and prayed. The boy said to his sorrowing relatives, "Don't weep for me: I have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ and He is calling me home," and thus he passed away. He lives still in the memory of all who knew him, an illustration of the power of the Bible to awaken and of Christ to save. His sister, older than he, continued to attend the girls' Sunday School, and manifested her interest in the Gospel in many ways: this year she also passed away, and I doubt not has joined Sita Ram in the "Happy Land" of which they learned in the Sunday School. The other members of the family are now candidates for baptism. Secondly, this work gives our native church opportunity of working for Christ, which cannot but be very helpful and productive of growth. The Christian brother whose daily duties confine him to the kutchery or railway office may thus find a happy change on Sunday by going to the city and teaching children. The catechist is thus developed into a more useful preacher, as the Sunday School taxes his resources and necessitates constant study of the Bible. In Lucknow the older boys and girls of our boarding schools attend these Sunday Schools as teachers, and thus under the direction of Missionaries and other workers receive a degree of training that will fit them for great usefulness wherever they may go. The wise pastor will certainly seek to lead his church to active work for Christ, and the Sunday School is one of the most practical, helpful kinds of work to be found. Teaches native church to work. European Thirdly, Sunday Schools for non-Christian children Gives work to open up great opportunities for usefulness to the members of our English churches and congregations. In Lucknow we have received very great assistance in this direction. European European gentlemen, military officers and others, have laboured most faithfully and efficiently in our Sunday Schools especially as teachers of Bible classes: they have thus won friends among our scholars, have added to the interest of the schools by their presence and hearty co-operation, and have been signally blessed in thus working for God. Very much is yet to be done in this direction, and I would that every English pastor in India could initiate this work and interest the members of his church in it. There are other advantages which will suggest them- Great though selves to all. Besides there are results which we cannot simple work. know. It may seem a little thing, the teaching the De "Our children will be Christians." Rough marble. The Sunday School reaches all. calogue or the Beatitudes to a handful of Hindu or Mahomedan children: there may be much of parrot-like repetition, not always in reverent tones; but in reality these lessons lead to changed lives and by the blessing of God to great results. Men often tell us in the village and bazar," Sir, we shall not accept Christ, we are too old to change, for us the die is cast, but our children will certainly become Christians." This is not only a confession of dissatisfaction, an acknowledgment of helplessness and failure, it is an invitation coming from the recesses of the fathers' hearts, asking us to take their children and train them for Christ. As Missionaries and Christian workers let us not be slow or half-hearted in responding to such an appeal. Let us win the children and thus win India for Christ! A great sculptor was once seen standing before a rough soiled block of marble half covered with earth and blackened by age: his companions saw no beauty in it, but he surveyed it with an artist's eye and cried out exultingly. "There's an angel in it"! Even so, in the rough, unthinking, uncultured boys and girls about us there are angels; and the stones which appear so shapeless and worthless may become fair and beautiful in the great building of which Christ is the corner-stone. Would that we all had the appreciative heart that looks through the unpolished exterior and sees the beauty within! OPENING SPEECH BY REV. J. S. CHANDLER, A. B. F. M., Madura, Madras. ; The Sunday School should not be restricted to children it works for adults as well. It aims to bring the Gospel to the masses and the masses to the Gospel. It adapts itself to the varying needs and tastes of those whom it reaches, using various attractions that are not considered suitable to the more stately services of the churches. Like the peaceful plains of Elis which the Greeks never desecrated by war, it interferes with no peculiarities of sects, being in all sects but not of them, and therefore does not excite the opposition of the denominational leaders. It brings no new theology and teaches nothing that all the denominations cannot accept. The Sunday School works for all, high and low, and rejoices over the cultured youth that seem to grow up into the church as much as the profane loafers that suddenly reform. Its aim is that of Paul, to become all things to all men. with the Church. It has the advantage of direct connection with Christ's Connected visible Church, besides the further advantage of numbers. Three years ago its forces numbered not less than 14,000,000; 7,000,000 being in the United States and Canada, and 5,000,000 in Great Britain. Undoubtedly the numbers in other countries now far exceed the remaining 2,000,000 of three years ago. issues of lesson-leaves to stimulate the study of the Bible number, in the United States alone, more than 2,000,000 copies every week. With such resources it can do a grand work for Christ, and multiply itself a hundred-fold in every heathen land. Its But it is our part to consider its usefulness in our midst, in connection with our work and as applied to our resources. My object, then, is to show that it is well adapted to do the Adapted for pioneer work of the churches. Pioneer work consists in removing pioneer work. obstacles and in gathering materials for systematic organized work. The emigrant on the western frontier has many a thicket and much under-brush to clear away, and much ground to prepare, and roads to open, and many materials to gather before a community can be established. So the Sunday School can obstacles and gather the materials out of which churches will grow. Consequently we should seek to introduce and maintain Sunday Schools in every available place. remove 1. It is adapted to the work of securing an audience. Probably most of the Sunday Schools thus far established for non-Christians have as a nucleus the children attendant on mission schools of one kind or another: these generally make up the majority of the Sunday School. This fact was used by one writer at the Bangalore Conference to show that such Sunday School instruction became supplementary to the daily instruction in the Bible. But in my view the reverse should be the case, and will generally be, if the Sunday School be conducted in the best way. It is too important a service and has too much individuality, if I may use the figure, to be made a mere supplement to the daily lesson. The latter should rather be supplementary to it. Secures an audience. A Sunday School, therefore, which can live by the free and willing attendance of non-Christians will have not only the audience of pupils from day-schools, but will be sure to draw in others, their parents, friends and passers-by. And this will be not a fleeting, but a regular audience. A certain number will A regular not return after one or two meetings, and there always will be audience. such a floating element, but the majority will be the same Sunday after Sunday. In our little town by occasional street preaching I may secure audiences varying from one hundred in the season of leisure to ten in the busy season; by weekly efforts I should secure considerably fewer hearers each time. But in my Sunday School I secure an andience of one hundred year in year out; and the number who attend is limited by the narrowness of our little A favourable audience. Of both sexes. It teaches the In many ways. room. A large class of intelligent Brahman youth, having no connection whatever with the day-school, has been broken up by the lack of room, and many adults come and go who cannot find room even to stand. With the completion of new quarters we hope to have a much larger audience. Again, this audience will be favourable to the truths taught. Were it not so there would be no Sunday School. The children in the schools are not the ones to make disturbances, and others do not come into a Mission building where Christian songs are sung and prayer offered to Christ if they be inimical. Very few street audiences have not some who would like to object, and very few Sunday School audiences are ever troubled by objectors. I have never had the least disturbance. Besides the willingness to hear on the part of those adults who choose to come, the youthful part of the audience is in the most favourable condition to receive impressions that will last as long as memory lasts and to receive an unconscious moulding into holiness. In many Sunday Schools this audience will include women and girls. Not all can well receive the two sexes for various reasons, but many can, and the opportunities are so far enlarged. We have from twenty to thirty girls and women every Sabbath. Many a woman, who would not mix with a street audience, will gladly sit for a few minutes at the feet of the Missionary lady and listen to the various Sunday School exercises. House to house visitation is commended as a means of extending the knowledge of the truth, because the listeners are more quiet and favourably disposed than the members of a miscellaneous street audience. And this advantage pertains to every Sunday School audience. 2. The Sunday School teaches the Bible and brings its influence to bear upon the consciences of the people. Many a Hindu boy studies his daily Bible lesson because it is in English, and he thereby increases his knowledge of the language, or because he secures other advantages from the school. We have had Brahman youth come to us and request us to establish a school for them, and declare that they would willingly study the Bible an hour a day. But their object was evidently the ulterior advantage. The Sunday School offers no ulterior advantage. Any school held on Sunday that does not by prayer and praise, and the direct application of God's truth to the consciences of the hearers, work directly for their spiritual good and conversion to Christ, is not entitled to a place in the ranks of the Sunday School army. It is this direct spiritual influence of the Sunday School that has brought so many of its members into the Churches at home, and given it the name of " nursery of the Church." It does not teach the Bible in any one way, but combines the reading of the truth, so that all may hear, the committing of inany of its portions to memory, the close study of assigned portions by means of question and answer, and the general applica tion of it to the life and conduct of all present. A certain Mission in India does not allow its catechists to preach at all in their services, but requires them to teach the Bible. Surely, if preaching be omitted, the Sunday School service seems to combine all other forms of teaching, and we would recommend such labourers to develop it as much as possible. It is my plan to use rewards of such a character and in such a way as to add to the amount of truth taught. All who wish are allowed to recite texts and receive cards with new texts for the next Sabbath. When all the cards have been well recited they may commit to memory Psalms, or portions of Psalms, and receive little tracts published for children as fly-leaves. At the end of each month the Bible lessons are reviewed and a little Scripture card given, and at the end of the year the holder of ten such eards receives a cheap Testament. This plan encourages all the children to commit to memory many texts and learn much of the Bible history and teaching. The great wheat harvests of America are gathered by combination reaping and binding machines, which cut the grain, gather it as neatly as any cradle, and then bind it in suitable sheaves to be taken and threshed at a subsequent time. So the Sunday School gathers the ripe grains of truth, dispenses them in suitable portions, and binds them into the memory to be subsequently threshed out into life by the good Spirit of God. Not long ago as one of those great machines was reaping in a harvest field, it caught up a woodchuck, or ground-hog, with the grain and bound it so securely into a sheaf as to choke it to death. And it often happens that Sunday School instruction seizes some ground-hog of superstition and strangles it by the force of the truth. 3. The Sunday School shows forth the Lord Jesus Christ It passes in and out among the various castes, in sight and hearing of a thousand superstitions, surrounded by the hosts of idolatry, yet provoking none of them and exciting the direct opposition of none. The reason is that it takes hold of common beliefs rather than special dogmas, of universally admitted truths rather than those of special application. For instance, it emphasizes the authority of the Bible rather than the reasoning of men as contained in preaching. Now all Hindus and Mahomedans reverence their own sacred books, and the sight of Christians honoring their Bible excites in them respect rather than opposition. Give rewards. Α combination machine. Shews forth Excites no opposition. Again, it cultivates praise to God as our Creator, Preserver and Praises God. Saviour, and that exercise appeals to the respect of almost every non-Christian as well as Christian. Opposition to the hearty praise of a gracious God comes not from the religious mind of heathenism, but from the civilized, cultured atheism, pantheism and materialism of Christian lands, the vaunted fruit of so-called science. The Sunday School does not even war directly against caste, the Is not openly great enslaving chain of India. It is so free in its work that it aggressive. |