The Sabbath-School Index: Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.Pardee, R. G. (Richard Gay)
Religion
The Sabbath-School Index: Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.
Pardee, R. G. (Richard Gay)
Sunday schools
It is a place where the churches of Christ meet with the children and
youth for the worship and service of God. It is the Church of God
caring for the children on the Sabbath day. Every song of praise, as
well as every prayer and reading and study of the Word of God,
together with every exhortation, address or sermon, should rise to a
high and holy act of simple, life-like, child-like devotion. The place
should be comfortable, attractive, light, airy and cheerful. It should
be dry and well warmed. The walls may be covered with prints, hymns,
and Scripture mottoes; or, as some of our wealthy congregations have
done, they may be frescoed beautifully with illuminated texts or
paintings representing Scripture scenes, to attract the children to
the house of God--to their _Sabbath Home_. Especial care should be
taken that the seats provided are adapted in size, height, and form,
to all ages and sizes, from the wee ones in the infant classes up to
the larger scholars and the members of the adult classes. The
three-sides-of-an-octagon form of seat is found to answer well, and is
much cheaper than the circular seats. Infant classes will need a room
by themselves, and sometimes raised seats are to be preferred. A good
blackboard and crayons, with good maps, should be furnished to every
room, together with a well-selected library, both for teachers and
scholars. Keep on file a few good Sunday-school papers and magazines.
It would be well also to have a few reference Bibles and a Bible
Dictionary. But the glory of the Sabbath-school is the open Bible, the
living Teacher, the Church Militant and aggressive. Said De Witt
Clinton: "The Sunday-school is one of the three great powers by which
the moral world is to be moved." Says the Rev. Dr. Daggett: "The
Sabbath-school is to do vastly more than all other agencies of the
Church." Said John Angell James: "In a few years we shall look upon
all the past progress of the Sunday-school but as the beginning, as a
kind of first-fruits, an earnest of the future of this great
institution of the Christian Church." Said the Rev. Dr. Campbell, of
the _British Banner_, London: "With respect to countless multitudes,
it is mainly the work of the Sunday-school teacher to carry out the
command of our Lord to preach the gospel to every creature. The
Sunday-school, for the _individual_, for the _family_, for the
_Church_, for the _nation_, and for the _world_, is one of the
principal mottoes to be inscribed on the banners of the faithful; and
many well-meant but feeble agencies on which much religious activity
is now _frittered_ away, will, we believe, at length be merged in this
grand institution. The conviction is strong in our mind that the
Sunday-school Union, as a great central source of light, life, and
power, is on the threshhold of a glorious career of usefulness, and
will speedily become, in the hands of the great Master, an agency for
good to an extent beyond all present appreciation by the Christian
Church."
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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