|
|
|
| WHILE the press teems with the theory and practice of
| national education; while learned men descant and
| dispute on the one in substantial volumes, and school
| inspectors unfold the other in works equally large and
| heavy; while the school books and lesson books of
| different societies leave no detail unexplained, setting
| each rival system in exact distinctness before us, one
| great institution, the only education of universal
| application within reach of the poorest, would seem to
| the casual observer, ~~ the chance inquirer, to be
| without a literature. Which of our readers, desirous to
| know something of the working of Sunday Schools
| beyond his own parish or town, would know where to
| look for information? whom to apply to? how to get
| at any trustworthy facts? At first it seems as if there
| were no books, no exposition of a system to be met
| with. In his own experience he sees no community of
| practice; one school is no guide for another; nobody
| can tell him anything beyond his sphere of immediate
| observation, which, perhaps, differs so completely from
| his own, as to induce a doubt of his informant's
| discernment, till a third witness has a totally different
| history to disclose, and has arrived at quite contrary
| opinions from both. He concludes, then, that it is a
| system without organization beyond the simplest one
| of teachers and learners; each school a close
| borough, a distinct society jealously watchful of its
| independence, and resenting all alien inspection.
| Strangers may enter our National and British Schools,
| nay, are invited to witness examinations on stated
| days. The timid mistress and pupil teachers are liable
| any moment to be called
|
| upon to exercise their craft before a chance curious
| visitor; but who ventures into the Sunday School to
| stand behind the chair of the Sunday School teacher?
| Each teacher's system and doctrines may, if he
| chooses, be a secret between himself and his
| scholars. We doubt ~~ for here we speak without
| sufficient general information to be confident ~~ if the
| boldest pastor ever ventures on a tour of inspection
| round his Sunday School room, listening to the course
| of instruction as it is carried on in his absence.
| For want, then, of positive data, our inquirer’s
| discoveries in this department only teach him that the
| institution has chameleon-like qualities, and varies in
| its aspect with every fresh locality, and even in every
| school-room. And so it does, but not quite for want of
| a literature and a system, ~~ at least we, who are
| fresh from the perusal of the works at the head of our
| article, would feel it impossible to ignore efforts,
| views, and plans, set forth with such confidence of
| tone and in such lofty flights of language. A system
| has been set forth with force and precision enough,
| and with sufficiency of detail. Nor has it wanted
| readers and disciples; but the fault seems to be, that
| all that is said authoritatively flies over the heads of
| those who are expected to carry it out, and thus, we
| must suppose, fails in affording practical direction or
| guidance, and leaves the teacher virtually to his own
| discretion, such as it is. Not that we wish to raise
| alarms on this score; though it is curious to note the
| liberty, nay licence, that may exist, unsuspected, side
| by side with the most inquisitorial investigation, and in
| the very same field; to contrast the trained,
| catechised, sanctioned teacher of the week-day
| scholar, the creature of system, whose mind has been
| in the hands of an active, watchful superintendence
| for years, over whose opinions bishops and
| committees have presided and perhaps sat in
| judgment; with the substitute Sunday supplies to the
| same learner; with the Sunday School teacher whose
| qualifications have probably never been tested by the
| simplest examination beyond perhaps that for
| confirmation, who has gone through no ordeal
| whatever, who has been accepted solely on his
| application for the office, accepted and generally
| welcomed eagerly, his disinterested good-will being
| taken as guarantee for all those other requisites,
| which, probably, can never be investigated. This
| voluntary offer of service, and ready, unconditional
| acceptance, is, we believe, the ordinary mode of a
| Sunday School teacher's election in our Church; we
| suspect it to be the same with Dissenters, from
| certain casual admissions in their books; indeed, our
| own small experience points to an absolute
| indifference to qualifications or fitness, which, we trust
| is never paralleled in our own communion. It is to a
| body thus
|
| constituted that the works before us, Church or
| sectarian, are addressed, and the task imposed on
| them, whether by man or woman, Englishman,
| Scotchman, or American, is one and the same, and
| expressed uniformly in the same formula, ~~ the
| conversion of their scholars. Neither sex nor age
| mitigates the burden of the commission, or clothes it
| in less awful, overwhelming language. A girl of
| fifteen, who wishes to help little children to learn to
| be good, has her task put before her in no lighter
| colours. Then and there she must 'convert'
| those infants, and 'save their souls.'
Any
| humbler aim, any notion of doing good short of this
| supreme result, is denounced as unfitting her for the
| work. And, moreover, she is taught to consider the
| task an easy one.
| Now, of course, there is a point of view ~~
| abstracting ourselves from time and looking only at
| the ultimate end of all our labour ~~ in which it may be
| said that there is no good clone, and no happiness
| worth a thought, separate from the accomplished fact
| of salvation. But we, who cannot read the heart, must
| work step by step, and rejoice in small hourly
| conquests over evil, and aim at certain immediate
| effects, and labour to instil a true faith, and right
| principles, and good habits, without presuming to
| anticipate the end, nor to grudge our labour in
| improving the present hour, leaving results to a
| higher disposal. At first the more ambitious tone of
| these books seemed to us assumed as a stimulus to
| exertion, as though boys and girls would be excited
| to greater efforts by being put on this elevation, and
| set impossible tasks, and taught to think their small
| service one with the preacher's and missionary's work,
| in call, in authority, in responsibility, in magnitude of
| result; and we felt how sad it was that every impulse
| given to youthful devotion should be a stab at
| Christian lowliness and humility; but we are inclined,
| on further thought, to attribute this line of argument to
| a different and sincerer cause. The recognised
| authority in this branch of study is the Reverend John
| Todd, Pastor of the First Congregational Church,
| Philadelphia: to him all our writers defer, and quote
| especially from him on this subject of conversion. Our
| readers might, perhaps, wonder how his dictum
| came to have such weight, so that thoughtful
| practical men slip into his words when they approach
| this topic; but, probably, the very weaknesses of his
| style have won him a standing amongst the class to
| whom he especially addresses himself, for young
| readers of circumscribed education and ambitious
| aims are likely to be at once taken with high-sounding
| language, and attracted by what their elders would
| pronounce puerilities; and he has, moreover, the
| advantage of having formed a distinct idea on the
| subject, which he develops with considerable
| ingenuity and consistency.
|
| Every ardent zealous sectarian must acutely feel the
| want of a
| centre of unity. He is cut off by his principles and
| practice
| from a visible Church, i.e. a recognised paramount
| body with
| peculiar gifts; this delightful image is forbidden to him.
| His
| own communion is, even to himself, only one of
| several bodies,
| of exactly equal authority and religious privileges, and
| he feels it
| has been almost a chance with him in which
| denomination he
| enrolled himself: therefore, whatever latent Church
| feeling he
| may possess as a social being finds no vent there.
| But still it
| is a craving of his nature which very generally must
| have some
| relief; he must picture to himself some universal
| brotherhood
| where all band themselves together under one name,
| where all
| are united in one common society that offers salvation
| to its
| members. With many the Bible Society is their
| Church; with
| others, the Temperance cause. Mr. Todd's Church is
| the
| 'Sabbath School,' and a very complete Church he
| makes of it,
| answering in all its gifts, and members, and offices, to
| the most
| rigid definition of the fold of Christ. It is represented by
| him,
| and by the writers who follow in his steps, ~~ amongst
| whom we
| would particularise the author of a Prize Essay
| entitled 'The
| Sunday School,' issued and warmly sanctioned by the
| London
| Sunday School Union, ~~ as an institution of Divine
| origin, with
| rites of sacramental power, served by a priesthood
| set apart for
| the work of prayer and preaching, to all whose efforts
| is attached
| a supernatural efficacy, who are also empowered to
| probe the
| heart and conscience of their flock by private
| individual close
| question and scrutiny, for which purpose they are
| enjoined to
| make themselves acquainted with each member a
| domestic ties
| and private life; and who are, lastly, pastors and flock,
| blessed
| with periodical visitations of the Holy Spirit in their
| corporate
| capacity, as being all members of the privileged body.
| All
| these points are more or less elaborated, but the
| question of the
| conversion of the scholar, with the more obvious
| means to this
| end, are necessarily the most prominent.
| We are not aware of having encountered the word
| Baptism, or anything that can be interpreted into an
| allusion to that sacrament, in any of the volumes
| before us. The rite is absolutely ignored, but, with
| some points of difference, admission into the Sunday
| School unquestionably takes the place of that
| ordinance in the minds of all these writers; the main
| difference only being that, whereas unworthy
| ministers may duly administer the Sacraments of the
| Church, the minister of the Sabbath School, i.e. the
| teacher, works not so much as a channel as by his
| own conscious instrumentality. Most of our authorities
| are Dissenters. It may, not improbably, be the case in
| America, that few of the children under discussion
| have been received into
|
| Christ's Church, and we know that this is also the
| case with large bodies in England. But even in Mr.
| Collins' work (dedicated to Canon Dale), which is
| sensible and practical whenever he writes from his
| own experience, the same tone is thought necessary,
| and Mr. Todd's formula quoted. In the Church of
| England Sunday School Magazine we find the same
| phraseology. Every child admitted into the School is,
| in their sight, a heathen: we never meet with another
| contingency as far as the child is concerned, though
| we do find Mr. Todd guarding against the natural
| inference from this fact with regard to the parents, by
| saying:
But this implies what is the practice;
| while parents who keep back their children from very
| early attendance at the Sabbath School are regarded
| in a darker light than that in which we view those
| indifferent people who withhold their children from
| Baptism. Take the opinion of the Sunday School
| Union, as put forth by Mrs. Davids, on this point: ~~
|
| And again, the argument of parents teaching their own
| children is thus set down; a parent is supposed to say:
| ~~
| Again: ~~
| We cannot wonder at the earnestness of these
| invitations to
|
| this ark of safety, 'this heaven-born system'
| (as the Essay expresses it), 'the glory of our age,
| the bulwark of our faith,'
when we see the
| promises attached to it, and the wonders wrought
| there.
| When we next quote statements of actual
| conversions, and the means used for this end, we
| would wish to guard ourselves most carefully from any
| suspicion of want of faith in the efficacy of prayer in
| the lowliest servant of God, or in the grace of the Holy
| Spirit to apply those prayers to the salvation of the
| object prayed for. It is unquestionably the duty of all
| engaged in the service of others, to pray for them with
| hope and fervour, and to apply all the powers of their
| mind and soul to furthering their highest interests. But
| what we object to in the following extracts is, the
| sacramental efficacy of prayer as applied to one
| exclusive peculiar field of labour. There is no Scripture
| sanction for the following tone of promise. It is placing
| teachers ~~ a young, inexperienced, frequently ignorant
| class, in a false position, to buoy them up with
| these unfounded expectations; it is turning them off
| from their legitimate employment, which is to teach
| the children put under their
|
| care, not to pry into their minds and curiously probe
| their consciences. If this inquisitorial investigation is
| thought unsafe in the hands of experienced ministers
| of God, what must it be when the questioners are
| boys and girls who can know nothing of character or
| human nature, who are urged upon a task for which it
| is impossible they should have any aptitude, who, raw
| and untried as they are, are expected to interpret
| expression, to read hearts, to follow all the inner
| conflicts of feeling? What mischief to the scholars if
| these examples ever prompt to imitation; what far
| greater mischief to the teachers. For after all, we
| have confidence in the stolidity and impenetrability of
| English childhood, whatever American children may be.
| It is not so easy to work on an ordinary Sunday-school
| child either for good or harm. But youth is a
| more excitable age, and those young persons who
| undertake the gratuitous office of instructor, are likely
| to have minds open to impressions, and eager for
| stimulants to keep them up in a difficult and perhaps
| irksome duty. What effect must it have upon many of
| these to be told that on them devolves, instead of on
| fathers and mothers, the task of instilling into the
| infant mind the first thought of religion ~~ on them
| devolves, instead of the pastors of the church, the
| ministry of reconciliation; to hear themselves
| addressed over and over again as ambassadors of
| Christ; to be told that they are the mediums of
| conversion; that they must receive every scholar as a
| child of wrath, that they are to make it a child of
| grace. We do not profess to have much experience of
| the working of schools where this strain is enforced,
| but it hardly needs experience to know what must be
| its fruits, so far as it bears fruit at all, so long as it is
| not mere unintelligible talk read by young people
| without thought, comprehension, or intellectual
| acceptance of any kind. So far as this perversion of
| natural order works at all, its effects must be injurious.
| To ordinary minds you can hardly do a worse service
| than indoctrinate them with an undue sense of their
| importance. You cannot turn a girl of sixteen into a
| minister of the gospel, as these books try to do; but
| you can make her a very insufferable girl. You cannot
| by high sounding exhortations change a young
| apprentice into a steward having in his treasure
| things new and old; but you can, perhaps, impregnate
| his fancy with the notion that he is one, and so upset
| heart and brain, unhinge and spoil his whole nature.
| And if clergymen find a spirit of insubordination rife in
| their schools, as we know is the case sometimes, this
| is a literature which may well produce such results,
| though very far, we believe, from the writers' design,
| who, on the contrary, have to labour to give the pastor
| his right place in this anomalous system, which, in
| fact, puts him on one side altogether, and,
|
| according to their view of the subject, secures the
| eternal salvation of each child, before his work and
| influence can be once brought to bear upon it.
| But we must give our readers examples of the tone of
| exhortation common to all these publications, even the
| most practical; the universal inculcation of the principle,
| that the teacher is to accomplish a certain work, the
| greatest change that can befall an immortal soul,
| without reference to any other instrumentality or
| teaching whatever.
|
| Prayer is put forward as one main means by which
| these mighty results are to be obtained; prayer in a
| sacerdotal capacity, stimulated by a promise of
| success, peculiar to this sphere of labour, which one
| and all of these writers guarantee, on we know not what
| warrant; certainly not by the example of Apostles.
|
|
|
|
| Another instrument of conversion is close personal
| scrutiny into the heart and conscience. How this is to be
| effected by such agents as the system has at its
| command we cannot divine, nor are we ever told. The
| matter is really never contemplated as a difficulty; every
| teacher, as such, is supposed to read the hearts of his
| scholars.
|
| Mr. Inglis, a Scotchman, while pressing this point,
| excludes sentiment from his plan of searching
| investigation: ~~
|
|
| There is some truth in all this; but on what a hopeless
| pursuit does he send the young teacher, who is not to
| rest till the exact state of the soul, before God is
| ascertained. While speculating on the presumption,
| and even cruelty, of this remorseless probing into the
| hidden mind of childhood, and on the clumsy nature of
| the instruments by which it is proposed to perform the
| delicate operation, our readers will hardly be in a
| humour to believe that there is much both useful and
| practical in Mr. Inglis's book.
| Another instance of this close handling of a child's
| conscience, painful and almost ludicrous to us from
| the fallacy of the reasoning, certainly implies a very
| dangerous practice in ignorant inexperienced hands. It
| is clear that the child was not convicted from any
| natural pangs of conscience; she had not been doing
| anything naughty, but was called upon to consent to
| an abstract principle beyond her feelings and
| comprehension.
|
|
| To place a little child's love of its earthly father thus in
| opposition to heavenly love, when, in fact, it is
| endowed with the natural sentiment to train and guide
| it to higher affection, is 'surely a monstrous perversion
| of the true lesson to be drawn. The same writer
| quotes ‘a beautiful testimony'
from a
| teacher's diary to the efficacy of this inquisitorial
| system of operation: ~~
|
|
| The necessarily practical character of these manuals,
| and the actual knowledge they exhibit of the working
| of Sunday Schools as they exist, contrast strangely
| enough with these spiritual
| experiences, and produce some startling effects.
| There are deliberate plans and measurements, as it
| were, for bringing about miracles of grace. When Mr.
| Todd, through inadvertence and want of taste, in
| detailing his method in certain teachers' meetings
| 'abundantly blessed,'
gives prominence to the
| fact that the table was in the shape of a T ; when,
| again, Mrs. Davids gives her testimony to the
| refreshment of tea as affording excellent opportunities
| for dropping words in season, they are only examples
| of the material machinery employed to bring about
| great ends.
| Mr. Todd, in enforcing the advantages of a taste for
| reading, says: ~~
| The superintendent is directed to form a separate class
| of those who are anxious about their souls.
| In some sensible remarks in 'The Sunday School’ on
| the evils of noise in a school-room, we meet with the
| following picture: ~~
|
| Again: ~~
| Again: ~~
| In discouraging the habit of some teachers to gossip
| the minutes away before business begins, a solemn
| contrast is instituted between two schools, in one of
| which the strictest order prevailed in all taking their
| places at once, while, in the other, the teachers
| lingered for a few minutes in cheerful talk with one
| another.
|
| In the midst of all this management there is betrayed
| an ignorance of children's natures and capacity, absurd
| if it were not melancholy. On the question of choice of
| books, Mr. Todd announces a discovery: ~~
|
|
| After expatiating on the necessity of amusing
| children, and giving them as something to look
| forward to from Sabbath to Sabbath the prospect of a
| new book, what he first and most cordially
| recommends, are the works of Doddridge, Baxter,
| Edwards, and Richmond; and when he wishes to
| account for a child's liking to hear the same story over
| and over again, he has no wiser or better suggestion
| than that it may be pride, as there is undoubtedly
|
| Mrs. Davids, alike forgetting the Sabbath as a day of
| rest, the limited powers of attention with which
| children are endowed, and their bodily restlessness,
| would keep them all day .in the school. It makes the
| heart ache to read the following demand on their time
| on the clay which should be a happy season of
| refreshment for mind and body: ~~
|
| Any relaxation of this hold is represented as producing
| fatal results: ~~
| Amidst all these questions arises the natural difficulty
| as to the spiritual condition of the teacher who is to
| bring about such results. A good deal of space is
| given to the point how far unconverted teachers are
| admissible, on which there exists considerable
| difference of opinion; though here again we are never
| let into the test ~~ whether it be through the
| confession of the applicant, or the practised judgment
| of the superintendent ~~ by which the condition of the
| candidate's soul is so accurately arrived at. Mr. Todd
| is against their employment, which is certainly
| reasonable, considering the work assigned to them.
| He reasons,
|
|
but his fellow-countryman, Mr. Packard, has
| certain practical experiences which make him
| unwilling to lose an able instructor, and he boldly
| decides: ~~
|
| And here the precision of information attainable on
| these subjects comes out in one of those exact
| calculations for which this whole class of writers is
| distinguished : ~~
| Mrs. Davids follows on the same side with the English
| estimates: ~~
| And she treats the question as so absolutely within
| the compass of human investigation, that
| Elsewhere Mr. Packard writes in support of the less
| exclusive method: ~~
| Now, monstrous and irreverent ~~ we might say
| profane ~~ as all this sounds to our ears, there is a
| vein of truth in it all. Only view teachers as instructors,
| not preachers, and substitute
|
| the idea of edification for conversion, adopting the
| less ambitious language which will naturally follow on
| a lowering of pretension, and the whole are rational
| subjects for discussion. There is a vast deal of
| practical, useful experience in all these books, but
| being made to bear on a false theory, it only gives a
| low and material tone to the investigation, and throws
| an air of ridicule over it to all unaccustomed to the
| solemn frivolity induced by treating high and spiritual
| subjects in a narrow conventional spirit. The simplest
| truths become absurd under this handling. What must
| be the habitual attitude of thought, for example, what
| the declension of taste, of the mind which can enforce
| the advantage of early piety after this fashion? ~~
|
| or clench an argument by the following illustration? ~~
|
| And all this to force on young, ignorant, unprepared
| minds a sense of responsibility, to make them do their
| best by inspiring a notion of the magnitude of their
| work. Under this perpetual course of inflation,
| everything becomes absorbed in the one idea. The
| Sabbath School is the great regenerator; ~~ every
| other means of grace recedes from view; this fills the
| whole range of vision; it is to occupy the whole of
| every day, the whole of every life. The teacher is
| never to see the end of his work; home is to give way
| to it; church is to give way to it. All his thoughts, all his
| reading, all his prayers, are to centre in it. All his time
| ~~ week-day and Sunday ~~ is to be devoted to it.
| Not only his scholars are to be on his conscience, but
| all their parents and families, and even the neighbours
| of all in this relation. To all of these he is to be paying
| perpetual pastoral visits, and to hold their conversion
| ~~ in virtue of his office ~~ as his especial charge.
| And as with teachers so with scholars, whoever is not
| the one is to be the other, for the whole of his natural
| life. Babes are to be taken from their mother's knee to
| be converted by the Sunday-school teacher, and,
| according to Mr. Todd, it is nothing but pride which
| induces the scholar ever to desert his tuition. He
| describes villages in New England (as seems also to
| be the case in Wales) where the whole congregation
| of 600 go to school.
he says,
|
|
And he exclaims with enthusiasm,
| Regarding Sunday Schools under this monopolising
| aspect, as taking to themselves all the work and all the
| glory, it is no wonder that there is evident a lurking
| jealousy between Sunday Schools and the ministry.
| Great pains are very properly taken to remove this,
| while scarcely admitting the fact, but we do not see how
| it can be obviated. The pastor is earnestly enjoined to
| instruct the teachers and to visit the schools; the
| teachers are exhorted to defer to him. But it is clear the
| system is too strong for this order of things really to
| prevail ~~ for due recognition of the pastor's
| supremacy. Mr. Todd has indeed laboured, in his own
| person, with what he considers complete success; but
| he writes,
and again: ~~
|
| Mrs. Davids knows many schools where
and
| elsewhere she laments that in the best works on
| Sunday-schools so little is said on this subject: ~~
|
| In another place she strongly enjoins all ministers to
| send their children to the Sabbath School as scholars,
| as the only means of removing the universal reproach
| of their children being unconverted: ~~
|
| They are plainly told that preaching is their work, that
| they
|
| have not time to attend to their children, that others
| must do it for them, and that to send, them as
| teachers only makes matters worse, and nourishes
| their pride : ~~
| On the other hand, ministers have their grudge that in
| their own sphere they are not attended to, as where
| Mr. Todd has known
| The relation of pastors with the Sunday school must
| really depend on the view taken of the work to be
| done there. If it is, as Mr. Packard says, ministerial,
| only differing from the minister's office in some
| externals, when he writes,
| And again, where the teacher in. soliloquy thus
| addresses himself: ~~
| If this is the view he is to take of his office, it is
| scarcely reasonable to expect him to defer to the
| authority of another in no true sense his superior either
| in work or commission. He is placed in too responsible
| a posture, his work is too distinct, and also too
| complete, too dependent on his own individual
| exertions, for him to yield to other guidance. The
| moment a difference of opinion arises he must assert
| his own, or be faithless to the work given to him
| especially to do. The youth who imbibes these
| impressions of his duties may be respectful to his
| pastor, as one minister is to another, but he will never
| feel under him, or in any subordinate or dependent
| relation.
|
| The whole strain of argument, as regards both
| himself and his scholars, is against it, and tends to
| self-reliance. Even the manner he is called upon to
| assume is to be clerical; and from the same cause
| that makes a weighty deportment natural to the
| minister, the feeling that it is expected of him from his
| profession. He is called upon to reflect what will be his
| pupils thoughts if they see him light-hearted.
| each one is made to ask,
He is reminded
| that only on the ground of saving souls, i.e. on the
| work being ministerial in its nature, is he justified in
| devoting the day of rest to the task, and under this
| stimulus he is not to stop short of complete prostration:
| ~~
| And yet, after all this, the more practical portions of
| these works warn the teacher to be cheerful in
| manner, and not sepulchral in tone. After themselves
| indulging in a phraseology of the most ponderous
| solemnity, and not seldom inventing words where the
| English language did not furnish them weighty
| enough for the occasion ~~ after enjoining a
| 'subduedness of tone,’
an 'engagedness in
| the great work,'
enforcing the truth in its
| 'totality,'
the gospel in its 'entirety;'
| calling preparation furniture,
school meetings
| exercises,
lessons engagements,
| and so forth, with allusions to 'prayerless teachers’
| ‘impenitent adults,'
scenes of a 'felt
| solemnity,’
and the like, the young people for
| whom these books are written are told to be natural in
| manner, to beware of prosiness, as in the following
| emphatic passage: ~~
|
| Writers who can enjoin simplicity in sentences like
| these forbid a sepulchral tone! How can a poor boy,
| who acquiesces in what he reads, help being
| sepulchral? The modulations of his voice are
| probably the only 'furniture'
in his power to
| produce the immediate impression expected; and
| moreover, we believe there is a natural connexion
| between an exaggerated sense of responsibility, a
| conceited estimate of personal influence, and a
| whining, sighing, groaning religion. People speak
| under the notion that every word of theirs has a
| mission; that it has to go home to another heart and
| conscience, and the voice is so attuned as to convey
| a sense of difference between words spoken with an
| end in view, on which eternal destinies hang; and
| words that have no aim beyond the present homely
| use.
| We have dwelt longer than perhaps some of our
| readers will think the subject calls for on views so
| opposed to our own, as to what should be the
| principle of Christian education and the order of
| training Christ's little ones. But it is well to know what
| is the tone of the literature of this subject. To us, then,
| their whole treatment of it is a perversion of the
| meaning of words. A school is a simple idea. These
| writers reverse its obvious meaning while using it, and
| really mean all the while a conventicle. A Christian
| school should be for the edification
of the
| scholars in the faith; these are avowedly solely
|
for conversion into it. The representative of
| English dissenters is unwilling that children should
| ever be recognised as 'Christians,' ,
lest they
| should be made conceited by the title, which is their
| birthright. In like manner their teacher is properly a
| preacher. Nothing that he says or does is allowed to
| have a simply scholastic bearing, but all aims at
| something beyond and beside the apparent purpose.
| Perhaps this discrepancy between the apparent and
| real design may account, in some measure, for the
| undoubted failure of which now and then we meet
| with a faint admission,
If they invite people
| to do one thing and set them to do another, the
| chances are that neither the one nor the other will be
| well done; if their loftier pretensions fail, the more
| modest and reasonable are not therefore secured.
| The mind is so far like the eye that it cannot dwell on
| foreground and distance at the same time. The
| teacher has one particular, perhaps minute, thing to
| enforce; he will not succeed in impressing it if he is
| mainly occupied in the vast general question of the
| state of the learner's soul. To be sure, Mr. Packard
| says, to the contrary of this, that in giving a lesson on
| Luke i. 20, on Zacharias's office, and the course of
| Abia, the teacher in his exhortation may be the
| means of converting
a scholar; but we think
| if this is his aim in the lesson
|
| he will leave the scriptural knowledge of his class very
| much where he finds it, and that it can signify very
| little to him or them what part of Scripture he takes for
| his text. In like manner, if he is taught to consider that,
| next to preaching, his duty is to ,p> pray
for his
| scholars, that every other requisite comes far behind
| these two, the plain work of teacher is made still
| further to recede from view, and another office is
| placed before the mind. For we observe a purely
| sacerdotal character is given to this service. He is not
| taught to pray that he may teach well, and that his
| scholars may profit by his instructions, which would
| be regarded as a very derogatory limitation. The
| prayer has very little relation to his professed work
| with the scholar. He pleads for them in a higher
| capacity, with which teaching and learning has no
| necessary connexion whatever: and thus even the
| great Christian duty and privilege of prayer, with
| which all our labours should begin, continue, and end,
| is made to obscure the simple lowly work which
| Providence really puts before him.
| We shall not be misunderstood when we venture to
| offer our own opinion in opposition to these lofty, to us
| extravagant, views, that, at least with inexperienced
| youth, the lower they can rate the worth of their own
| performances, the soberer their expectations, the
| humbler their estimate even in prayer of their own
| influence, the better it will be for themselves and for
| the task they undertake. That class will be best
| attended to and best served where the teacher of
| eighteen or twenty sits down with the simple view of
| teaching the lesson for the day, its meaning and
| object, whose mind is so far circumscribed by the
| present, that his most conscious object is to make his
| children good and thoughtful while under his charge,
| to bring them that one step safely on the right way, to
| awaken their interest, to enlarge their intelligence, to
| ground and confirm them in the faith they have been
| taught, through the means of the appointed chapter,
| and collect, and catechism, and hymn, influenced by
| the constant sense of being himself under instruction,
| of only imparting what he has derived, ~~ seeking to
| fit them, in fact, to join in the services of the Church,
| and to understand and profit by what they will hear
| there from one set over them both: without one
| distinct idea of a solitary responsibility; of a work to be
| performed by himself and no other on the .souls of
| his young charge. Such an one, while he knows
| himself to be a little higher in knowledge than his
| pupils, never dreams of assuming that the distance of
| life and death exists between them, but rather
| believes that in one and all a heavenly spark has
| been breathed, which, by the divine blessing which he
| seeks, may be fanned into a flame. Not
|
| that, in advocating this humbler tone of conduct and
| expectation, we have any wish to shun the use of the
| word conversion, which can never be without a
| personal application to the youngest or the most
| advanced Christian. Every heart which feels its
| sinfulness must cry for itself as for others,
| 'Convert us, and we shall be converted.'
Who
| can feel himself beyond the reach of promises
| accorded to S. Peter, when, already called by his
| Lord? We need constant renewal, to be regenerated
| day by day; but in the way employed in these books,
| as a change from heathenism to Christianity, as a
| change once for all from a state of wrath to a state of
| grace, from alienation from God to favour with Him,
| as an instantaneous effect to be aimed at in every
| instance, and which in every instance has yet to be
| achieved, its use establishes a fundamental
| difference with all education on sound principles.
| We know that in many quarters there is a prejudice
| against the institution of Sunday Schools, which
| probably a perusal of the theoretical parts of these
| books would greatly increase. It is certain that if such
| views could be carried out, there would be an entire
| subversion of existing order. Authority would change
| hands, and youth be set above age. This is only
| according to American practice in other things. We
| recognise a fitness there in the new system; it is
| simply adapting the rules which sway secular society
| to popular religion. Age and ancient authority have
| long lost their hold on those hot impatient spirits. It is
| only following precedent that youth which takes
| absolutely its own way, and follows its own bent in all
| social matters, should assert its claim to self-government
| in the affairs of the soul, and discard as
| obsolete all antique laws of order and subordination.
| But in England, in spite of a tendency to adopt the
| same language, there are influences and prejudices
| at work even in those bodies most likely in principle to
| fall in with such ideas, which must prevent their
| gaining any effectual footing, or in any event must
| greatly modify them. We cannot but believe that even
| amongst Dissenters it is mostly mere talk, a
| phraseology which affects little the actual working of
| mind with mind. Our concern, however, is not with
| them, nor does our experience furnish us with any
| exact knowledge. We are left to conjecture and
| probabilities, which modify our fears lest these
| institutions should be working any unfavourable
| change in the national character.
| For ourselves, we can only regard the Sunday School
| as an absolute necessity which it is vain to quarrel
| with; to us it is one of those institutions which we can
| no more dispense with than we could with education
| altogether. However subject to abuse or ill influence,
| the present state of our population, the
|
| present condition of the whole country, agricultural,
| and especially manufacturing, requires it. Who can
| conceive what England would be at this time, either if
| Sunday Schools had never been established, or
| were now discontinued altogether. Can any person
| seriously imagine that, if they had not been called
| into being, the poor would, as a class, have
| systematically instructed their children at home in the
| truths of religion; that fathers and mothers in the
| class of mechanics would, amidst all the difficulties of
| their position, have taught their children some hours
| of every Sunday? Do rich people, with every
| advantage, do this generally? They, to be sure, have
| all the week to teach in if they are so minded, so that
| it may not be necessary; but is a man better qualified
| whose time all the week is engaged not in teaching,
| but earning bread for his children in mechanical
| labour, for the hard work of steady tuition on the
| Sunday? What do people suppose would be the state
| of the children of our vast town population, employed
| all the week in mills and manufactories if no public
| effort were made for their education on Sunday? It
| may, of course, be answered: 'What did they do
| before Sunday Schools were thought of?'
We
| believe they did very badly but if they were ignorant,
| so were all about them; the higher classes were used
| both to the fact and to the necessity of the poor being
| sunk in ignorance, from which only here and there
| one superior spirit could extricate itself. Would
| educated Christian men now endure to return to that
| state of things? But it would not be to the same state,
| but to one tenfold worse, if our vastly increased
| youthful population were now turned adrift, as they
| certainly would be, into the streets, to follow their
| own devices; for it is sheer utopianism to suppose
| that, as a body the hard-worked fathers and mothers
| of large families of the poorer class should spend
| their Sundays with their children within doors at
| stated tasks till the hour for public worship arrives.
| Their houses are not adapted for it, the street-door
| stands too temptingly open; and, besides, the
| Sunday dinner must be considered, which would
| more than divide the mother s attention. The family
| saunter in the fields in summer, the fireside circle on
| winter evenings are not interfered with, their
| pleasure is rather enhanced by the Sunday School;
| but there is the whole day to account for, which
| should be a day of rest, but which would be the
| hardest day of the week, if those better qualified to
| teach, and with more leisure, did not step in to relieve
| them from the charge for a certain number of hours
| each Sunday, to the equal benefit, we believe, of
| parents and children When we are oppressed by the
| importunate question ~~ the question that will
| obtrude itself, however, on every scheme undertaken
| for the good of others ~~ 'What good does it all
| do?’
| <
| when we are disposed to think that things could
| scarcely have been worse had matters been left to take
| their course, it is well to revert to such authentic
| accounts as we have of the condition of children when
| Sunday Schools were set on foot, at least in some
| parts of England, and to inquire what were the
| circumstances which induced thoughtful people to devise a
| plan of public Sunday-education. We use such
| authorities as we have at hand, who at least spoke and
| wrote from experience of what they saw. We first quote
| Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, the saint of Methodism, who
| speaks soberly enough on this subject. Somewhere
| between 1780 and 1790 he convened his parishioners,
| and urged upon them to build a Sunday School with the
| following arguments: ~~
| Hannah More, who was one of the main instruments in
| instituting Sunday Schools in country parishes,
| mentions, as one of her great inducements, keeping her
| scholars out of gaol. In writing to Wilberforce we find: ~~
|
| Next we come upon her description of 'Shaw's parish:'
| ~~
|
|
| Of another place she writes: ~~
| Her labours were viewed by the fanners of that day in a
| spirit according to these different tempers. Some had read
| about Sunday Schools in the Bristol papers, and believed
| they might be very good things for keeping the children
| from robbing their orchards. Others, on the contrary,
| objected to all innovation, and said the country had never
| prospered since religion had been brought into it by the
| abbots of Glastonbury. The clergy generally welcomed
| them, and found their congregations increase, which had,
| previously, been as low as eight in the morning, and
| twenty in the afternoon. Some of the mothers mistrusted
| their designs, and suspected them of trying to get their
| children into their power, with a view, at the end of seven
| years, of selling them into slavery. In one tour of inspection
| through a village, they found but one Bible, and that
| propped a flower-pot. But it is fair to state that, in her
| locality, every evil was exaggerated by the non-residence
| of the clergy, so that no doubt it represents the extreme of
| degradation to which the poor had fallen when these
| efforts were made to raise their temporal and spiritual
| condition. Where the clergy catechized the children of their
| flock, the state of things must have been different; but as
| far as we have opportunity of judging, the new plan was
| generally welcomed by the clergy. At any rate, we think it
| is clear that the new system interfered with nothing, upset
| nothing; that there was no existing model in successful
| operation which it would have been wise to take as an
| example. The general advance in education, in which the
| poor had a right to share, indeed indicated the need of
| some new agency, the want of which had not been felt in
| earlier times. We suspect that everywhere the evil she next
| alludes to more or less prevailed: ~~
|
|
| And this still continues to be one of the great benefits,
| we will say blessings,
conferred upon the
| nation by Sunday Schools. This leading feature of the
| system grew out of the necessity of the case. At first it
| was by no means an essential part of Sunday Schools
| that the teaching should be gratuitous, nor is it now;
| but as they became common it would be felt, on the
| one hand, much too great a strain on the master or
| mistress of the week-day school, especially where the
| attendance was large, to confine them to the same
| routine of labour on the Sunday; and, on the other,
| next to impossible to raise the needful funds for
| separate hired assistance on that day. Hence
| gratuitous help, when once thought of, must be
| eagerly caught at, and must inevitably become the
| rule. And in spite of all accidental evils, of all
| difficulties perhaps inseparable from the plan, we
| must think it a most happy necessity. The blending
| not only of rich and poor in regular friendly
| intercourse, but of every intermediate grade between;
| the general fusion which takes place every Sunday of
| the well-intentioned of all ranks; the knowledge of the
| condition and habits of the poor which is thus spread;
| the sympathy for their trials which must be thus
| awakened; the effort to equalise the difference of
| fortune which is the teacher's especial work, by
| imparting that superior knowledge which better
| education has given him to others not favoured with
| his advantages; the kindly feeling thus generated in
| the poorer classes to those above ~~ perhaps only a
| little above ~~ them, not from a sense of pecuniary
| obligation, which, by itself, does not bring people
| together, but for that service which can wound no
| man's independence, namely, care and interest and
| the highest benefits conferred, naturally, simply, and
| in the common order of events, on his children; are
| facts which cannot be denied or disregarded.
| Whether Sunday Schools have succeeded or not in
| their main design, this collateral benefit of creating
| good feeling between different classes has been
| gained. More than one great crisis has passed over
| the world, and been weathered in England, which can
| bear testimony to it. As for great good ~~ the greatest
| ~~ when erring mortals lay plans to accomplish this
| on a large scale, we do not see but they must expect
| failure; not complete failure, but failure in regard to
| the greatness of the design. Even inspired and divine
| agency, in the course of near two thousand years,
| has not been permitted to accomplish the conversion
| of the world: have we a right to be disappointed
| because Sunday Schools in eighty years have not
| altered the whole face of society, have not
| counteracted all evil influences, have not made a
| religious and church-going population? That they
| have not done this; that they have hardly, or barely,
| advanced one step towards it, must be sorrowfully
|
| admitted; but, to those who therefore quarrel
| altogether with the system, we would still maintain
| that they have done good, ~~ that religious principle,
| as well as religious knowledge, is now in a far less
| depressed state than it would have been, as far as
| we can judge, without them. Any change of habit in
| great classes is gradual; a neglected population, that
| has been broken of going to church, on whom public
| opinion on this point ceases to act, may take
| generations to be restored to the habit, ~~ to that
| unquestioning submission to church, Or, at any rate,
| meeting-house-going, as a rule ~~ making it as much
| a matter of course when the time comes as our meals
| ~~ which governs the respectable middle-classes. All
| agree that, when the call of pain, distress and
| suffering comes in later life, those minds are more
| impressible that have received instruction in youth
| than such as have been left to middle age in dense
| ignorance. Our devoted army chaplains found
| something to work upon, a foundation of knowledge
| and dormant faith in one case, which furnished at
| least a starting point for their teaching. The sacred
| language was not in such cases a dead one. And for
| our home youth, surely their state is better, less
| savage, than if all their Sundays from childhood had
| been spent in following their own devices, even
| though, when they become their own masters, there
| is the intolerable regret of seeing the vast majority of
| them cast aside their teaching and give themselves
| up to the diversions within their reach, without a
| thought beyond. Of course, to lookers-on it is easy to
| argue that, if such is the result, the fault must lie
| either in the system or those who work it. The system
| is a human system, and the teachers are full of human
| imperfection ~~ so far the cavillers have the best side
| in the argument; but till the magnitude of the evils
| they have to fight against are understood, till the bad
| influences of the week are weighed with the good
| influences of the Sunday, or, rather, those few hours
| of the Sunday which supply their main opportunity,
| the question cannot fairly be considered, and the real
| good done is certain to be underrated. This is so far
| felt to be true, that it is the lookers-on who are
| discouraged; those actively engaged in the work of
| Sunday Schools have always something to call
| success to cheer them. Some of our authorities
| endeavour to prove by statistics the value of these
| institutions. We never attach much importance to
| such statements, and these before us are some
| dozen years old, yet we will quote them for as much
| as they are worth, believing ourselves that the
| majority of our criminals have been utterly neglected
| by their parents, and allowed to grow up in ignorance:
| ~~
|
|
| Not, of course, that we follow this author in her
| conclusion. It is not because these unfortunates had
| not been to a Sunday School in their childhood, but
| because they had bad parents who set them a bad
| example or exercised no discipline over them, that
| they grew up depraved; but in fact the two hang
| upon one another; respectable parents as a rule
| (unless under peculiar circumstances) send their
| children to the Sunday School. It is commonly the
| most careless who do not keep their children at
| home, but allow them to roam abroad in pernicious
| liberty on that day.
| Amongst the advantages of a voluntary gratuitous
| system of Sunday teaching, is the Jess austere and
| rigid system- of instruction involved. Many persons,
| especially in theory, regret that the happy day of rest
| should be embittered by confinement and lesson
| learning. If we did not sincerely believe that Sunday
| Schools greatly contribute to the happiness of our
| youthful population, we should at least hesitate to
| advocate them. For a happy Sunday is the
| Christian's birthright. If the schoolboy has to go on
| Sunday to the room which has been the scene of
| every-day restraint, and to the master who has
| administered tasks and chastisement throughout the
| week, we pity him; there is no idea of holiday
| attached to the day; but repairing, as he generally
| does, to another locality, to be under a milder rule and
| new companions; with the reasonable anticipation that
| he will hear something to interest him, that his
| teacher will be glad to see him, and lay himself out to
| make instruction easy and pleasant; when he finds a
| total change from week-clay associations, fresh and
| cheerful faces around him, and something new to
| observe; then the going, the coming, the agreeable
| stir, the comparatively short sifting, the variety of
| occupation, the
|
| singing, will all contribute to the pleasure of the day.
| Indeed, where Sunday School is a bugbear, as it is
| to some unruly spirits, we think it will be found
| generally that the service at church, with the
| necessary steadiness and quiet, to which school is
| the introduction, is the real difficulty. Children and
| young people are never the happier for being
| aimless, for having no-one
| to lead them. No-one can
| desire for them an idle day; no person acquainted
| with boys can expect them to devote themselves for
| long together to serious or religious study. They must
| have someone to help
| them, and this is the teacher's office. It should only
| be in very extreme cases that any severity of
| punishment should be inflicted on the Sunday-school
| scholar, ~~ that anything should be done to him
| which should deprive him and others of the holiday,
| almost voluntary, idea of the scene. Indeed in our
| large towns it has almost compulsorily this character;
| for if a boy does not like one school he can generally
| move to another. His parents would rarely interfere
| with positive authority. Attachment to his teacher, or
| to some favourite companion, is generally the only
| potent tie, ~~ and that it is so, and that our schools
| are yet so well filled, is, we think, an answer to the
| charge of cruel confinement on the day of rest.
| To take a lower view, for which we ought perhaps to
| apologise, ~~ the act of donning his best clothes the
| first thing in the morning and making a respectable
| appearance among his fellows, is to most boys a real
| pleasure. This is incompatible with his roving
| propensities, if he has them, and may go far to
| counteract them. We are convinced that the feeling of
| looking his best, contributes greatly to that cheerful
| bright look which belongs as such to the Sunday-school
| scholar, and separates him from the skulking
| shabby truant from school and church, who makes off
| to some favourite forbidden haunt with averted eye
| and dogged look. And if this is so with boys, who
| have something to overcome, who have a love of
| adventure and no antipathy to dirt, and who are
| exposed to temptation and ridicule from wild
| companions, ~~ what an clement of pleasure, not
| necessarily connected with vanity, is the toilet of the
| Sunday-school girl. We do not know a more cheerful
| sight, or one more pleasant in its way, than the
| collecting of a girls' school on a fine Sunday morning,
| ~~ we would say, especially in the manufacturing
| districts, where the monotonous yet noisy labour of
| the week adds a peculiar zest to the serene smiling
| variety of the Sunday gathering.
| The choice of colouring in towns is generally quieter
| than in the rural districts; the general eye is in better
| training; there is not often anything particularly flaring
| or gaudy to offend
|
| either our taste or our principles. We cannot but be
| impressed by the care, thought, and judgment which
| must have been at work in many a humble home to
| turn out such a number of children, trim, clean, and
| neat, and often with a certain finish, which, though
| some may shake their heads over, yet as a sign at
| once of cultivated taste and parental fondness, we
| would not be hard upon. The children in these
| districts, after the age of eleven, work hard; they earn
| their own living, ~~ it is quite fair that their
| appearance should be creditable. But there is no
| doubt that the Sunday School often secures them this
| privilege from the mother, who might be slatternly and
| indifferent about .her child, unless there was some
| stated constant occasion in which she would be
| brought into direct comparison with others. Conscious
| then of tidiness, cleanliness, and propriety, the school
| gathering is a meeting of friends in a state to enjoy
| each other's society; a look of sprightliness and
| alacrity pervades the assembly. Teachers greet and
| are greeted with a kindly smile. Then follow tasks,
| well or ill said, as the case may be, ~~ for anything
| like compulsion is out of the question, ~~ it is a matter
| that must rest with the conscience of the child, her
| regard for her teacher's wishes, or her appreciation of
| the small rewards or privations decreed by the rules
| of the school. Severity, rigidity of any kind are
| scarcely practicable, unless in some extreme case of
| contumacy.
| The aspect we are giving to the subject may be
| considered secular; but there is no doubt that its
| merely social features are important. The Sunday
| School has a great influence in directing the channel
| of youthful feeling, and' forming the habits of our
| population, apart, we may say, from its direct
| religious working. For instance, we suspect that
| contact in the Sunday School forms more friendships
| than mere neighbourhood. The attachment that
| studious thoughtful children form for their Sunday
| School is remarkable. It is often the home of their
| most poetical thoughts; they are comparatively
| removed while there from vulgar influences; the
| romance of their nature comes out in it. In hard times
| it is often a motive to resignation and content. It is
| something to look forward to at the end of every
| cheerless week. We have known young women give
| up the thought of change, and struggle on through a
| period of short time, and even total want of work,
| because they would not leave their Sunday School.
| The friendships formed, fed, and matured there
| amongst the girls, always most amenable to such
| influences, really often supply the place of what is
| called a tenderer passion; and if touched with a tinge
| of ridicule to lookers-on, may yet prove of most
| substantial service in preserving young women at the
| most trying
|
| age from a vulgar desire for admiration. The fact of
| grown-up scholars regularly attending a well-ordered
| school, may be taken to mean that they have no
| intention or wish to settle early ~~ that they do not want
| ‘followers.’
In fact, as Sunday is the only day
| at liberty for cultivating attachments, they really cut
| themselves noff from such affairs; their engagements at
| school and the services at church leave them very little
| time; and as their attendance at school is absolutely
| voluntary, it would cease naturally so soon as a more
| absorbing interest found it inconvenient. But apart from
| these closer ties arising from some real or fancied
| congeniality, and because a special friend is felt a sort
| of necessity with some minds: in the drudgery of
| married life how often does the woman look back to her
| Sunday-school, her teacher, and her companions in
| class as the bright happy part of her life. Of course, in
| the retrospect, the religious atmosphere gives a certain
| sanctity to the time.
| But we are forced to detach and separate the two ideas,
| for if the religious teaching had indeed sunk deep she
| would not have fallen into the neglect of ordinances we
| perhaps now find her in. Those who pass from
| childhood to youth in the same school, never forget the
| time; rather those Sundays, those weekly meetings,
| schoolfellows, teachers, superintendent, pastor, are
| engraven on the heart and memory, are looked back
| upon after years of separation, ~~ call the emigrant’s
| thoughts homeward with a pang, ~~ are talked of on
| death-beds. The opportunities for thought, for peaceful
| companionship, or warm friendship, the occasional
| moments of confidence with the teacher, whose station,
| or age, or sympathizing manner, or gift in imparting
| religious instruction, or all combined, excite feelings of
| affectionate reverence; the delightful sensation ~~ to
| intelligent minds cut off from intellectual occupation in
| their mechanical labour and too often at home ~~ of
| acquiring knowledge, the high tone of subject, all
| combine to excite strong feelings in the higher order of
| minds; nor are lower incentives wanting where these
| have no power; the stolen gossip, the mutual scrutiny,
| the movement; the sights, sounds, novelties,
| inseparable from numbers, all make up an agreeable
| change to most children, either from their week-day
| work, or even from their home, whatever its pleasures,
| with the cuffing, scolding, nursing of babies, and
| general disorder, which are not often separated from a
| large family confined in a small space.
| The scene altogether fits in so exactly with the existing
| state of things, with the wants of a population brought
| together, in a manner created, by the great mercantile
| spirit of our age,
|
| that as we look on we acquiesce in it as in any fact of
| nature, though not without experience of its incidental
| drawbacks. The Sunday School must be, while things
| are as they now stand; the question with each one
| concerned must be how to make the best of it, and to
| make it fulfil its legitimate work.
| We have hitherto dwelt on the scholars in their
| peculiar Sunday aspect; we now turn to the other
| necessity of a school, the teacher, who has to adapt
| himself to this holiday attitude of mind and feeling, and
| who is often equally served and benefited by the
| institution. The main staff of teachers in every Sunday
| School, especially in the boys' department, are young
| ~~ youths and young men before they have settled in
| life, and who have been led more by a desire to be
| useful than by any especial fitness or unusual
| clearness and accuracy of knowledge to become
| such. The clergyman is obliged to accept and to be
| glad of this aid; and he may do so safely, while he
| holds his legitimate place and influence. Teaching at
| a certain period of life is the best mode of learning.
| People thus become aware of the cloudiness of their
| apprehension of that sort of knowledge which it is
| supposed everybody knows, which civility always
| takes for granted, but which, in spite of the universal
| assumption, is often held in such a fog of uncertainty,
| that every member of a large company would tremble
| to be put through an examination upon it. We are
| afraid that the general knowledge of Scripture is of
| this character. It is proper to assume that every
| person of decent English education is acquainted with
| his Bible, but what average of these have any
| distinctness or clearness of historical knowledge; how
| many dare to come to close quarters on questions of
| either fact or doctrine which have needed comparison
| and research. Many a youth who offers himself as a
| teacher has not, and only by the process of teaching
| has, learned his deficiency, and set about repairing it;
| for every honest mind will at least do his best to know
| accurately what it is his business to teach, and thus
| he benefits as much as his scholars. He learns, and
| learns with a purpose; the faculties both of headland
| heart are stimulated; and if knowledge so recently
| acquired has not the precision which is necessary in
| the ordinary schoolmaster, there may be the
| equivalent of greater freshness and interest; the
| lesson is not given in so perfunctory a fashion; the
| Sunday teacher and scholar, though not all students
| together, are at least a little more on a par. This of
| course applies only to the senior classes. But this
| state of things, it is scarcely necessary to say, implies
| a head. These youths are not the persons to feel their
| scholars a charge in which ,reg orig=no one> no-one
| else shares. They must never forget their
| subordinate capacity; they should be under constant
| guidance
|
| and direction, and only so far as the clergyman
| maintains this predominant relation with the teachers,
| and his active present authority recognised by the
| whole school, is the Sunday School what it ought to
| be.
| Young people engaged in a good work have the
| temptation to become conceited, and to lose their
| simplicity. They should be defended from the danger
| by being held in due subordination. Where this is
| wanting, and where due surveillance is not
| maintained, we know that this evil and other worse
| ones have often crept in, the school becomes a little
| society of its own, distinguished by a pert pretentious
| manner. Under the screen of the school's common
| interest, the young people of both sexes meet on
| unrestrained familiar terms, habits of flirtation arise,
| not as in the gay freedom of ordinary life, but with a
| certain sanctimonious tinge and flavour, which runs
| the risk of turning mere youthful folly into hypocrisy.
| On this ground, and alive to the propensities of youth
| in this matter of flirtation, prone to break out under all
| disguises, we cannot enter into the proposals of some
| of the works before us to teach boys and girls in the
| game room, though we own that with us the objection
| to the plan lies much more with teachers than
| scholars. Not one of these books, in their most
| practical parts, recognises, even by implication, the
| danger of bringing young people together in close
| intercouse in the seasons called amongst them
| revivals. Mrs Davids, indeed, enjoins that teacher and
| scholar shall be always of the same sex, but beyond
| this the religious excitement seems to be supposed a
| preservative from all other. With these plans,
| however, we have no direct concern, nor from pur
| own experience should we feel any warning on the
| subject necessary; but hints now and then have
| reached us of another state of things, and we suppose
| it to be where local circumstances deprive the clergy
| of their desired influence.
| The predominance of youthful teachers has made us
| dwell on their needs and services first; but there are
| never wanting, in the fully developed school, teachers
| of older standing, and the more there are of such,
| other things being equal, the better organized will the
| school be. In the girls' department there will generally
| be found some teachers of mature age : the
| clergyman's wife, if her home avocations permit,
| presides either as superintendent or head teacher; and
| most parishes furnish some maiden ladies able and
| willing to give their services. Experience shows the
| great advantage of the persons of best station in the
| parish working in the Sunday School Not only is their
| education better, but rank (we use the word only
| comparatively) tells, and we think always will
|
|
|
|
|
| all these by that mysterious bond of eating and
| drinking together ~~ a tie, a link of union, and
| fellowship, and soul too, ~~ the strength of which can
| scarcely be over-estimated, which, however
| dependent on our lower instincts, influences all
| classes, all occasions, all natures, and which is
| recognised from one end of Scripture to the other.
| Indeed, it may be said of all fetes given to the poor,
| that those take a very inferior and superficial view,
| who, because beef and pudding or tea and cake are
| with themselves very ordinary things, full of vulgar
| associations, despise others for looking forward to
| them, and back upon them, in a different spirit; and
| suppose that the good conferred by these means
| upon them is merely an indulgence of appetite. We
| can sympathise much more with the grave
| benevolence to be met with in every parish, which will
| exert itself in earnest, as in an important matter
| needing their best thought and judgment, to collect for
| and prepare these good things to the best advantage.
| Indeed, it is a day to bring out a great many qualities
| and talents which lie hid in the common routine of life,
| and to reverse some of our estimates of capacity. It is
| wonderful how many persons come out in a new and
| bright light in them. Some emergency, a shower of
| rain, or other disaster incident to these festivities,
| elicits sparks of genius in unexpected quarters, and
| shows who are to be relied on ~~ revealing presence
| of mind and ready wit in one, in another untiring good
| humour, in a third some especial power over children's
| attention. The pastor, thrown by necessity into a
| scene not much in accordance with his taste or
| education, may make it a day of profit and interest to
| himself, by using it as a study of character. It is,
| amongst other reasons, because a general holiday
| always furnishes this opportunity, that we have dwelt
| on it so long, and treated what some think a trifle, an
| irksome duty only to be forgotten when past, as an
| important engine to bind different classes together,
| used and spent as it may be.
| But while dwelling on the accidental features of the
| system, we may seem to be passing over its main
| purpose, and its every-day practical use and working.
| We have not thought it necessary to enter into plans
| of teaching, for, after all, these are not affected by the
| day; i. e. a person who can convey knowledge
| successfully on the week-day will use the same
| method on the Sunday.
| The works before us ~~ especially 'Collins's
| Teachers' Companion,' and 'Inglis's Sabbath School,'
| ~~ contain much good sense on the best way of
| gaining attention and imparting information; persons
| cannot be actively engaged in a work, whatever their
| theories, without arriving at much valuable practical
| truth. We have, however, purposely confined
| ourselves to these theories, as we have wished our
| readers ~~ especially our clerical readers ~~ to know
| what views are entertained by the popular
|
| writers on the subject, to prove to them that it is
| necessary to keep the headship in their own hands
| if they would have the children under their charge
| educated in Church principles. Under this condition
| we cannot see or imagine any other system better
| suited to the times, or 80 well adapted to bring
| numbers under his own instruction at once.
| Sunday-school teaching must necessarily be on
| fundamentals, for the teachers, as a class, are not
| equal to more: they are teaching themselves in
| teaching their scholars; but we think the pastor,
| when opportunities are afforded of forming a good
| Sunday-school will find large numbers of children,
| such as our great parishes, furnish, in better
| training from his influence than could be brought
| about by any other means. He can thus, at stated
| periods or for any particular lesson, bring under his
| eye, in an attitude of attention as many children as
| he wishes, and so make his teaching tell on the whole
| of his parish in a way no other agency can. This
| advantage will be particularly felt when it is
| necessary for him to classify his youthful flock: for
| instance, when he has to prepare them for
| confirmation, he has an admirable machinery, and
| a body of candidates ready to his hand, with
| examples amongst the elder scholars of some
| whom the rite has led to regular and devout
| attendance at Holy Communion. This momentous
| season which Dissenters evidently seek to supply
| by their periodical school revivals, should be, and
| we believe is, a very important time in every
| well-conducted Sunday-school. Though comparatively
| few may be of age for the rite, an impression of a
| solemnity at hand pervades the school; a general,
| interest is excited; the subject occupies the
| children's minds, is talked of at home, and awakens
| thought there; the startling ignorance of Church
| discipline and practice which prevails in many a
| Lay locality receives a little light Let
| anyone use the subject of
| confirmation, as a test both of Church feeing and
| general religious intelligence, in districts with and
| without a Church Sunday-school, and he will at
| once perceive its effect on the popular
| apprehension, and, by comparison, realize some of
| its benefits.
| Perhaps this appeal to comparison of the state of
| thing with and without a Sunday-school, the superior
| civilisation, humanity, and intelligence where they
| prevail, the rudeness and barbarism in the populous
| districts where they are still wanting is now, and may
| be for some time longer, one main argument of their
| good service on any large and comprehensive scale.
| But we are convinced no-one
| can have been long engaged either in the
| teacher's office or pastoral superintendence, without
| having personal experience of their value in a far
| deeper and more important sense.