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The light in the true preacher's soul is straight from heaven; his is an immediate divine revelation to men; he is a man in whom his uttered truth is realized; he leads men to a higher world; he pleads with men. His medium is the spoken word, the intellectual expression of these spiritual things. His preaching is the mind translating the spirit into the language of reason.

My brethren in the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ, called to convey the eternal counsels of God which determine the moral destinies of men, how great is our intellectual task: to search out the unsearchable; to bring to men, through the mind, the vision of the invisible; to express, in the language of reason, the inexpressible! We need, more than aught else, ever and ever to pray the prayer of Richard Baxter of Kidderminster: "Lord, do in our own souls that which thou dost use us to do upon the souls of other men."

DISCUSSION

REV. W. A. WOOD, A. M.

PASTOR METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SPENCER, MASSACHUSETTS

The educational aim of the pastor is the inspiration of life-the highest possible ethical life. This was the aim of the Master of men. Jesus said: "I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it in abundance." Life is the main interest of the pastor in his educational aims. Life is free. To promote life, the pastor must fall in line with the trend of religious thinking in our time. marked element in that trend is the refusal to admit a purely external authority in religion anywhere, and in the assertion that authority in religion is internal, spiritual, ethical, moral, a matter of conscience, a matter of experience. We are called into the presence of the spiritual. Fundamentally, it is a contest of methods—the method of purely external authority and the method of experience. The method of external authority bases all judgment of truth upon the external marks of its origin and the trustworthiness of those who promulgated it. The method of experience puts us in immediate contact with reality, and teaches us to judge of truth only according to its intrinsic value, directly manifested to the mind in the degree of its evidence.

The experimental method destroyed the astrology and physics of ancient days, but it created a new astronomy and a new physics. Why should not the same method adopted by the pastor in his educational aims have the same fecundating and rejuvenating effect? Purely external authority is the right of the species over the individual. Self

direction is the right of the individual with regard to the species. The moral consciousness does not appear at the beginning of evolution, nor does it at any moment burst suddenly into being all luminous and perfect. "It emerges slowly and laboriously from the night of nature."

The education of mankind is the passage from faith in purely external authority to personal conviction. Here, and here only, in personal conviction, is final authority. Authority which is purely external tends to become neither reasonable nor disinterested. It ought to be a guide, but it becomes blind. Tutelage becomes tyranny. The past is continually struggling for self-perpetuation against the future which is sure to dawn. All history is a moral pedagogy, whose vitality lives in this perpetual struggle between the autonomy of the conscience and collective authority. Of this struggle are born all the problems which civilized people to-day face.

In the educational aims of the pastor the Bible is his chief instrument. For this it is admirably adapted, since it is a record of the self-expression of God in human life, a book of life, a great spiritual biology. The demonstration of the divinity of Scripture is an inward revelation taking place in the consciousness at the moment of reading and making the truth appear as the sunlight. We know that light is light by the fact that it gives us light. Scripture must be left to justify itself to the consciousness, for it has in itself the faculty of showing its truth as things white or black show their color, as things bitter or sweet show their flavor. There is nothing to oppose this appeal to experience.

The Bible will ever be the book of power, the marvelous book, the book above all others. It will ever be the light of the mind and the bread of the soul. Neither the superstition of some nor the irreligious negations of others will ever be able to do it harm. "If there is anything certain in the world, it is that the destinies of the Bible are linked with the destinies of holiness on the earth."

That which we must absolutely repudiate is an external authority. The time has come for those who have broken with authority in their inner life to break with it in their educational aims. The gospel, in its very principle, implies the abrogation of external authority, and inaugurates as a fact the religion of the spirit. The only ultimate authority is the experience of God in the human soul. Jesus taught as "One who had authority," just because in his soul and in the souls of those who heard there was that special sanction which the human conscience gives to truth, which the truth must have if it is to appear divine and take possession of us.

"If any man wills to do the will of the Father, he shall know of My teaching whether it is from God." "It is before all else the virtue, the efficacy of His Word, which gives him authority." His teaching forces itself upon souls because it takes hold of them and subjugates them as the truth itself does when it shows itself in its own luminous evidence; as holiness and love do when, mingling in one, they reveal themselves by the power of their own radiance. Every sentence of Jesus has revealing power; is a ray from heaven just because the conscience welcomes it as a light essentially its own. His words so incorporate themselves in the human conscience that it can neither forget nor repudiate them without repudiating itself.

V. SUNDAY SCHOOLS

THE ANNUAL SURVEY OF SUNDAY SCHOOL PROGRESS REV. PASCAL HARROWER,

CHAIRMAN SUNDAY SCHOOL COMMISSION DIOCESE OF NEW YORK, RECTOR CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION, WEST NEW BRIGHTON, NEW YORK

Let me ask your attention to two lines of observation:

I. THE PRESENT CONDITION.

II. THE OUTLOOK.

I. The question of education is one of critical interest. In the budget of any state or city or town, this item calls for the largest appropriation. It is based on the fact that modern life cannot build itself upon an ignorant proletariat. Increase your percentage of intelligence, and you put the larger percentage of brain and thought into your life. Depress it, and Russia with her tens of millions becomes the victim of fate.

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1. Deeper Regard for the Sunday School. The conviction is steadily deepening" that religious training is an integral part of education, that in this country the state school does not and cannot include religious training in its program." This is forcing the Sunday school" into a position of great responsibility and importance, for it is in fact," as President Nicholas Murray Butler has said, a necessary part of the machinery of our time." It may seem to some that this statement is simply a description of the estimate placed upon the Sunday school during the last twenty-five years. On the contrary, it has all the force and value of a new estimate. The most encouraging fact in the present condition is the seriousness with which men are discussing the problem of religious education as education. And to-day there exists throughout the educational world a new, and to many of us until recently an unlooked-for, respect for the Sunday school.

2. A New Literature. The effect of this new regard has been seen in the contributions to the problem of religious education of a large and rapidly growing literature. Out of a list of 375 books bearing particularly on moral education, nearly one third have been published since the beginning of this century.' And besides these there is a large bibliography dealing with other sides of the problem. The influence of this literature is placing the Sunday school upon the same high ground with 1 Griggs's Moral Education.

the university and the elementary schools. The same men are dealing with both. And the inevitable result is, that the Church finds herself in possession of an institution greatly elevated in its essential

claims.

3. Effect of This on Teacher-training. An important impetus has thus been given to the work of teacher-training. One of the difficulties in the way of raising the standard of teaching has been the indifferent value set upon the work.

It grew out of the actual conditions as they existed. There is much truth in what B. F. Jacobs said: that "God had skimmed the cream of the Church and put it into the Sunday school."

Possibly there are to-day in the United States three thousand teachertraining classes. Now, it is right here that the influence of this increasing literature is to greatly benefit the Sunday school. It is the most hopeful element in the situation. It is creating an atmosphere favorable to the teacher. It is setting a high value on his work. This value, furthermore, is set by men who bring to bear upon it the experience and association of higher education. And we cannot overestimate this fact. The Sunday school of the last generation was divorced from all other schools. It moved in its own narrow sphere. It was limited, therefore, in its range of thought. The teacher went to his class without any conception of that larger fellowship which he may have to-day. The present condition makes for the creation of higher ideals, and is a distinct help to those in the Church who are working for better standards.

4. The Sex Factor in Teaching. A recent writer has called attention to the overwhelming proportion of female teachers in our public schools. The same holds true of our Sunday schools. There can be no doubt that for certain ages woman is the natural teacher of the child. But it is equally certain that the child loses, who does not somewhere in his educational course feel the touch of the man. It is well to remember that Christianity has from the first been the religion of the world's strongest manhood. We must keep the boy of 17, through the

man of 30.

5. Lessons and Grading. There has no doubt been a distinct movement towards the enlargement of the curriculum to include subjects lying, strictly speaking, outside the Bible. This does not imply a lowered estimate of the Bible, but it does imply the higher estimate of that human life and history out of which the Bible was born, and to which it bears perpetual witness.

Certain tendencies are therefore to be observed.

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