Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The Sabbath-school may be said to be divided into three courses, namely,
the preparatory or infant-class, the collegiate or Sabbath-school
proper, and the post-graduate or Mr. Parker's Bible-class.
What can a mere babe of three or four years learn in Sabbath-school?
sneers the critic. Not much, I grant you, of justification by Faith, or
Effectual Calling; but certain elementary precepts can be impressed
upon the mind while it is still in a plastic condition that never can
be wholly obliterated, come what may in after life. Prime among these
elementary precepts is this: “Always bring a penny.”
Some one has said, “Give me the first seven years of a child's life
and I care not who has the remainder.” I cannot endorse this without
reserve; but I maintain as a demonstrated fact: “Bring up a child to
contribute a copper cent, and when he is old he will not depart from
it.” It was recently my high privilege to attend a summer gathering
of representative religious people in the largest auditorium in this
country. Sometimes under that far-spreading roof ten thousand souls were
assembled and met together. This fact could be guessed at with tolerable
accuracy from the known seating capacity, but the interesting thing was
that it could be predicated with mathematical certainty that exactly ten
thousand people were present, because the offertory footed up
exactly one hundred dollars. What an encouragement to these faithful
infant-class teachers that have labored unremittingly, instant in season
and out of season, saying over and over again with infinite patience,
“Always bring a penny,” to know that their labor has not been in vain,
and that as a people we have made it the rule of our lives always to
bring a penny--and no more.
I have often tried to think what a Sabbath-school must be like in
California, where they have no pennies. It seems hardly possible that
the institution can exist under such a patent disability, and yet it
does. Do they work it on the same principle as the post-office in
that far-off land where you 'cannot buy one postal card because the
postmaster cannot make change, but must buy five postal cards or
two two-cent stamps and a postal? In other words, does a nickel, the
smallest extant coin, serve for five persons for one Sunday or one
person for five Sundays? I have often wondered about this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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