The Pacific Volume 55, Nos. 27-52 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...and an opportunity: I. First of all the Sunday-school is a responsibility. It is a responsibility laid on the church by the state. In other countries religious instruction is given in the state schools; in the United States that department of education is practically handed over to the church. A man may say he does not believe in the institutional church as the dominant type of church. He may say that in exceptional and unusual conditions, as on the foreign field or in the slums of a great city, we do indeed need the institutional church, but that the average church should be rather inspirational than institutional; that it should stimulate and inspire other organizations or its individual members to do certain things rather than do them itself. I do not wish to discuss this principle. There is room for considerable discussion about it. I simply use it to emphasize this point: that, however much you may eliminate all other institutional features, you have one great institutional element left which you cannot eliminate--and that is the Sunday-school. If the church does not provide for the religious education of children no one else will. Upon the church has been laid this task Of religious education. The church must do this work as efficiently as the state is doing its share of the task In secular education. '2. But the Sunday-school is not a mere burden laid upon us by the state; it is also a great opportunity, and in three ways: '(I-)' Through the Sunday-school the church is privileged to surround the child with a. religious environ ment from its earliest years. It is an opportunity to lay foundations without which it would be next to impossible to rear a superstructure of Christian manhood and womanhood. (2) Through the Sunday-school the church is privile...