spiritually inexperienced, and therefore unfitted to instruct others. The effect on the Sunday School is also bad, as I know from sad experience. The children feel what they cannot express, the shallowness of the instruction, and an atmosphere of unreality soon pervades the whole school. The effect on the congregation is equally bad. When the leaders of the parish are not represented in its Sunday School, the congregation has no interest in it, and what is inevitable, declines to support it. "As a rule, the best instructors are mature women. But women must not be the only instructors, if we are going to hold the older boys. The present proportion, even in some of our best dioceses, of one man to four women, is not enough. True, women are easier to obtain, and usually are more spirituallyminded than men, but have they the power to create those ideals of manly Christianity which a young boy must have if he is to be saved? The condition of most of our schools answers the question only too plainly." Paid Teachers. Says Butler: "The securing of paid teachers has been advocated as a method of obtaining properly qualified instructors. The end is most desirable; the means has been tried and found wanting. At the beginning of the Sunday School revival in the eighteenth century, the first teachers were paid, but the practice was soon discarded. The world-famous School of Stockport (England), which has trained 106,000 pupils and to-day has 5,000 on its rolls, began with paid helpers; but as early as 1794, five-sixths of its teachers received no pay. In the United States, the Philadelphia Sunday School Society started in 1791 with paid teachers, but found the results unsatisfactory, and soon secured teachers who worked for love. To-day the paid teachers are mainly in Jewish synagogues, and even there such payment is the exception, not the rule." Teachers' Meetings. There are two kinds of Teachers' Meetings. The one is the old kind, nay, the present kind, to a heart-rending extent. It is on the style of pigeon-feeding. It takes a group of teachers and feeds them with already digested pap. The food is stuffed in, just as rapidly as the conductor can talk. The teachers make mental or pencil notes. They return to the School to reproduce the food fed them a few days before. The Teachers' Class lasted an hour. Their School Class lasts half-an-hour. An hour's material cannot be insufficient for a half-hour's reproductionthen, forsooth, why study for more? It is as if a Seminary Professor sought to cram the student with material for each and every sermon he might ever preach; material ready for reproduction. The other sort of Teachers' Class is general training. The Seminary fits the Seminarian for the battle of life, building up a student. He is trained how to study, how to seek his material, how to become a scholar, how to prepare each sermon in the best way. So here. Let each teacher be trained how to study and then get up each lesson at home independently, without crutches, as the Preacher gets up his weekly sermons at home. With a Subject-graded School, the old style class is an impossibility in most cases. The Clergy ask at once: "What about my Teachers' Class, then?" Why, turn it into its proper work, and take it out of its false, unnatural position. The pigeon-fed teacher will be no more "a teacher" after ten years of such a class. To the end of time each week's lesson must be supplied. Absence from class means no lesson or a poor one next Sunday. Better sacrifice the work a year, and use the class to train teachers for the balance of their usefulness. According to Fitch: "A true teacher never thinks his education complete, but is always seeking to add to his own knowledge. The moment any man ceases to be a systematic student, he ceases to be an effective teacher; he gets out of sympathy with learners; he loses sight of the process by which new truth enters into the mind; he becomes unable to understand fully the difficulties experienced by others who are receiving knowledge for the first time. It is by the act of acquiring, and by watching the process by which you yourself acquire, that you can help others to acquire. It is not intended by this that the thing thus acquired should be merely a greater store of what may be called school learning, or of what has a conscious and visible bearing on the work of the school. It is true that we can never know all that is to be known, even about the subjects which we teach in schools." QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 1. With acknowledged hindrances and limitations, due to building, equipment, etc., how can you suggest improvements for your School in (a) time and manner of meeting, (b) arrangement of building, (c) placing of classes and scholars? 2. What Departments would be feasible in your School? What names would you apply to them? Is there any significance and importance in the choice of names? Why, or why not? 3. What is the use of the Font Roll? Of the Home Department? Why do you not organize them? 4. Why is not a general "Kindergarten School" desirable? 5. Compare your Teachers' Meeting with the one suggested. CHAPTER XXVI. THE BUSINESS SIDE OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL Management: SUGGESTIONS. SUGGESTED READINGS. THE BUSINESS END OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. Hammond. THE BIBLE SCHOOL. McKinney. Boynton. Peters. HANDBOOK ON SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK. THE MODERN SUNDAY SCHOOL. Cope. Index. HOW TO CONDUCT A SUNDAY SCHOOL. Lawrence. Index. Rewards: THE ART OF TEACHING. Fitch. pp. 27-28, 124-140. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TEACHING. Fitch. pp. 109-187. *HOW TO CONDUCT A SUNDAY SCHOOL. Lawrence. Index. Officers. The chief officers for the "Business End" of the Sunday School are usually (1) Superintendent; (2) Secretary, and in large Schools, Assistant Secretaries; (3) Librarian; (4) Treasurer, in small Schools usually combined with the Secretaryship; (5) Grading Teacher. Superintendent. He is best a Layman of pronounced Business Ability. If a Minister be Superintendent, let us urge most emphatically that it be under the oversight of the Pastor and not of an Assistant. If needful in order to lighten too arduous duties, let the Assistant relieve his Superior of other labors to a larger extent. The duties of the Superintendent should be the Business oversight of every Department and Officer, down to the smallest detail. All matters of Record should be reported directly to him weekly through the head Secretary. This means that the Treasurer, Librarian, and Grading Teacher should report to the Secretary. The point is to give each person the fullest personal responsibility for the fulfilment of his own assigned duties. The Superintendent should control the school, give out notices, accept new teachers (unless it be arranged that the Grading Teacher examine all teaching applicants), appoint teachers to classes, assign Substitute Teachers, etc. The opening and closing Services should be in the hands of the Minister. Upon the Superintendent the whole order and system of the School depends. Dr. A. A. Butler in his CHURCHMAN'S MANUAL gives the same advice in such cogent language that we quote him in full: “In most parishes the Superintendent is a layman, and it is best that it should be so. If he is (as he should be), a man of mature age, brought up in the Church, he will be a loyal helper. The turning over of the Sunday School to a young clerical assistant is a mistake; unless he has received a special training for the work. He often becomes a substitute for the Rector, and helps to perpetuate the false idea that the Rector's other duties are more important than caring for the children. I know that this idea is an old deeply-rooted one; that in fact it was once an apostolic idea, but have we forgotten what the Apostles' Lord had to say about it? (St. Mark 10:13). A young deacon cannot bring to the School the experience of a parish priest of mature years, or of a godly layman of like age. Moreover, the officering of a Sunday School by ministers and women produces a bad effect upon the older boys of the School. The Rector had far better give some of his routine work to the clerical assistant and the superintendentship to an experienced layman." The Secretaries. In small schools one person often fills the place of Secretary and Treasurer. In a large School there should be Secretaries over (a) Font Roll; (b) Kindergarten Department; (c) Primary Department; (d) Each Division of the Main School and separate ones for Boys and Girls; (e) High School (f) Postgraduate School; (g) Home Departmennt. Each of these are then really Assistant or Deputy Secretaries under (h) the Head or Master Secretary, or Registrar. DUTIES OF OFFICERS. (a) DEPARTMENT SECRETARIES. (1) Record of attend |