark This Sunday-school Congress has a deeper meaning for me than for, perchance, any other person present. Since 1872, 1 have not had the privilege of attending any Sunday- school Convention using the English language. Very grateful I am to President Warren for inviting me to Rome. In 1872, I was pastor in Connecticut, U. S. A., and went as delegate to the "International" Sunday-school Con- ference in Indianapolis, Indiana. The same year I was invited by the American Board to give up my pastorate and to join a new mission in Bohemia. My present associate, the Reverend J. S. Porter, who was one of my small Sunday- school scholars in 1872 in Connecticut will speak to you here on Thursday about Austria, so I will not give statistics or steal any of his thunder. Permit me to state a few incidents as they may come to my mind while speaking to you. Our German brethren here have referred to a certain prejudice against any ''Foreign plant." It was the same in Bohemia. At a little conference some of this opposition was overcome by a choice Bohemian pastor who was in full sympathy with Sunday-school work. ''Brethren," he said, "this oppo- sition to anything foreign is very unwise. How about potatoes? A few years ago they were foreign here, but Bohemia adopted them, and you know how we enjoy them." A smile was seen on many a face for it was well known that this pastor always ordered at a restaurant two portions of potatoes. "Then, brethren, are you ready to give up your coffee, because it was once foreign ? No, no, not one of us could do that. Now then, give the Sunday- school a hearty welcome, and it will soon be as much at home here as in England or America." At present there are in churches of different denominations, fifty Bohemian Sunday-schools with one hundred teachers and five thousand 204 E !U % H o DQ o a. t/) Bohemia pupils. Our free churches (Congregational), the first of which was organized in 1880 in my house, are all interested in Sunday-school work. There are over twenty such Congregational Churches in Bohemia, Moravia and Vienna. We have also two such churches in Russia among Bohemians living there. The first work done at our first out-station in Southern Bohemia seemed small and very discouraging. Only two children were reached in a house or family Sunday-school. But children may in time become stalwart. Christians. Where shall we look to-day for that boy and girl? The brother has been for some years a successful pastor in America and is now in Chicago ; the sister is one of the best Bible Readers in Cleveland, Ohio. By the way, this is not the only preacher our mission at Prague, Bohemia, has given to America. You can find our young men serving God among Slavs in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Dakota and Wisconsin. Two of our Young Men's Christian Association fellows are working for Slavs in Canada. Let me now call attention to a Home Department incident that would do Dr. Duncan much good to hear. Some years ago, a Bible Colporteur succeeded in selling a Bible to a Bohemian weaver. It was the only Bible in the village. The weaver little knew what he was doing when he bought it, but he was anxious for light for himself and family of eight children. When weary at his house-loom he would take up that Bible and read a chapter. At the simple meal the truth of that chapter was considered. With no teacher, this one Bible began to open the eyes of those to whom God's Word was a new book. Two years ago I saw that original Bible, now in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Well- thumbed and coverless, that one book has been greatly owned of God. The parents died in full trust in Christ. Where are those eight children? The oldest is a pastor in Ohio, the second is a pastor in Minnesota, a third is a pro- 205 Sunday Schools the World Around fessor in a Christian institution, another is in Young Men's Christian Association work, the daughters are Bible Readers, the whole family in the service of our Saviour. The sight of that Bible turned me back to Bohemia, led me to decline a most tempting and united plea to become superintendent of Slavic missions in America. If one Bible can do so much let me go back to Bohemia and spend my days in circulating and explaining the Scriptures. Pray for my thirty colporteurs (National Bible Society of Scot- land) and for the new ones we are placing in Russia. I see before me the old flag beneath which some of us marched many a weary mile in the Civil War in America. When, at Gettysburg (1863), one of our batteries had been captured by brave Southern men, one of our generals said to a Vermont colonel, " Can you not bring back those guns ? " Looking at the great danger and calling for volunteers, he said: ''I will bring back the guns or die in the attempt." Brethren, have no Sunday-school pupils been captured by the enemy? Can we not bring them back? Let us say as did that Vermont officer: ''I will, or die in the attempt." Bohemia and Moravia By the Rev. J. S. Pokter Perhaps in no country under the sun is Sunday-school work more hedged about with all sorts of obstacles than in Austria. To begin with, ninety-eight per cent of the population is nominally in connection with the Romish church, which, of course, not only is averse to any Sunday- school effort, but also watches very carefully any and every attempt to lead the young into the truth as it is in Jesus, and thwarts it if possible. For example, no child between the ages of seven and fourteen may change its religion. Parents converted to-day must continue to send their children between the above-mentioned ages to the Romish church and to the required religious instruction in the public schools. 206 Bohemia and Moravia And more than this, they may not take such children with them to the church of their adoption, nor send them to Sunday-school. Our Sunday-school work is, therefore, legally limited to children born in our churches. The authorities are trying to go farther and forbid parents to take over to their "new faith" children under seven years of age. This is, however, illegal, and we are waging warfare against this open violation of the spirit of the law. Another difficulty! All children must have religious instruction in the public schools. It is a part of their education. Religion is, however, so disguised and maltreated that our youth come from the schools generally openly and avowedly atheistic or with a distaste for everything that wears the name of religion. Protestant pastors must also give religious instruction to children of their persuasion. They must go hither and yon in their large parishes that often include whole counties, and are really worked hard in giving this instruction; so that quite naturally, many feel that they cannot give any extra time and strength to the young. Some pastors have from twelve to sixteen hours weekly of religious school instruction, involving many more hours of travel. Sunday-schools and Sunday-school instruction have there- fore in the eyes of young and old the semblance of required school duty. Wlien we tried to introduce questions and answers into some of our social meetings our auditors felt as if we were again putting them into pinafores and seat- ing them on school benches. These and other obstacles stand over against the would-be Sunday-school worker. Do you wonder that we say with Paul, "who is sufficient for these things" ? Bohemia and Moravia have in round numbers a popula- tion of 9,000,000, of which 225,000 are Protestants. Or, in other words, only one-fourth of one per cent of the population walks under the banner of the cup which is the symbol of Protestantism in these countries from the days of 207 Sunday Schools the World Around the Hussites. Only one out of every four hundred of the people we meet wears even the nominal name of Protestant. This whole mass must be leavened: ''The old, old story" must be told simply (oh, how simply!) until it Hves in and dominates the lives of those "who err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God." The coming of American missionaries to Bohemia and Moravia thirty-five years ago meant the planting of the Sunday-school idea in Bohemian soil. Slow indeed has been the growth of this foreign plant, but growth there has been and is. Dr. W. A. Duncan, of the Congregational Sunday-school and PubHshing Society, visited us nearly fifteen years ago and helped on the work not a little. From his visit dates the beginning of our publication of ''Pom- ucka" which includes not only an exposition of the Sunday- school lessons, but a few words of exposition of the Daily Readings. Our "Pomucka" is used in many a Bohemian home, not alone in the land of John Huss and Comenius but also in Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria and America. Our Home Department outnumbers by far those who gather to study the lessons. In upwards of three thousand homes is the family altar the center of a Httle Sunday-school whose influence is doing much to ''leaven the whole lump." The passage of Scripture studied in the weekly church "Bible Hour" is in many cases the Sunday-school lesson. In addition to this a set of twenty-five questions is prepared every week and hectograph copies are sent to thirty circles of believers, many of them far removed from church privileges. These "questions" are founded on the Sunday- school lessons and help to growth in Bible knowledge as well as to the spread of Sunday-schools. And just now the London Sunday School Union is helping to put into the field a Sunday-school missionary who will give a part of his time to the planting and promotion of Sunday-schools. How can Sunday-schools of other countries help the Sunday-schools of Bohemia? 208 Bulgaria ^c> I. By helping to put into the hands of all the nitive Sunday-school workers who read English some of our best lesson helps. 2. By helping to publish in the Bohemian language, Trumbull's "Teaching and Teachers"; we must train up teachers. 3. By helping to defray in part the expenses of a yearly Sunday-school Institute which should serve to spread interest in Sunday-school work as well as to equip workers for better service. 4. By sending some experienced Sunday-school w^orker to spend six weeks at least, in Bohemia and Moravia, helping in the proposed Sunday-school Institute as well as in a general promotion of the interests of Sunday-schools. Bulgaria By the Rev. Theodore T. Holway, M. A. I am heartily glad that in this Sunday-school Convention of the nations Bulgaria has her place. I. A word as to her history. In the days of Alfred the Great she was already a powerful nation, and her "Czar" ruled from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, from the ^gean to the Danube. A little earher, just after the days of Charlemagne, the two great missionaries to the Slavic races, Cyril and Methodius, had gone up and down the Balkan Peninsula, proclaiming the gospel to the Slavic peoples, and winning them to Christianity. In 864 A. D., Boris I., styhng himself "Czar of Bulgaria and Autocrat of the Greeks" accepted Christianity and made it the State religion. Tw^o years later he sent a special ambassador to Rome with one hundred and six questions on various points of Christian faith and polity. For a time Boris wavered between Pope and Patriarch, between Rome and Constantinople, but finally became joined to the Eastern Church. Cyril and Methodius it was who introduced into Bulgaria the numerous saint's-days which have robbed the 209 Sunday Schools the World Around people so long of a third of their time. These days, however, are but the gravestones of ancient Bible schools. Later, Bulgaria came under Greek influence. A Greek Patriarch was appointed. The Greek liturgy took \he place of the native language, and after a time the Bulgarians became ignorant and indifferent in religious matters. Nevertheless, the early training must have been of great power in their lives since it enabled them to remain Christian, and relatively pure during the five centuries of political bondage to Turkey and ecclesiastical bondage to Greece. They passed under the Turkish yoke nearly one hundred years before Columbus discovered America (1398). In 1878 Modern Bulgaria was born, a country about the size of Indiana, or of Scotland and Wales together. It has now a population of about 5,000,000, in addition to about 1,250,000 Bulgarians in Macedonia where we have a very encouraging work. Bulgaria is alert and has made very remarkable progress during the twenty-nine years since her liberation. In social conditions, in education, in morality, this youngest of the Balkan States stands preeminent among them all. The reason of this is that the Bible, in the vernacular, was widely circulated w^ithin its borders before the country was free, and many of its early leaders, after its liberation, were trained in bibhcal ideals at Robert College in Con- stantinople— an institution founded by that versatile and consecrated American missionary, Cyrus Hamlin. Rouma- nia, even to-day, has no colporteurs except among the Jews, practically no Sunday-schools and no Bibles. Servia is entirely without all three. Greece knows little of the Bible, since to-day it cannot be published save in the ancient Greek. Is it not significant that one Balkan State in which the Bible has had free circulation is fast becoming the leading State in that Peninsula? 2. Religious Condition. The Bulgarian Church, like every other branch of the Eastern Church, "has the form 210