The teachings which produce the sweetest and most beautiful things in the lives of children, and will make them the truest and best “soldiers and servants” are those given in the Sunday-Schools which are multiplying in Japan. Therefore there is no work better worth doing than that in the Sunday-Schools, and no service more valuable than that of the missionaries who teach the children of Japan.... On the Campus of the Reformed Church College, Sendai, there was held last summer a union gathering of the Sunday-Schools of the city. Some of them were Saturday Sunday-Schools, as there were not hours enough on Sunday for the Christian teachers to instruct all those who are eager to learn, and it is not unprecedented for two or three Sunday-Schools to be taught by the same persons. When the pupils in the Christian schools of Sendai came together they were one thousand seven hundred strong. An eye-witness says:-- “I wish you could have seen them! Our own four Sunday-Schools furnished one hundred and fifty of the number. It did my heart good! Do missions pay? Oh, my, no! One of our students in the training school is the direct result of the Sendai Sunday-School, and another from that Sunday-School enters next year. And to hear those one thousand seven hundred children sing! And back of that great gathering was the story of long and patient labor, days of constant effort, and nights of discouragement.”[88] [Sidenote: A Sunday-School with practical results.] With such a view of the value of the Sunday-School to Japan, it is interesting to note that in May, 1913, there were one thousand seven hundred Protestant Sunday-Schools in Japan, with an enrollment of about 100,000 pupils. If the question is asked, Do the Sunday-Schools have any effect on the lives of the children? it is a pleasure to answer with a brief extract from the personal letter of a new missionary to Japan:-- “This afternoon a lady called whose mother belongs to the nobility and has older ideals, but her father is American. She is a most earnest Christian and has done a great deal. She has access to the nobility’s children and is forming a Sunday-School, but she has many discouragements. At one village they had started a school of two hundred, and the children were showing its influence, but the schoolmaster feared just this and so managed to frighten the parents that all were withdrawn. This village was built in terraces with a long flight of stairs, down which many blind people went. The boys used to hang cords across so as to trip them. But now they have begun to take these poor people by the hand, and lead them down.” A Sunday-School that can teach such practical Christianity to mischievous boys must be a power in the community. [Sidenote: A Sunday-School Parade in Peking.]