5. =Educational Efficiency.= The Sunday school is in the world with a definite work--religious education. Its religion will be based on the Old Testament and kindred literature in a Jewish school; it will be based on both the Old and New Testament and supplemental literature in a Christian school; but whether Jewish or Christian, its work is the teaching of religion, as contained in the living Word, and illustrated by the lives and teachings of the heroes of the faith. The true test of a Sunday school is the answer that it can give to the question, "Does it teach the vital religious truths of the race so as to develop individual character and efficiency?" That is its task, and by its success in accomplishing it each school is to be judged; not by the splendor of its building, or the exactness of its machinery, or the enthusiasm of its members. The thirty or thirty-five minutes devoted to the lesson is the supremely important period in every true Sunday school. The time is often bound to be all too short for teaching divine truth, and printing it upon mind and memory so deeply that all the studies and pleasures of the six days between the two Sundays will not cause the teaching to fade. Yet the time is as long as the ordinary teacher (or preacher) can hold attention to one subject, and therefore in most classes it is sufficient. Toward that half hour of teaching, therefore, all the energies of the school, of the training class, home study, teachers' meeting, gradation, government, should be turned. For the vital aim of the Sunday school is the eternal message of God to men through men, so that men and women of the Christ spirit and character may be developed. 6. =Character-Building.= The first task, therefore, of the Sunday school is to teach the Word, but that teaching is only a means to an end, and that end is greater than mere intellectual knowledge--it is the building up of a complete character. This is more than "bringing souls to Christ," or leading them into church membership. If the sole aim of the Sunday school was to compass the salvation of the scholar and to surround him with the walls of a church, then we might safely dismiss our scholars when they have passed through a crisis of conversion and entered the church door. But the Sunday school is to do more than save its scholars from sin. It is to train them in the completeness of a Christian character; and such a character involves not only personal righteousness but also service for God and humanity. Its aim is not to take people apart out of the world, but to set them in the world, equipped for work in making the world a Christian world, and thereby establishing on earth the kingdom of heaven. The measure by which the Sunday school accomplishes such a work as this, constitutes the final, crucial test of its success.