Produced by Curtis Weyant, Thomas Hutchinson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE BOY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday School with Teen Age Boys JOHN L. ALEXANDER _Superintendent Secondary Division International Sunday School Association Author and Editor "Boy Training," "The Sunday School and the Teens," "Boys' Hand Book, Boy Scouts of America" "Sex Instruction for Boys," etc_. =Introduction by= MARION LAWRANCE _General Secretary, World's and International Sunday School Associations_ ASSOCIATION PRESS NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS THIS LITTLE BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEN WHO MUST FACE ALL THE PROBLEMS OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL--TO THE MEN WHO HOLD THE KEY TO ALL THE LIFE AND PROGRESS OF THE SCHOOL--THE SUPERINTENDENTS OF NORTH AMERICA. INTRODUCTION The Sunday school chapter of Church history is now being written. It comes late in the volume, but those who are writing it and those who are reading it realize--as never before--that the Sunday school is rapidly coming to its rightful place. In the Sunday school, as elsewhere, it is the little child who has led the way to improvement. The commanding appeal of the little ones opened the door of advance, and, as a result, the Elementary Division of the school has outstripped the rest in its efficiency. Where children go adults will follow, and so we discover that the Adult Division was the next to receive attention, until today its manly strength and power are the admiration of the Church. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the middle division, called the Secondary, and covering the "Teen Age," has been sadly neglected--the joint in the harness of our Sunday school fabric. Here we have met with many a signal defeat, for the doors of our Sunday schools have seemed to swing outward and the boys and girls have gone from us, many of them never to return. We have busied ourselves to such an extent in studying the problem of the boy and the girl that the real problem--the problem of leadership--has been overlooked. The Secondary Division is the challenge of the Sunday school and of the Church today. It is during the "Teen Age" that more decisions are made _for_ Christ and _against_ him than in any other period of life. It is here that Sunday school workers have found their greatest difficulty in meeting the issue, largely because they have not understood the material with which they have to deal. We are rejoiced, however, to know that the Secondary Division is now coming to be better understood and recognized as the firing line of the Sunday school. What has been needed and is now being supplied is authoritative literature concerning this critical period. Indeed, the Sunday school literature for the Secondary Division is probably appearing more rapidly now than that for any other division of the school.