on the part of religious papers and in the form of quarterlies and lesson papers. It enlists on the side of Bible study in the Sunday school an immense capital of brains and money. It appeals powerfully to sentiment, and secures the help of that important ally. The superintendent and teacher in every city and hamlet in the land, the parent in every home, even the child himself, feels, or may feel, the stimulus and inspiration of the fact that the prayerful thought of the Christian world is turning with him to the portion of Scripture assigned for a certain Sunday's study." *

The chief disadvantages of such uniformity are: (1) The lessons are not adapted to the pupil. The principle of adaptation applies to matter as well as to method. We have seen how the religion of early childhood differs from that of later childhood, and it again from that of adolescence. Shall we attempt to teach the same doctrines, or the same portions of the Bible, to pupils in such widely different stages of development? A little child cannot understand the messages of the prophets or the spiritual insight of John. You have doubtless experienced the difficulty of trying to teach children under eight or nine such matters as Isaiah's conception of the Messiah, the temptation of Jesus, the parable of the unjust steward, Thomas' doubt, or Paul's doctrine of justification by faith.

Such was not God's own way of teaching. The Bible contains the record of His education of the human race. Its parts are not all alike. It is a progressive revelation. He taught simple lessons to the race in its childhood, and only in the "fullness of time," when the experience of thousands of years had made men ready to understand, did He show Himself to them in the life of Jesus.

...

"The Bible, on the whole, is pedagogical in its general arrangement. . . In the Old Testament the wonder and folk stories, the creation and nature stories, come first. These appeal to the little child under six. Farther along are the law and order books, the spectacular scenes of Egypt, the Red Sea, Sinai, Marah, Nebo and the like. Then come the historical, military, patriotic, then the prophetic and reformatory, with an occasional glimpse of the utopian world in the future. That is all pedagogical. So also is the New Testament. The doctrinal part is near the close where it belongs in any proper course of study for the school." †

* "Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 128.

Haslett: "The Pedagogical Bible School," p. 55. I have hesitated to use this

(2) In the mind of the pupil, the system contains no principle of progression. He does not feel himself advancing from year to year. He knows that, however thoroughly he may study and however rapidly be promoted from class to class, he will still have set for him the same lesson as every other pupil in the school. There is no incentive in the thought. There seems to be no tangible result; he does not feel that he is getting anywhere.

This lack of progression results often in a dulled interest as the pupil approaches the lessons of later years. He enters Sunday school, let us say, at four; then by eleven he has covered about the whole Bible, in so far as the Sunday school ever gives him a chance at the whole. Just at the time of life when his interest in religion and in the Bible should be most fresh and vigorous, he begins again the round of lessons. What if the passages are somewhat different and the titles new? He is bound to feel that he is learning again something that he already knows. "One of the most real difficulties in the Sunday school," says Forbush, "is the fact that to the boy the Bible is trite. It is hard to find a boy who does not know as much about the Bible as he wants to."* College teachers of Biblical literature have to combat an inertia caused by the student's tacit assumption that he has not much to learn about the familiar old Book. The uniform Sunday school lessons may lead to a premature sophistication which deadens the interest of adolescence. The youth does not revise his childish conceptions of religious doctrines, and the man becomes a weakling or a doubter.

(3) Such a curriculum has no connection with the rest of the pupil's education. Religion is worthless if kept apart from life. Yet we educate our children as though we aimed at their separation. The public schools give religion no recognition; the Sunday school teaches the same lesson to the high school senior as to the child in the first grade. Then we try to put together by exhortation what by education we have torn asunder.

(4) The lessons fail to give a connected view of the Bible in its wholeness and in the onward sweep of its progressive revelation. The Bible is not a collection of dogmas or of proof-texts, in all its parts quotation, or to refer at all to God's method of teaching the race, because I attach little value to the "recapitulation theory" which colors so much of Haslett's thought. Our point is not that the child does, or ought to, pass through all the stages of religious life that the race has passed through, and in the same order; but simply that God Himself fitted the content of His teaching to the capacity of IIIs pupils.

"The Boy Problem," p. 110,

of equal value. Neither is it a body of writings and records, each of which carries its own moral and spiritual message independently of the rest. It is the record of a great religious experience-the religious experience of a nation taught by God Himself, yet learning slowly and with many mistakes. It culminates in the life and teachings of Jesus, in whom dwelt "all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." We fail to grasp God's revelation if we take it text for text, or incident for incident, and seek in each some spiritual truth. The parts have meaning only in light of the whole. "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ."

The International Committee has sought earnestly to realize this principle in its choice of lessons; yet in practical effect the lessons have lent themselves to a split-up mode of interpretation. There is question whether a system of uniform lessons can ever avoid this tendency, in view of the necessity of choosing passages which can convey some truth to the mind of every pupil. Certainly a graded course can more definitely compel the assumption of the historical point of view.

(5) A uniform curriculum takes no account of the critical periods in the spiritual development of the pupil. Adolescence has its special needs. The lessons should be such as to win a consecration of the life.

5. The International Graded Lessons, authorized by the Convention at Louisville in 1908, are proving to be the practical solution of the problem. Carefully prepared by teachers of long experience, they accord with the principles of teaching set forth above, and definitely fulfill the requirements which the uniform lessons failed to meet. They combine all the advantages of uniformity and cooperation between schools with none of the disadvantages of uniformity between classes.

Those who have used these lessons have found the pros and cons of this chapter so much ancient history. If your experience has been that of most schools, you will never go back to the uniform lessons. You need no discussion of the work of the various departments. It is already familiar to you; and you can find no sounder and more practical methods than those given in your teacher's text-book.

Those who have not yet used these lessons face no more serious issue than that of whether or not to take them up. A few practical suggestions may help you:

(1) You ought to know what the graded course is like. Send for a text-book of the grade you are interested in, and find out.

If you get

the first book of the year, it will be worth a great deal just for the practical suggestions it contains as to methods of teaching.

(2) Do not be afraid of the seeming complexity of a graded course. It is flexible. You may make it as elaborate as you please. Begin easily, with just one grade in each department. For that matter, you need not have departments at all if you do not wish. Simply have separate classes, each studying the course best adapted to the development of its members.

(3) Do not be afraid of physical conditions. Ideally, a graded course calls for the complete separation of departments, each having its own room and its own opening and closing services as well as its own lessons. Practically, the best you have will do; and you can handle the course even if your whole Sunday school must meet in one room, and that the auditorium of the church.

(4) Do not be afraid of the pupils-that they will not like the stricter work, or the separation into grades. The added interest of the lessons will make up for that. If you find it difficult to begin the grading, follow that of the public schools.

(5) Do not be afraid of yourself. You will no longer be able to read comments on the lesson in every paper, or to study it at a weekly meeting of all the teachers of your school. You will have to stand more squarely upon your own feet. But the teacher's text-books give definite and wise guidance for every lesson, and you, as well as the pupil, will feel the stimulus of a new interest. Moreover, you will stay within the same grade, or at least the same department; and that means that you will get a better mastery each year of both lesson material and methods. You can meet each week with the teachers of your grade in other Sunday schools, just as you used to meet with the teachers of your own school, to study the lesson and to help one another by an exchange of experience.

6. Whether your school adopts graded lessons or not, its aims and methods must be graded. You must strive, in so far as you can, to teach according to the principles of self-activity, apperception, adaptation and organization.

The fundamental aim of every Sunday school class is the same-the moral and spiritual development of the pupil. We seek to bring those we teach to a knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and to loyal, whole-hearted service in His kingdom. But this general aim can be realized only in so far as we meet the particular interests and needs of the pupil at each stage of his development. Each department of the Sunday school, therefore, will have its specific aim.

(1) The Beginners are getting their first acquaintance with God as the loving Father. The child's life in the home and the eager reaching out of his senses toward nature about him, form the apper. ceptive basis upon which we must build.

(2) The meaning which the Primary pupil gets out of the stories we tell him is determined by the new ideas he is gaining in public school and by the distinction he is coming to make between the world of fact and that of the imagination. We must seek to coordinate our teaching with that of the school, and so to present the simple truths about God, His works in nature and His dealings with men, that the child may feel them to have a place in the world of fact.

(3) The Junior apperceives the truth in light of his social instincts and his hero-worship. Our teaching must center about the moral life, as commanded in God's law and revealed in the person of Jesus and in the heroes of the faith. We seek to present the ideal of moral heroism, to deepen the sense of responsibility for the right, and to give a vision of the glory of service.

(4) The work of the Sunday school centers about the Intermediate department. It is the decision time. We shall bend all our energies, first to secure a consecration of heart and will to God's service, then to help the pupil carry out his decision in actual living and doing.*

(5) Our aim in the Senior department is (a) to meet the doubts and intellectual difficulties which are often characteristic of later adolescence; (b) to help the pupil clear up his moral and religious conceptions and formulate his beliefs; (c) to train for definite and specific service. The work of the department should be in large part elective; and the courses will include both some of a predominantly intellectual character and others more definitely practical. The normal course should begin in this department. We shall seek earnestly for the conversion of those who have not yet dedicated themselves to God.

(6) We have said nothing thus far about the men and women of the

* It is very unfortunate that the International Lessons have saddled this department with so meaningless and inappropriate a name as "Intermediate." It is not intermediate, but central; and we should do everything to make the pupil feel it to be such. The term, furthermore, has often been applied to the department below this; and this has been called the Junior. An adolescent dislikes anything that savors of childishness. He feels himself reaching out toward maturity. It would be far better to give the department a name that would convey some impression of its importance and appeal to this sense of life's expansion, The term "Secondary" would do; but it would, perhaps, be better frankly to call it the "High School" of the church.