Peeps at our Sunday-schools

Preface

*

HERE are some sketches of the work, and of the workers at work. They are from life.

Encouraged by the very cordial and unexpectedly favorable reception given on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to my "Sunday-School Photographs," published several years ago, I have put these " Peeps " into the form in which you now look through them. As you go with me to look at the Sunday-schools, and we enjoy our brief glimpses at them, please to remember that these pages are not meant to contain finely spun theories, or didactic disquisitions on what a Sunday-school ought to be, but rather pictures of what our schools are.

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Marching On 7

II. The Great Variety of Schools . 15

I

arrjring #n*

E are pushing on rapidly. The Sunday-school of to-day is no more like the Sunday-school of twenty-five years ago than the railroad of to-day is like the old flatrailed contrivance, on which the conductor held the rails down with his fingers until the wheezy little locomotive slowly dragged our fathers over the rickety structure. At thirty miles* an hour, the forty-ton engine and the superb palace-car now push their way to the Pacific Coast, awakening the whole land from slumber to energy, and pointing the way to mighty improvement — to large results — in every branch of Christian work as well as secular.

We are progressing bravely, thank God! There were some good schools twenty-five or thirty years ago — many of them. A school that was both large and good was an exceptional thing. The school to which I went in my boyhood had about nine hundred children in it, and was considered, as it truly was, a wonder. There was none in town like it. While we must not consider numbers the chief element of success, yet let us be thankful that there are now many schools in the land, each with a much larger membership than that. And let us also rejoice that an immense class of our juvenile population is now reached by the Sunday-school, which the school of a generation ago neglected.

We have progressed in the estimation in which good Church members regard Sunday-school work. Thousands of people who used to sneer at the Sunday-school as a child's plaything, are now ready to labor for it, to teach in it, to help pay its bills, and in other ways to cast their influence on the side of its success. The miserable old prejudice against the Sunday-school, that it was the opponent of the Church, or the competitor with the

Marching On. 9

Church for honors which belong exclusively to the Church, is rapidly passing away. The Church of to-day regards the school as a part of itself — neither enemy nor rival. It recognizes the class and the desk as the auxiliaries of the pulpit, giving the Gospel to the children, and preparing them for the deeper and richer work which the pulpit has to do in showing them how to grow in grace.

The Sunday-school of to-day is lodged in better accommodations than our fathers enjoyed. The sepulchral basement, with its ill-smelling, decaying floor, its musty walls, and its rheumatic atmosphere, is discarded wherever it is possible, and used for the storage of coal and rubbish, as it always should have been. The sunshiny upper room, with pleasant walls and cheerful pictures, with comfortable seats and carpeted floor, welcomes the children to happiness as well as to instruction. When a new church is built a new Sunday-school room is generally built to match it The new room is provided with decent ventilating and heating apparatus, with convenient seats, and with all that makes for health as well as for comfort.

io Peeps at Our Sunday-Schools.

We have better helps than we used to have. A favorite idea of the Sunday-school work of the last generation was, that it ought to be done very cheaply. This idea was the parent of the six-penny question book, and other " helps," which helped the teacher as little as possible for his money, and which confused the poor scholar entirely. That class of educational books which profess to teach French, Latin, German, or fiddle-playing, for twenty-five cents each, convey to the unsatisfied learner the merest smattering of that which they pretend to teach. So with the six-penny help. With the necessity for better things came the demand. Some of the old sort are yet published, it is true, by antiquated owners of stereotype plates, who should long ago have sent those plates to the melting-pot ; but the demand is for something better. The supply and the demand keep together as closely as the lamented Siamese twins ever did.

With better helps we have better study on the part of teachers. Map, chart, commentary, dictionary, illustrated travels, pictures of all descriptions, help the teacher, not to

Marching On.

II puzzle the child by reading to him unanswerable printed questions, but first to store his own mind with knowledge, and then to convey that knowledge to the mind of the child. There is less reading Scripture by rote than there used to be. There is more understanding of the true meaning of the sacred word. There are boys of fourteen years old who to-day know more about the Bible than many Sunday-school teachers knew thirty years ago. Study on the part of the teacher leads to study on the part of the boy and girl. Children love to go to school now more than of old, some of them merely because it is attractive but many of them because they are learning something, and learning it in a pleasant way. With all the mere pleasantness of the school, it is safe to say that our children are becoming better acquainted with the meaning of the Scriptures than most children of the same age were thirty years ago.

If there were no other signs of progress than the present condition of " Uniform Lesson " work and study, we should see enough to make us thankful for living in the march of to-day. Thousands upon thousands of children and their teachers are studying, every week, the same passage of Scripture, in well-selected courses of lessons, carefully chosen by some of the best men in the land. The ablest heads and the warmest hearts in every denomination of Christians devote themselves to the preparation of " Lesson Leaves," " Lesson Readings," and the other helps to the study of these passages of Scripture. Whole towns, and even large cities, are so well united on the study of these lessons that teachers meet together in great companies for evening study-meetings, drawn by a common interest in preparing themselves for the lesson which all will teach on the coming Lord's day. There is a vitality about the study of the lesson, and its teaching, which never animated the old desultory fashion, which left each teacher to take whatever lesson he chose, or no lesson at all, according as it suited him.

We are progressing triumphantly with our music. Mear, Dundee, Windham, and China are all good tunes, and there is much more music of the same kind, and just as good. So is stale bread wholesome food ; but we do

Marching On. 13

not like to be compelled to sing the one or eat the other all the time. Perhaps some of our modern music is too vivacious ; but let us have it so rather than too dismal. Only let us guard against the introduction of trashy music and ridiculous rhymes. Children will sing any thing they are taught, provided the tune is not too gloomy. We will ring out worthy songs of praise till the sound goes forth a blessed mission to every home in the country ; till the song of Divine grace is carried, on happy voice of children, to destitute souls never reached by the regular ministrations of the pulpit.

We pray better, too. How precious the teachers' prayer-meeting ! How delightful the little gathering of children, held in many a school, to ask for blessing on the work in their own hearts and the hearts of their friends ! How glorious the news, when tidings of conversions cheer the prayer-meeting, and animate teacher and scholar to renewed efforts in the labor of love !

And so we march on. Once in awhile some good brother of fifty years ago wakes up to tell us that these days are not half so good as the former days, and that we ought to go back and do things as they were done when he was a boy. But, while we respect his sincerity and the depth of his convictions, we will yet journey by rail rather than by stage. We will break up the soil with the steam-plow when the old style of labor fails to do the work. We will cut our harvest with the machine reaper, rather than have whole fields of it go to waste for the want of reaping. We will use every device that God has put into the heart and brain of man to make, to help us in our work. And in his strength we will march on! On, to great results in gathering children ! On, to great attainments in the knowledge of the truth ! On, to more prayer, more study, more work ! On, to final victory through the blood of Jesus Christ — to the welcome which awaits us at his right hand, with all the children he has given us.

The Great Variety of Sunday-Schools. 15

II

THE well disposed, but empty orator, who harangues an assembly of fellow-beings in reference to the Sunday-school work, sayyig, " My friends, the Sunday-school is a great institution, a very great institution ; one of the greatest institutions in the world, my friends," has a general idea that all Sunday-schools are cast in the same mold, and finished alike, after the manner of cannon, or nickel pennies, or brass buttons. He is not thoroughly correct. When we examine a lot of great guns in a fort, we do find that they all look very much alike. But the experienced gunner will tell you that his pet gun will carry its death-dealing ball a mile and a half farther than will the great gun in the next casemate, which seems to be its twin brother. Although the nickel coins seem so much alike, even a casual glance discloses the fact that they differ in dates, and in the experience they have had at the hands of those who have used them as a circulating medium. Brass buttons differ as to their patterns, surfaces, sizes, and even as to the ways in which their eyes are fastened in. So with a flock of sheep. A careful examination reveals the fact that each individual sheep has its own expression of countenance, and that these expressions are almost as diverse as the expressions of the human face.

It is even more so with the Sunday-school. Hardly two schools can be found exactly alike in all respects. Even though one school may copy another as closely as possible, the copy is not perfect, owing to some local circumstances, or inability to carry out other men's ideas. It is well that there are differences. If all Sunday-schools were molded and fashioned alike, it would be productive of disagreeable monotony, especially if the standard mold were a poor one. The great variety of style in which Sunday-school work is done affords opportunity for the exercise of inventive genius, and for wisely appropriating to our own use the thoughts and experience of other people. The proprietor

Great Variety of Sunday- Schools. 17

of a mill is naturally on the lookout for improvements in machinery suited to his purposes. The shop-keeper is wide awake for new ideas in the carrying on of his business, and does not hesitate to build on the foundation of other brains than his own.

The children of this world are quicker in taking hold of new ideas, and in making improvements in old ones, than are the children of light. If an invention or improvement in worldly matters is good and useful, it is sure to be extensively followed. An improvement in Church or Sunday-school has to struggle against prejudice, hard names, and the charge of being a wicked innovation on ancient and honored precedent. The world adorns its theaters and concert rooms^ ventilates them, and furnishes them with seats on which human beings can sit without risk of breaking their backs. The church, in too many instances, daubs its walls with unsightly burlesques of art, seats its congregation on narrow, straight-backed benches, with cushions for those who pay for them and hard boards for the impecunious stranger. It provides several small holes in the walls or ceiling of a large building, nominally to ventilate it, and then wonders that the people prefer to stay at home rather than to come to places where the physical man is made so uncomfortable that the spiritual man must go hungry. The world educates its children in spacious public schools, with high ceilings, and all the modern conveniences of walnut and cast-iron furniture, of lattdst pattern arid best workmanship. The little ones who are taught the truths of the Gaspel in Sunday-school are too often humbled to cellar lodgings under the church, and are allowed to take their chance of getting rheumatism, or colds in their heads, or of being suffocated by impure air, which is so freely thrown off front youthful lurigs, but for which the building committee forgot to allow means of exit. Even where the Church itself, has stepped forward into the ranks of enterprising improvement, and has introduced the latest novelties in comfort and convenience, the Sunday-school is crow'ded into a sort of back kitchen, or basement, with the privilege of going up to the third tier to listen to the preaching. The church, which is up to the times in the matter of elegant fresco work,

The Great Variety of Sunday- Schools. 19

and which adorns the recess in the rear of the pulpit with a magnificently painted deception — a colonnade, for instance, pretending to stretch back about a quarter of a mile, like a long market-house — is too often content to educate its children in a barn-like, unpainted room, whose dismal walls testify to the fact that the thin coat of whitewash which is spread on them was furnished grudgingly, and of necessity.

The children of light have in the progress of recent years partially waked up to their deficiency in these matters. Still, with all the latter-day improvement in church building, and in conducting Sunday-schools, we must confess that the children of this world are wonderfully ahead in enterprise, energy, and persistency in their efforts to instruct and entertain, after their fashion, the rising and the risen generation. Let the Church of the living God be at least even with them. Let us be awake to every thing that can increase our efficiency in carrying on the work which is committed to us.

The various features of the Sunday-school work are before us for examination. The work is conducted differently in different places, and under different circumstances. We find not only the cheap Sunday-school, compressed into uncomfortable quarters, but we find elsewhere the " purple and fine linen " Sunday-schools. We find one school a model of good order, and another a disgrace ; one so interesting that the children rush to it, while its next neighbor is conducted so drearily that no reasonable child cares about having any thing to do with it. One school is celebrated for its efficiency, while another drags slipshod along, accomplishing little or nothing ; one does its work quietly and faithfully, while its spread-eagle rival makes a great fuss, and is supposed to have evangelized all the little people within five miles of it.

There is more to be learned from actual observation of real Sunday-schools than from didactic discussions of what Sunday-schools ought to be. We can form our best judgment of the condition of the work of to-day by faithfully picturing it, and then looking fairly at the pictures. To this end let us take a series of brief peeps at some of the

The Great Variety of Stmday-Sckools. 21

representative schools of diverse types of character — good, bad, and indifferent. We go with a view to learn from them ; to copy what is good, to take warning from what is bad or unwise : not to examine merely with a view to criticism, but to profitable and kind admonition. With all the advance and improvement in all branches of the work, there is yet room for more. Let us hopefully labor for it !

III

VERY little money is spent on it. The people of the church to which it belongs think that it is not worth spending much for. They are not far from right, for it is a poor affair of a Sunday-school, and if it is to be made no better, time, money, and brains are wasted in keeping up its shabby existence. Thinking it is worthless, they put their theory into practice by withholding the funds necessary to its prosperity. Expensive theories often fail of being put into practice ; but when the theory is one involving the saving of money, it is likely to go into operation. The prodigal people who carry on the church over yonder, spend six or seven hundred dollars a year on their Sunday-school. The narrow-minded persons who run this school reason therefrom that they are wantonly throwing away money ; that they ought not to lavish on their school an amount equal

The Parsimonious Sunday-School. 23

to what many congregations pay for the support of pastor, pastor's wife, pastoral horse, and six little pastoral children ; and that they will set an example of praiseworthy economy by running their Sunday-school for as little money as possible. They will even try to have it cost nothing at all. They rejoice over the fact, as they count up the yearly expenses of the whole establishment, that they have saved something.

The idea of economy is a right and useful idea in its proper place and bounds. Instances are on record of its having been carried too far. A man may save considerable money by not educating his children at all ; but he will find it expensive in the end to let them grow up dunces. The supplies for the family table may be cut down, so as to materially lessen sums paid to butcher, grocer, and milkman ; but the head of the family will some day wake to the fact that the style of domestic economy produces great leanness of flesh in the family. The shopkeeper mayturn down the lights in his windows till the gas burns blue ; he reduces his gas bill, but drives away his customers. You may go almost without clothes, and save coal by filling your grate half full of brick-bats ; but your aching joints and shivering flesh will painfully tell you that it would have been wiser economy to procure good and reasonable fuel and raiment, and plenty of them. The traditional person who fed his horse on shavings and shoe-pegs, instead of on hay and oats, saved in the amount of his feed bill, but is said to have suffered the loss of the animal on which he tried the economical experiment.

We knock at the door of the parsimonious Sunday-school. It opens of its own accord, for the latch is broken, and to mend it would have cost twenty-five cents, which amount it was thought best to save. These little expenses, says the financial man of the school, do amount up so ; at the end of the year they make quite a bill. We pause to wipe the mud from our feet, but there is no door-mat Some thievish person carried it away six months ago, and another has not been procured. A mat would cost a dollar and a half, which had better go to the heathen. We would sit down. Some boys in the class near

The Parsimonious Sunday-School. 25

to the door crowd together to make room for us ; for there are no benches provided for visitors ; it would cost too much. The superintendent stands behind an old thing which used to be the church pulpit. When he raps on it with a stick, which he does to call the school to order, he raises a cloud of dust from the old straw and dry-goods composing the cushion. Part of the Gospel according to Matthew is torn out of the large Bible, which was used in the church till it wore out, when it was generously given to the Sunday-school, with the kind regards of the Church. A new Bible was then provided for the church, and a new white and gilt pulpit was erected. The congregation up stairs sit on hair cushions, with red moreen covers ; the children in the uncomfortable basement into which we have entered, sit on benches about as luxurious as saw-horses. The rays of the sun find their way into the grown people's sanctuary through colored glass ; the only coloring on these basement windows is from the dust that has collected, and the mud that has been splashed on the seven-by-nine panes which were thought good enough for

26 Teeps at Our Sunday-Schools.

the Sunday-school. There is an absence of cheerful warmth and comfort. The chimney is out of order ; and the stove, a second-hand one purchased for five dollars less than a new one could have been bought for, does not draw well. There are no boxes, drawers, shelves, or closets for the reception of the books ; consequently each class leaves its books in a pile on the floor, under the end of the bench. The books are a little soiled and dog-e^red ; but that is no matter, they are only children's books. No money has been wasted in tinsel decoration of the walls of this school, nor have any pictures been provided to call off the attention of the young people from their lessons. The solitary adornments of the walls is a dismal map of Palestine on muslin, " Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1842." This help to the understanding of the sacred Scripture has been suffered to remain, speckled by the flies of summer, darkened by the smoke of winter, and browned by the dust all the year round, till it is now more of a time-stained relic of the past than an assistance in present geographical research.

The Parsimonious Sunday-School. 27

The literary and intellectual furniture of this concern is of much the same order as the stove, the windows, and the walls. The shabby hymn books, out of which the children sing very shabby music, suggest the idea of an economy which has not found its way into the choir of the church, where the stately organ, with several rows of gilt pipes, makes harmony with vocal praise from golden-edged hymn books. The school is now studying the same lessons that were studied last year, not from a desire to clinch the nails of truth then driven, but from the fact that it has not been deemed best to incur the expense of new question books. The idea of uniting with other schools in the study of a uniform series of lessons does not occur to these good folks. The library books, few in number, are broken backed, torn, and smeared, presenting, in their appearance on the shelves, no inducement to any ambitious child to take and read. No Sunday-school papers are taken for the children or teachers, for it would cost several dollars a year to furnish them.

It has alreadv been remarked that the singing is poor — a kind of rusty singing, which refuses to get new music, new hymns, new instruments, or new helps of any kind. There is no enthusiasm about it, and there is very little real music. Enthusiasm is costly. The better we sing, the more new music we need to buy. The hymn book used is one published thirty years ago, excellent in its way, but not up to the times. Three children crowd to look over each hymn book, for there are not enough to go round the school.

But somebody will say, that, notwithstanding all these deficiencies, the Gospel is taught in truth and simplicity. If it be so, well. But when the surroundings of religious teaching are as beggarly as these, the religious teaching itself is generally weak stuff. It is true that the Gospel can be taught in a barn, or a cave, or an old railroad car, or even in the open air, which is cheaper than all. But we do not seek a barn if we can get better accommodations, nor do we go down into a cave, if we can be provided with quarters above ground. Open-air preaching is praise- * worthy in season ; but when the ponds are frozen, and snow lies a foot deep on the

T/le Parsimonious Sunday- School. 29

ground, a comfortable church, with heating apparatus in full blast, is desirable.

Had there been a Sunday-school department in Solomon's temple, it would have been gotten up in good style. Solomon would not have crowded the little Israelites into a damp, uncomfortable cellar, or into a mean upper story, destitute of the comforts of life. He would not have calculated how many shekels of gold he could have saved by making the young folks put up with mean accommodations ; nor would he have contracted with Hiram, king of Tyre, for a lot of knotty and unseasoned timber, "just to finish the Sunday-school."

The Sunday-school is worth all it costs. Out with that pinching parsimony which closely calculates the lowest penny for which it can be managed.

IV. WHERE do you go to Sunday-school, Jimmy ?"

" Why, marm, I goes to the Baptisses, and the Methodisses, and the Presbyteriums ; but IVe been a trying the Tiscopals for two or three weeks."

"You don't seem to belong anywhere then, Jimmy."

" Why, yes, marm, don't you see ? I belongs to 'em all, exceptin' the Tiscopals ; but I'm going to jine them too, now."

"Well, Jimmy, what's your idea in going to so many ? "

" Why, you see, I gits a little of what's going on at 'em all, ,marm. I gits liberries, and hymn books, and all that ; and when they has pic-nics, I goes to every one of 'em."

The complication of affairs which the youthful Jimmy assists in making, exists alike in village and city, in metropolis and in coun-

The lilixcd-up Sunday-Scliool.

try town. A sort of religious vagabondism ; a wandering propensity of girls and boys who are anxious for continual novelty and excitement, who need to be anchored in one place, both for their own good and the good of the schools to and from which they unceremoniously run.

The mixed-up Sunday-school works under great disadvantage. It does not know what is its own and what is its neighbor's. Its own affairs and the affairs of its neighbors sometimes become so intimately mixed that it would be hard to ascertain whether or not it has any thing that is strictly its own. It has never succeeded in making itself so attractive to the youngsters who come to it as to induce them to belong only to it. Here are boys and girls who are present only one Sunday out of three or four. Ask them where they have been, they will probably tell you that they "couldn't come." Or they may tell you the straight-forward story of their having been to some other schools during their absence. Visit the other schools in the neighborhood occasionally, and you will find a number of your own scholars there, and looking as if they belonged there. Can any thing be invented which will more certainly tangle the work of the school than this system, on rather, want of system ?

The library of the mixed-up Sunday-school contains a number of books which belong to other schools. They have been brought in by children who have taken them from the libraries to which they belong. These wandering children are, of course, slovenly and careless in their habits, and cannot be expected to think of such a small matter as returning a book to its right place. In addition to the mixture of books thus provided for, there is a great vacancy on the shelves, which may be accounted for by the fact that children who feel no more interest in a school than to straggle away from it in this fashion, care very little about returning the books which they have borrowed from it. Books which should be on the shelves, in good condition and neat order, are on the kitchen mantel or closet shelves of families who should have sent them back months ago. It is more by happy accident than by any particularly careful management, that these vol-

TJie Mixed- up Sunday-School. 33

umes are not in the coal scuttle. When " house-cleaning " time occurs in these families, it sometimes happens that a child starts from home with an armful of books which have thus laid idle and forgotten. The child takes them at random to the school she happens to belong to for that day, even though they may happen to be the property of half a dozen different schools. They are all grist to the mill of the careless librarian, who receives them "without prejudice," asking no questions for conscience' sake. There ought to be a system inaugurated in these schools of exchanging and restoring such stray property, as the street railroad companies exchange their tickets, or as the banks exchange their checks and notes through the li clearing house."