If we shut our eyes to these facts, they will remain; but if we frankly face them, a decade of intelligent and devoted work will effect a great transformation. The first step is obviously along the line of improved courses and methods of study. Many different courses are at present in the field. All have their merits, and to those who have developed them highest praise and credit is due. Some have been prepared to meet immediate and practical needs, but ignore the larger unities and the historical background, and in general neglect the results of modern educational and biblical knowledge. Some have been worked out in the study and have a strong academic flavor, but do not meet the needs of the average scholar or teacher. Others are models of pedagogical perfection, but lack content. Progressive Sunday-schools are trying one system after another, and meantime the note of discontent is rapidly rising. The crisis is too serious to admit of personal rivalries or prejudices. [Sidenote: _How to meet this need_] The moral of the situation is simple: that which will fully meet the needs of the present must be a combination of all that is good in existing courses, and embody what is best in the scholarship and methods of to-day. Like the most effective systems in the past, it must be wrought out in the laboratory of practical experience. It must be planned from the point of view of actual needs and conditions. It must also have a worthy and definite goal and a high ideal. It should emphasize the importance of fundamental religious instruction, as well as preaching. All that is practical and permanent in modern educational methods should be utilized. It should preserve the existing superb Sunday-school organization, and, as far as possible, the unity of the splendid system now under the direction of the International Committee. Finally, it should incorporate the positive and illuminating results of modern constructive biblical research. The task cannot be accomplished in a moment, nor by one man nor a small group of men. It is certainly important enough to command the best experience, the ripest scholarship, and the most unselfish devotion. [Sidenote: _The advent of a new era in the history of the kingdom of God_]