The front line of the Sunday school movement; the line of the vanguard of Sunday school progress, with a glimpse of ideals beyond

Front matter

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Book ZE^

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Foreword

When my long-time friend the president of Bangor Theological Seminary requested me to give a course of Lectures on the Sunday School to the students, two reasons were especially influential in deciding me to accept his invitation.

The first was a desire to express in some degree the gratitude I owe to this Seminary for the training I received at its hands. Not the least of the providential blessings which have come unexpectedly into my life was the loving guidance which brought me to Bangor and its Theological Seminary:

I congratulate the Seminary for its high ideals, for setting them before the students and saying : " There is the portrait of the minister whom the churches need, and whom they want. He stands continually before you — study him ; set your faces in that direction ; the whole training of the seminary course is to help you to become that man."

I congratulate the students on their privilege of entering the ministry.

The greatest joy a life-work can bring belongs to the Preacher who preaches the Gospel because he loves the Gospel, loves its Giver, and loves his fellow-men.

The greatest joy of the Preacher is that, like his Master, he can also be a Teacher.

4 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT

The greatest joy of the Teacher lies in the teaching of youth.

The other reason was a desire to express in book form some things that lay upon my heart.

One of the largest elements in the ideal of the Preacher, as of the Teacher, is the shepherding of the lambs of the flock ; and by learning how to shepherd the lambs he learns how to shepherd the whole flock. It has been said that if you convert an adult you convert a unit ; but if you convert a child you convert a multiplication table ; that the star of Bethlehem, the star of hope, still stands over the Child and the Home ; that " man was the conundrum of the eighteenth century, woman the conundrum of the nineteenth century," but the problem of the twentieth century is the child.

" Columbus," said Chauncey Depew, " was a dreamer, but he dreamt of new worlds. He was admiral of the ocean because he was made Christopher Columbus to carry Christ across the sea." Columbus found the new world of which he dreamed ; and it is through the child — the child in the Home, the child in the Sunday School, the child in the Church, that we whose work it is to be Christophers, bearers of the Christ to the children, shall find the new earth and new heavens of John's apocalyptic vision.

One of the chief dangers of the scholarly temperament as distinguished from the teaching temperament, and of young ministers fresh from their seminary studies, lies in the living, moving, and having their being in a different atmosphere from that in which their people live and move and have their being ; with different subjects of intellectual interest, seen from different standpoints and

FOREWORD 5

with a different terminology. Their sermons are not, as is sometimes said, " over the heads of the people " ; they are simply one side of them, outside of their sphere of interest and thought, on another plane, and therefore ineffective. Thus Ian Maclaren in the British Weekly describes " one of the chief futilities of the pulpit, — preaching on academic subjects, which interest the preacher very much and about which the people do not care one brass pin, or wearying himself with vain controversies which he thinks are most exciting, but which bore the people to death."

There is not the slightest danger of being too learned or too intellectual. The preacher, as the teacher, must gain all the knowledge he can, fill his treasure-house with things new and old, search every realm of thought for the very best, have the holiest and highest experiences, see the loftiest ideals ; but his real business is to bring these things into contact with the daily life of his people, translate them into their vernacular, and adapt them to their needs. The choice little volume of Patterson Du Bois on the Point of Contact in Teaching is equally good for the preacher and the teacher.

Now the children are among the best means of getting at this "point of contact," through the Sunday School, through the Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Young People's Unions, the Pastor's Class, the Home ; just as it has been said that the " Kindergarten is the leaven that has been transforming all elementary education."

" The science of the century kneels by the cradle of the child." " And a little child shall lead them."

If I were just entering upon my ministerial work, I would as a rule go to the Sunday School, and remain

6 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL MOVEMENT

through the session ; I would teach the classes of children rather than adult Bible classes ; I would not usually become the regular teacher of any one class, but would be a substitute teacher, teaching every class in the school as opportunity offered, thus becoming acquainted with every scholar in the most helpful way.

As I now look back over my uneventful life, more and more clearly does the Sunday School Work flow throughout its whole length like a river of light. Its tiniest rill in the mists of years gone by I still see in one of the earliest pictures my memory holds, as I behold myself a little boy of four years sitting beside my father, while he taught a class of young men in the old Brick Church in New York City.

One of nine children, brought up in an atmosphere intensely religious, literary and educational, both theoretical and practical, with a mother who had a gift for telling Bible stories, with plenty of manual training in my father's factory and garden, with Bible reading and prayer five times a day, with children always in my own family even till to-day, there has been at least an opportunity of knowing something about both children and the Bible.

Then I had some of the best academy teachers boys could enjoy, some experience in teaching in a boys' school and as school committee in village schools for many years.

Always teaching in the Sunday School, at times teaching the same lesson three or four times in a week to old and young, with growing Sunday Schools in each parish, where the authorities permitted me to experiment freely, I at length came to the time, twenty years ago, when I was compelled to make a choice between being the pastor

FOREWORD 7

of a single church, or of giving myself up wholly to work for the Sunday School.

Since then that has been my life's work and joy. At home and abroad, through books and observation, through continual practice in teaching, through a study of every variety of school within my reach, through an unusual opportunity for acquaintance with Bible scholars and secular educators, I have tried with open mind and eyes to learn the best things for the Sunday School. The work itself has been my "Schools and Schoolmasters." I have tried to put in practice the theories I have held, unlike a good friend of mine who kept his watch with scientific exactness to the second, but was never known to be on time.

Therefore, what I bring in these lectures is peculiarly the outgrowth of experience gained through long years of study and observation and never ending toil. The book is almost an autobiography of one whose life has been spent in slowly climbing toward ideals not yet realized, and who is still climbing toward the distant goal.

No one can be more conscious than myself of how imperfect are the results, of what better things are near at hand, of the fact that all the results here given are' but the lower steps of the golden stairway reaching into shining clouds which hide the unknown heights. May you

" read between the lines The finer grace of unfulfilled designs."

"Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

"Ta TradrjfjLdTa fJLaOrjfJLara."

Contents

PAGE

FOREWORD 3

CHAPTER

II

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF SOME OF THE STRATEGIC POINTS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FRONT LINE

Befoee taking up in greater detail a few subjects which seem most important and are now receiving earnest discussion in Sunday School circles, I desire to stand by your side and show you, as in a panorama, the whole long Front Line of the Sunday School, the vanguard of its advancing army. At best the view will be imperfect ; others, from different standpoints, will wish to add or subtract ; and the line is continually changing so rapidly that new things have come within my vision since I began these lectures.

Still it is well to see as accurately as we can in one bird's-eye view what seem to be the best things as yet attained by the Sunday School, adopting as our own a toast given to Wellesley College, " May her ideals always be just beyond her grasp."

In seeking to bring the schools up to the Front Line, it is possible that some notes from the log-book of my experience may be of service in helping the reformer to avoid certain rocks on which more than one has been wrecked or suffered loss.

1. It is wise to show the possible good to be attained, and to lay but small emphasis upon the condemnation of the past.

Proctor the astronomer, in his Familiar Science Studies, relates the story of an Oriental potentate who " dreamt that all his teeth fell out, and when he was told that he was to lose all his relatives, he slew the indiscreet interpreter ; but when another and cleverer interpreter told him that his dream promised long life, and that he would survive all his relatives, he made the man who thus pleasantly interpreted the omen many rich and handsome presents." Both counsellors said the same thing except that one pointed out the evil and the other the good. And you will find that very often the success or the failure of your plans for reforming men or Sunday Schools depends on whether you place your emphasis on the bad to be removed or on the good to be cherished ; on the errors and mistakes of the past, or on the picture of better things ; your back to the night and your face to the dawn.

2. It is best not to make too sudden and revolutionarychanges. The opinions of most men are changed as a ship reverses its course by so large a circle that the passengers have no idea that they are sailing in exactly the opposite direction from that in which they started.

When I was expecting to preach in foreign lands, a wise missionary gave me this good advice, " Do not make any criticisms on what you see in the mission field for at least a year." That advice has stood by me ever since. It is good advice for every minister when he enters upon a new field.

3. Be both conservative and radical, but have a clear idea of what these terms really mean in practical life. A conservative is not one who merely stands still. He is not a mummy ; he is not typified by Sancho Panza asleep on his saddle, propped up by four sticks, while the robbers had driven his beast from under him. The conservative is one who moves along the regular roads, the beaten paths which the wise men of old have trod, and he can go as fast as he will. The radical is one who is seeking out new ways, exploring the forests for better paths, experimenting for something new and better. And though the pathway of progress is thickly strewn on either side with radical failures, yet the radicals are also continually showing us better ways, and when they are found, the conservative walks therein.

4. Another great secret of success in hastening the adoption of better things is found in hiding yourself behind the cause. Let others have the honor while you do the work ; let others be the figurehead while you are the unseen screw that makes the ship go. There are those who never work earnestly unless they carry the flag at the head of the procession ; let them carry it, while you secretly suggest the line of march. Work through the constituted authorities. The failure to do this has wrecked many a good cause. Keep yourself out of sight. Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and then all these things shall be added unto you.

In surveying the Sunday School world for the strategic points in its front line we would note : —

I. That it is Open-minded to Everything Good. — It desires to learn, it is seeking the best. As a whole the Sunday School does welcome every experiment and every effort to discover better things, and bids Godspeed to all the prophets who see the possibilities of the future, and are taking " advanced steps " toward their realization. The learned man wanted " I die learning " for the epitaph on his tombstone. The Sunday School will have no tombstone, for its motto is " I live learning," or in the words of Paul burnt into his very soul : " Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold; but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

II. It is Well-balanced in its Progress. — It is not like Dickens's Skitzlanders in that strange land, the peculiarity of which was that, while every person there was born physically perfect, yet at a certain age any part of the body which had not been used was lost entirely so that nearly every inhabitant was deformed.

The good Sunday School develops in every direction ; it moves forward in every line of progress with equal step.

III. It has One Great Aim : Conversion and Culture in the Christian Life and Character. — It is vastly more than Zoroaster's doctrine that " the one thing needful is to do right." "All good thoughts, words, and works lead to paradise ; all evil thoughts, words, and works lead to hell." It is first of all to lead the young to make their life choice of God and right ; to inspire them through the life of Christ, through the cross of Christ, and through the Holy Spirit, with right principles, with a new heart, with a love to God with all the heart, and a love for their neighbor as for themselves.

Then follows the training into the perfect Christian life, into the practice of every virtue, and in the best social service. The late Professor Davidson conceived of education as " the process of transforming the original nature of man into his ideal nature."

And everything in the school — the teacher, the teaching, the devotional exercises, the music, the reverential order, the organization, the giving — must focus on this end and aim.

IV. It is a Bible School. — A real school for the study of the Bible, as the divine means for attaining the aim of the Sunday School.

There are many instrumentalities, which in various degrees are seeking this end, but the Bible as an educating force is the principal one in the work of the Sunday School, and should be aided by everything that can illustrate and impress its truths.

This means real study.

It means a Bible in every scholar's hands.

It means the best methods of Bible study.

It means nearly everything in the Front Line of the Sunday School.

V. It is a Bible School for the Whole Church. —There is a familiar ideal, originating, in its form, with Bishop Vincent : —

" ALL THE CHURCH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL ; "ALL THE SUNDAY SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH; "AND EVERYBODY IN BOTH."

Dr. C. R. Blackall, the wise and efficient editor of the Sunday School literature of the Baptist denomination, places, on the title-page of his capital little volume Our Sunday School Work and how to do It, a variation of this as his ideal : —

"A HOME school and mission for every baptist church;

"EVERY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH IN THE SUNDAY

SCHOOL SERVICE; "EVERY MEMBER OF THE SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH

SERVICE ; "ALL AND ALWAYS FOR JESUS CHRIST, OUR LORD

AND KING."

The Sunday School is the Church studying the Word of God.

The emphasis of the morning service is on the inspirational.

That of the Sunday School service is on the educational.

That of the evening service is on the evangelistic.

The Sunday School is primarily for the children. When Jesus laid his last threefold command on the penitent Peter, once he says "Shepherd my sheep," but twice he emphasizes the young, " Feed my lambs," " Feed my young sheep." 1 The church can do no better than to use the same emphasis in its services.

But there is danger in making the school exclusively for the young. I have heard of a Parisian lady who had found the elixir of youth, and by using a few drops each day had retained her youthful beauty and vigor. But her maid found the elixir, and, taking a large draught, became a tiny child like Alice in Wonderland.

The whole adult membership needs the Sunday School. They need it for themselves ; need it for their own training and spiritual growth ; need it for the renovation and freshness of life which contact with the children gives; need it for its home influence on the children.

1 appia, lambs ; 7r/)6/3ard, sheep ; 7rpoj3drtd, diminutive, little sheep, young in years or in experience.

They are needed in the school to give it character and tone. They are needed as a means of retaining the young men and women under its influence.

Both children and adults will be better trained, better instructed, more deeply influenced, when all study the Bible together. Mr. J. W. Axtell in his Organized Sunday School declares that " the making of the Church roll and the Sunday School roll so nearly identical that the latter shall practically embrace the former, is the first condition of the very best type of school."

VI. The Church will make the best possible provision for the needs of the children, as the wise mother does in the household. At the Front Line, in the distribution of the finances, the needs of the children will never be neglected or scrimped. In the arrangement of the services the children will never be forgotten. Never will the Church or pastor let sermon or service trespass on the hour set apart for the children ; never will they be willing to climb to their highest experiences on a ladder made of the losses of their children.

VII. The Sunday Schools on the Front Line will have the best buildings, rooms, and apparatus within reach of the Church. Everything that can aid in the work will be provided. See Chapter XI.

VIII. The teachers will be chiefly from the members of the Church ; the choicest and the best people in it working for love. Thus they will be teaching by example seven days in the week what they teach in the school one hour a week. Except for some primary classes, and some special adult classes, nothing can be as good for the school or the Church as this plan. The Church needs it as much as the children. And for the children, no knowledge, no training in teachers from without, can weigh for one moment against a band of teachers selected from the best members in the Church for character-making power. See Chapter V.

IX. The Teachers will be trained for their Work. — The Educator will be Educated. He will be educated to accomplish the aim for which the Sunday School stands. He will be educated in character, in knowledge of the Bible, in the study of the child, in the art of teaching, and in the art of living. See Chapter V.

X. Provision will be made by the Church for the Training of its Teachers. — It will provide Reference Libraries, courses of lectures, normal classes, teachers' meetings; and, as far as possible, open the way for them to attend the institutes, conventions, lectures, classes, correspondence schools, and all means abundantly provided for this purpose.

This they will do the more willingly because the parents, the young people, and the community in general need these things almost as much as the teachers. See Chapter V.

XI. The Teacher's Pastorate. — Sunday School classes have been called " Little Parishes of Eight." Every good teacher is the pastor of his class. He has an unusual opportunity of giving to his class the shepherding which a pastor gives his flock. He can often gain the intimate confidence of the boys and girls, in some cases even more than parents can, and guide them with wise counsels. See Chapter III.

XII. Organized Classes. — Every class above the primary will be organized with regular officers, and be largely selfgoverning. It can thus do much practical work like the

Whatsoever Committee in the Junior Endeavor. The members can invite others that would naturally belong to their grade to join them, the social meetings giving a specially good opportunity for this purpose ; they can supplement the Sunday School work by meeting on week-day evenings, with the stereoscopic pictures or special studies ; they can give mutual help in various ways.

Especially among boys is the organized class of great value. One of the brightest of our younger Sunday School writers, Rev. William Byron Forbush, Ph.D., in his Boy Problem, gives some figures from a Questionnaire by Dr. Sheldon. Of the 1034 boys of ten to sixteen years, who responded, 851 were members of societies formed among themselves. " From 1022 papers collected there were reported 862 societies, more than half of which were athletic or game clubs," the greatest period of activity being between the ages of ten and fifteen. Older classes are organized in a different way, but are quite as useful and necessary. They look out for the sick, the stranger, the neglected. They carry the invitation, they arrange socials, they plan for mutual improvement and help.

XIII. The classes will usually consist of from six to ten scholars, except in the cases of the primary and the adult Bible classes, and those classes where some teacher has peculiar power of attracting and teaching. Many a teacher can succeed with six scholars who would fail with ten. Yet it is seldom wise to divide a class which has gathered around a teacher whose attraction has drawn the scholars to her.

XIV. The study hour will not be less than forty minutes, but in the younger classes there will probably be more than one kind of lesson. To them belong the Supplemental Lessons.

XV. The School will begin and end promptly. — The opening exercises will never infringe on the study period. If for any reason something must be shortened, it will be something besides the study hour ; that will be as sacred and unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Once a minister, coming to preach to a regiment of soldiers, saw this motto in large letters before him on the wall of the tent : —

" The New Beatitude : Blessed is he that is short for he shall be asked to come again."

So on the successful Sunday School is written : Blessed is the superintendent that is short, and prompt, and businesslike, and does everything on time, for he shall be asked to serve again and again.

XVI. The Devotional Exercises will be truly devotional, producing the best possible atmosphere for the culture of the spiritual life, for the study and the practice of the Word of God. The forms of devotion, those that naturally express the devotional spirit, will be universal throughout the school. President Hopkins wisely taught his classes that where the natural forms of devotion are disregarded, the spirit of devotion itself will die. Closed eyes and bowed heads are essential during the prayers. " The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him." Let every worldly thought and feeling be hushed, that " the still, small voice " of God may be heard. No one, however saintly, will be allowed to lead the Sunday School in prayer who does not express the devotional spirit, the longings and desires which children can feel, and enter into from the heart ; for otherwise he is not only tempting them to irreverence and discourtesy to God and his worship, but is training them into the hypocrisy of using forms without the spirit.

This is the time also when the most devotional portions of the Scripture shall become so familiar by continued repetition from Sunday to Sunday that they will become, like the Lord's Prayer, the natural medium for the expression of the religious feeling.

My long-time friend, the Rev. Alford A. Butler, D.D., Dean of the Faribault Episcopal Divinity School, gave at the Crypt Conference some wise advice which all denominations would do well to adapt to their own conditions.

"The worship of the Sunday School should train the children to understand and love the services of the Church. Yet some clergymen, ignorant of the first principles of pedagogy, do the opposite thing. They so plan their Sunday School worship as to educate the children to be unfamiliar with the Church's prayer and praise, and strangers to their devotional helpfulness. Do you wonder that such children drop out between Sunday School and Church ? " On the other hand the spirit of worship will make the school " the house of God, and the gate of heaven."

XVII. The School will be graded both in material and in method, with distinct upward steps, and a final graduation, not out of the school, but into the great adult department where the scholars will pursue post-graduate courses till God calls them to his Heavenly Home. See Chapter VI.

XVIII. The Regular Lessons will be the continually improving and modified International Lessons, at least till some of the many active experimenters on the Front

Line shall see a vision and present a workable ideal of something better, not merely in certain directions but as a whole. For I have as yet seen none — even in the light of the present scientific child study and pedagogy — which combines so much of the best, with so few " outs," as that system, with optional lessons for the children at the one end, and unlimited elective lessons for certain adult classes at the other, according to the latest plan. See Chapter VI.

XIX. Supplemental Lessons and Reviews. — Supplemental lessons are drills in condensed statements, and various things to be learned by heart, which are essential to the best understanding of the Bible, and of each separate lesson. They do not pertain to one system of lessons more than another. There is no conceivable system in which they are not needed. They keep in view the whole scheme of which each separate lesson is a part, and in which the lesson finds its place and unity. They belong chiefly to the lower grades, up to fourteen or fifteen years. They should be used in general exercises wherever possible. They should include summaries of geography, of history, of chronology, of biography, of facts about the Bible, of the great truths of Christianity, and of the distinctive doctrines of the denomination to which the school belongs.

Reviews, if made not a mere repetition of the detailed lessons, their titles and golden texts, or special teachings, but a broad view of the movement of the history, can accomplish a part of this purpose, but only a part. According to Professor Hamill, the review is " the completion, test, and confirmation of teaching " The Review "is one of the seven essential conditions of all true teaching. Other things being equal, he is the ablest and most successful teacher who secures from his pupils the most frequent, thorough, and interesting reviews."

XX. The Sunday School will be a Part of a Great System of Cooperation. — It will cooperate with the other departments of the Church in giving aid in lectures and educational classes ; with the organized young people's societies in many directions. It will be in closest relations with parents and the home ; with pastors' classes and with the work of the day school.

It will cooperate with other Sunday Schools ; as, for instance, in taking a Sunday School census, so that no one can fail of receiving an invitation to some Sunday School ; in teachers' meetings and normal classes; in an interchange of teachers of Bible classes and experts in different departments of Bible study. It will cooperate with the town libraries; as, for instance, in New York City and in the cities of Newton and Somerville (Mass.).