same half-hour has been expected to yield results in two entirely different fields, and naturally the actual issue has been too little result in either. The method of the jumble of the two has had a fair trial, and has failed, as one might have expected it would. We cannot find the solution of the problem in this direction.

The first step toward the solution of the problem, then, is the clear recognition of the analysis of its elements. Religion cannot be taught. There are things which can be taught, and which the church must teach. Stories about the men of the Bible can be taught in such a way as to illustrate moral and religious truths. The life of Jesus can be taught in such a way as to bring the pupil into contact with the divine power of that life. The thoughts and feelings of religious men can be taught as they have expressed themselves in the Bible. But when we turn to religion itself, the instructional function disappears and the function of inspiration takes its place.

A second step toward the solution of our problem lies in the recognition of the fact that the human mind is not made up of water-tight compartments. These two functions of which I have been speaking are totally and radically different. Different methods must be employed for the fulfillment of each, and yet one influences the other. Instruction, rightly done, yields results which inspiration may take up and

use.

From this a third step follows. It is the Church's business so to instruct that such results may be available for inspiration. It ought to do this, no matter what the subject of teaching. If the church teaches reading to a Chinese, or sanitation to a mothers' club, it ought to regard that work, so far as it is church work, as absolute failure unless it yields, not religious inspiration itself, but some result which religious inspiraation may take hold of and use.

The Sunday school is, on the whole, however, most advantageously placed in regard to this matter. Its subject of study is the Bible. Now, it is impossible to study the Bible from any point of view-lower criticism, higher criticism, literary, historical, or any other-without finding one's self at some time in the course of the study in the presence of great, inspiring, spiritual truths. The keenest, most intellectual study leads up to that, as well as the devout reading of the humblest disciple.

But now we face the heart of the problem. It is not theoretical, but practical. How shall we translate instruction into inspiration? Where is our transformer, to change the current from one potential to another? There are no means in full operation at present that are at all adequate to do it. To use the clerical term we want a good transformer.

There are, however, several means in germ which may perhaps later develop into something of real use. One is the present insistence on continuity and proportion in the Sunday school study of the Bible. It is plain to see that the future will insist more than the past has done on the larger divisions, rather than the smaller, in Bible study, on books and periods of history and groups of literature. This will reduce the tendency to make every lesson convey a separate and distinct religious teaching. Often one must work through a book or a period, the labor perhaps of a long series of lessons, before the results which religion can use become available. Then they appear naturally, and take their proper place in the structure of Biblical religion. If all the present discussion of method and curriculum will result in this, it will be a great gain.

Another element in the possible solution of the problem is the use of special seasons for - let me use the old-fashioned word - spiritual ingathering. Decision day is such a season. The occasional pastor's class during Lent, or at any other time in the year, is another. Of course there is need of wisdom in arranging and carrying out such plans. The particular advantage of their connection with the Sunday school is that thus they naturally invite a recognized relation between instruction and inspiration. In general, the pastor's place in the Sunday school has not been used to its full value. All the traditions of the pastorate, and, usually, the experience of his work, make him the person, above all others, who might be able to translate instruction into inspiration. How it may be done each pastor must work out for himself. He, at least, has a free field, and is not hampered by traditional methods.

Possibly, the opening and closing exercises of the school can, in some cases, be made to have a definite religious value. At present, it is doubtful whether they commonly have any value at all. They seem to be held because it is customary to hold them. They ought to have a value for the instruction, if for nothing else. But they can never be relied upon to supply the entire means of religious inspiration. They are too short, too much dominated by the spirit of instruction, which should rule the Sunday school lesson itself.

Can the Sunday school be so managed as to inculcate a spirit of reverence? It deals with a religious subject. There seems to be no reason why it should not be conducted as reverently as the church service. I ask in all seriousness, Can you expect a confused, undignified hubbub to yield results which religious reverence can use?

REV. J. T. MCFARLAND, D. D.

EDITOR SUNDAY SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY

The church's problem of the religious education of its people consists of two factors: First, furnishing the people with adequate instruction in the facts and principles of morality and religion; and second, giving them needed guidance in the moral and religious activities of their lives; and both of these to the end that moral and religious development may be effected and Christian character formed. Upon this problem, in both of its phases, the Church has always been engaged, and has done and is doing much.

But the Sunday school is at great disadvantage as respects the possibility of securing high efficiency on the part of its teachers, because of the short time to which its work is confined. The majority of the public school teachers never had any direct normal training; by experience in the schoolroom and by association with more experienced teachers, they have learned how to teach. But the teacher in the public school has an opportunity for practice in teaching far beyond the teacher in the Sunday school, for his work covers six hours a day for five days in the week, while the Sunday school teacher has really but about thirty minutes a week. Thirty hours against thirty minutes is a wide difference. If we will consider the literature of the Sunday school for the teaching of the current Bible lessons, we are impressed with its redundancy rather than its poverty. An excellent guidance has been provided in methods of teaching also. The Bible teacher at least has put within his easy reach the means for acquiring a knowledge of the principles of pedagogy as applied to his work. So that we may safely affirm, in spite of all imperfections and deficiencies, that the great defect of the Church does not lie in a lack of properly prepared material for religious instruction, nor chiefly in an inefficient, because untrained, teaching force.

The great defect in our whole system of religious education lies in a radical oversight or omission; namely, the failure to perceive that moral and religious education must include moral and religious action, and that it is the duty of the Church not simply to give direction to the work of instruction, but to give direction to the activities of those under its care as well. In entering, some nine months ago, upon my office as editor of the Sunday school literature of my church, I determined to do something towards strengthening the work of the Sunday school at what I consider its weakest point. That point of weakness is almost a break in the chain, so almost entirely has it been overlooked

so far as any systematic provision for the need is concerned the missing link, namely, that should connect instruction and activity in the process of education. The very thought of the necessity of this link has been almost wholly overlooked. I therefore introduced into our Sunday school Journal and Bible Student's Magazine, as a regular part of the lesson helps, a department which I call " The School of Practice." In explanation I quote from my editorial introduction of this depart

ment.

"Our purpose in 'The School of Practice' is to help the teachers in our Sunday schools to give some current guidance to the moral and religious activities of the members of their classes. It raises the question, 'In view of the truth of the lesson, what practical things ought we to do during the coming week in fulfillment of that truth?' It enables the teacher at the close of each lesson to say to the class, 'Well, now, we have learned such and such truths from the lesson to-day; now, what immediate use can we make of these truths? How can we carry them out during the week? What shall we do?' And then, having raised these questions, not to leave the whole matter indefinite, but to go forward and put the members of the class upon specific lines of moral and religious practice. The constant word should be, 'We have learned; now let us do.' For, otherwise our knowledge will condemn us.

The recognition of the fact that "That which is not expressed dies," should startle us when we consider what for the most part we are doing in our Sunday schools. We have been absorbed in the task of instruction. We have considered that we have fulfilled our mission when we have conveyed moral and religious knowledge to the children and youth of our schools. We have used the best obtainable helps for teaching and have done our utmost to rightly guide the thinking of our scholars. But we have not made any systematic attempt to guide their activities. Sabbath after Sabbath we have brought forward some of the great truths of the Bible, and we have not taken pains to inquire whether those truths have been carried out into the activities of the days lying between the Sabbaths. The result has been that thousands of our young people have become over-loaded with a surfeit of unemployed knowledge, and have acquired a habit of regarding truth indifferently as a thing to be given passive attention and forgotten. We should bring ourselves up to the recognition of this that it is not a pious thing to come together and talk about truth and duty. without any purpose or plan to obey the truth and perform the duty that may be presented to us. So far from this being pious and religious, it may be, and I think often is, impious and irreligious.

PRESIDENT WILLIAM DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D. D.

HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT

Self-criticism is one of the conditions of spiritual growth, alike in the individual and in the community. It is a law of our nature that we attain our ideals only through dissatisfaction with our present spiritual possessions. The Church, to-day, in facing the problem of the education of its people, is exercising afresh its duty of self-criticism. It has been made to feel that its work is not as thoroughly done as it ought to be, and that weakness results on various sides of its life through this failure.

There are those who occupy a peculiar position to-day by at once urging religious education and yet affecting to despise the teaching of religious truth. It is true that they mask the latter under the term of doctrine, or throw scorn upon it by the use of the epithet "dogma"; but we must face the fact that there is no teaching of religion that does not imply the inculcation of certain conceptions of God and of Christ and of the way of salvation. We are not able to live our life without

laying hold of truth. We are rational beings, and it is through the exercise of our reason that we discover at once our task, our relations, and our destiny. In our day the attempt to get people to be religious will utterly fail unless we tell them what it is to be religious; and that can only be done by winning their belief in certain great facts and their place in the history of the race and of the individual man. Over against a skepticism that sweeps away the truth of the Scriptures we present the reality of that sublime revelation which God has made through them to the whole race. Over against materialism which infests our social life and penetrates like a deadly miasma into our churches, and even paralyzes some good men in the pulpit, the Church must set the reality and glory of the spiritual. Now, to do all this implies that people must use their intellects in order to be Christian, and that other people must use a great deal more intellect in order to instruct them. As a matter of fact, we find that wherever there is a teaching ministry which knows what to teach and how to teach, there we find a solid faith among the people, and a fervent response to every true religious appeal.

This work must begin among the children. They are being taught, in many parts of the country, in the public schools that they must be "good," and there a great deal of very useful moral instruction is given, and some valuable influences by earnest teachers are exercised. But it is curious that intelligent people do not see that exactly in this way they have not only not avoided sectarian teaching, but have actually adopted