THE SUNDAY SCHOOL A TRUE NURSERY OF THE

CHURCH.

BY ELIZABETH PORTER GOULD.

To make the Sunday-school the nursery of the church in reality, as well as in name, is the goal to which all organized efforts in that direction should tend; for, in work to this end, rightly conceived and executed, lie the best means in this age of directly perpetuating the facts and principles of Christianity to the greatest number of human beings.

The value of nursery-work grows parallel with the idea of man's innate capacity. The conception of an early guidance of the natural abilities in the right direction, by means of the loving care and wise knowledge of those who also know when and how to add the quickening power necessary to a larger development, reveals the nursery to be the very heart of mankind out of which proceed the issues of life. Friedrich Froebel knew this, and hence the secret of his power as an educator. His method of working, in its finest spiritual essence, is destined to enter even the organized Sunday-school work. The intimate and fruitful relations between an ideal nursery and its family and an ideal Sunday-school and its church are different in degree, not in kind. The principles of working are the same in both. In each, love is the keynote to the perfect harmony, and necessary freedom the stimulant to the highest work. Now the nursery, par excellence, holds over its members the joy of the privilege of belonging to, and growing up in, the bosom of family love and care.

Birthright into this nursery gives not only membership to the family, but promises a fuller, more active membership, in the course of time; and not until the birthright is sold does membership cease. In this true nursery the responsibility of being good, of becoming worthy and competent in time of sharing more intelligently the family privileges, is taught and felt from the very first consciousness of existence there. This individual responsibility, rightly conceded, gives a dignity and interest to childhood, which fact is, as yet, but imperfectly understood. It is the needed stimulant to quicken to a deeper, larger living; for it opens the shortest way to true selfknowledge and self-respect, out of which grows the capacity for selfsacrifice. This steady growing up into the work and love of the family utterly excludes, for all so favored, the idea of being formally born into it at a later date. There follows only the freedom party to

announce the conscious independence of manhood and of womanhood, proud to reassert the family name, and further the work to larger ends.

Now apply this meaning of a family nursery, par excellence, to a church Sunday-school, par excellence,-as this age is destined to see it become, and the relations of a church to its Sunday-school become enlarged. All the members of the Sunday-school become the objects of its love and care, belonging to and growing up into its privileges, enjoying them in proportion to the power of assimilating its obligations. A sincere desire to learn the facts and follow the principles of the Christ-life, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, gives birthright into the Sunday-school, and so membership to the church, with the promise of a fuller, more active membership, in the course of a larger development of all the faculties. Not until the birthright is sold does membership cease; and only the largest knowledge of a complex human nature ever justifies any judgment as to a birthright sold. This steady growing-up into the love and work of the church utterly excludes, for all so favored, the idea of being formally born into it at a later time. There follows only the great ingathering of the free sons and daughters, conscious of their freedom, who are proud to assume more intelligently the church name, and, with their growing knowledge, further its work to broader ends.

In the realization of this condition of things between a church and its Sunday-school,-and the time is surely coming when it is destined to be realized, the communion seasons will become great family feasts, where even the weakest one in the nursery will be heartily welcomed. A sincere desire to come, faint even though it be, will be the only required wedding garment. The hearty invitation of the church to its great social gatherings, as now seen in the organized sociables and occasional festivals, will become augmented by the as hearty invitation to its more sacred feasts. A sincere invitation to share all the blessings will shut the door to ignorant discriminations. Such an invitation will be limited only by man's free will, not by his intellectual theories, as such, nor even by the depth of his spiritual life. The sun, in shining for all, invites all to share its blessings. There is the fact, no matter what be the scientific speculations or even the ignorance concerning it.

Therefore, in this new realization of things, it will become as heartless and cruel to withhold from any of the members of the Sunday-school an invitation to the communion feasts of the church, because of their incapacity to a full understanding or assimilating of them, as to withhold from the children of a nursery an invitation to the periodical Thanksgivings because of their incapacity of a full

knowledge or enjoyment of them. Even the smiles of helpless infancy add a joy to such a home-feast, and fill the measure of happiness arising from a whole family reunion. Even the inability of a child's being present does not prevent an invitation for such a presence. Can a church, representing a larger home-feast, dare to do less for those under its love and protection? The very idea of exclusion is limiting and hardening in its tendencies to the sensitive soul; indeed, the natural heart, even the sin-stricken heart, is more susceptible to a large, sincere invitation than man is apt to think. Love is the great leveler. Experience teaches that the largest pa rental and broadest church love even awaken the greatest desire in the objects of their love to receive their refreshing blessings; and, as has been said, the awakened desire becomes the only necessary wedding garment. Therefore, the communion-table will be spread for all the members, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, to assimilate, to the capacity of each, the love of the Father as revealed in the life and death of the wellbeloved Son. The early and gradual familiarity with these great feasts will become to the youngest and the most inexperienced a means of interest and of growth which no later formal introduction to them could equal. The educational influence, in the subtle realm of symbols, will become to the growing minds a means of questioning to a larger knowledge, which, in other conditions, might be fraught with irreverence, doubt, or darkness. The question of the little seven-year old girl, who, having witnessed the sacramental service, on reaching home asked her mother if she could "buy the bread that had Jesus Christ in it at the bake-house," will then be an impossibility.

Then there will be awakened a greater social feeling one for another, arising from that fullness of heart which desires that all the family should share the same blessings, and that largeness of nature that makes it practicable for them to do so; and so the harmonies of that love will be sounded which will eventually unite in His name all the nations of the globe. To hasten this grand consummation the missionary spirit will become stronger, and its work more effective.

The idea which is now becoming more and more realized, that the verity of facts, and not the illusion of speculation, is the only common basis of belief on which all of all grades can stand, leads many a thoughtful, congregational form of mind to the desirability of perpetuating down the ages the form of facts, as expressed in the Apostles' creed. The acceptance as a basis of belief of this form, which has ever been dear to the heart of all Christendom, would bring all accepting it into a closer fellowship with that large distinctive

body of Christian believers found all over the world, who make it the verbal expression of their religious belief. There is a unity of letter or word which often precedes the unity of spirit. This is suggestive and inspiring.

As the knowledge and recital in unison of this creed becomes an educational necessity of the Sunday-school work, so a wise and subtle interpretation of its principles must become the teaching of the church. Thus the work of the church will take in and supplement the work of the Sunday school, while the same creed will find them. Many years of self-sacrificing labor and hard experience have been necessary to bring the Sunday-school to its present systematized condition. Its demands now equal its growth. If it bears the name of the nursery, a name so significant in this age, — it claims its privileges and desires its responsibilities. It insists upon having its full rights, the rights of the family to which it belongs. The exclusiveness of the churches in having so carefully closed their membershipdoors to many who imbibed the teachings of their Sunday-schools, butwho, either through their youth, ignorance, or mental questioning, were unable to fully assent to the vernacular of their creeds, has been a formative, strengthening power,―necessary, perhaps, to create a distinctive name and method of working,-which, now that they are organized, makes it possible for them to extend a more loving, parental hospitality to all those who are able to enroll themselves under their educational, fostering care.

The time has now come for the broader thinking, which has been slowly permeating the churches, to vitalize itself into broader action. The platforms of the nineteenth-century Christian work must be larger and more complete than those of the centuries that have preceded it. The growing years bring the fuller revelations which need a larger expression.

The highest religious economy,—and especially that which follows this century, with its practical, scientific outlook,-has ever an eye to the best union of the practical with the theoretical, and is only content while laboring for it. The prophet's eye sees that a full acceptance theoretically of this comparative relation of a Sunday. school to a true nursery,-to which, in common language, reference is so often made,-must lead directly to its practical accomplishment if the best results are to be secured. It also sees that not until this full family relation is established can the Sunday-school fulfill the highest mission which this age demands of it. The working for this is all the more imperative when the expediency of having special Sunday-school work done at all is questioned by thoughtful minds.

TEACHING HISTORY.

BY J. M. GREENWOOD, KANSAS CITY, MO.

Rationally man connects himself with the past and the future. He reads from the pages of the historian, of rulers, statesmen, warriors, philosophers, poets, and painters; he sees humanity struggling in kingdoms, empires, and republics to attain greater freedom. But onward humanity hurries, restless, impulsive, and irresistible. Governments rise and fall, all swept away by this constant stream which pours forth an ever-increasing volume,-bearing on its bosom the life and death of nations. It stays not for the wreck of empires or the birth of kingdoms.

To the student, the central figure is man, - his genesis, life, motives, actions, destiny. This is History! As sublime as the theme is, in nearly all our schools and colleges it is pronounced a dull, insipid study. Evidently there are reasons for this state of things. The causes may exist in the manner and method of presentation by the instructors, or the text used may not be well adapted to the capacity of the learners. The object of this paper is to solve, in part, these difficulties.

Education as a science, and also as an art, is founded upon a correct interpretation of the human mind,—its laws, development, mode of growth, and methods of culture. Instruction never rises above the teacher's conception of the mind and its capabilities. The nonprogressive teacher is stationary,—a paralyzed dummy! Completely hemmed in, he never attempts to pass beyond the self-imposed barriers. No terrapin was ever more carefully housed than he. On the other hand, the progressive teacher has a lofty ideal, which is ever becoming more perfect in intellectual grandeur and in the harmony of its proportions; to this he strives to take his pupils.

To secure clearness, the subject will be considered under the following sub-divisions:

I. What is the object of teaching history?

2. What should be taught?

3. How should it be taught?

I.

A distinguished author has said: "To understand a portion of the human race, is the object of history." Yes; and as that portion is developed in time and space, it is also the object of the historian.