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christians in Burmab. Taking all these facts, with the present state of the world, and remembering that a hundred years ago the gospel was not preached in one of those places, they had reason to thank God and take courage. Talk of the slow progress of the gospel-they had been watching great changes in this country. A hundred years ago that General Baptist Association could not have been convened there; and if it could, the chairman would not have been the Mayor of Leicester. At that time the dissenters had figuratively to fight for existence they had to defend their right to live in that old England of theirs. The grandfathers, a hundred years ago, never dreamt of the Universities being opened to them, and never dreamt that their grandchildren would read in the papers that very day that the previous night a hundred members of the House of Commons voted in favour of relieving bishops from work in the House of Lords. They never dreamt that in these days the Jews, Roman Catholics, and above all Nonconformists, would be admitted to the House of Commons and to the mayoralty of large towns. The Test and Corporations Act existed in those days in full force, and Dissenters could not keep a school except by stealth, and the social and moral condition of the people was frightful to contemplate. Slavery existed in the British colonies, and English Dissenters had not then discovered that slavery was a sin; more than half, probably two-thirds of the people of this country could not read; there was not a Sunday school in the land-of hospitals and infirmaries there were few-and vice and crime everywhere abounded-profligacy and drunkenness prevailed even in the highest circles in the land-and religion was almost unknown in the pulpits of the Established Church. He urged them to pursue the great work in which they were engaged. They had a divine religion, let them remember that. Bible that had regenerated one heart could regenerate the world: that Spirit which could re-create one soul could

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re-create the whole race. They must be diligent in their day and generation, believing in success, and sure that nothing which God had said would fail; lifting up their hearts in prayer, in the assurance that though delayed long the answer would come at last-that the prayer taught by their Master 1800 years ago, which they had been offering up year after year since that time, and which had not been fulfilled yet, should at last be accomplished-"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

The Rev. R. CAMERON, of Toronto, a deputation from the Free-Will Baptists of America, seconded the resolution in a few words, expressing a hope that the friendly intercourse between the United States and Great Britain would continue, and his belief that the interchange of sentiment and feeling and visiting each other would tend to bind together the Anglo-Saxon race.

The resolution was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously.

The Rev. H. CRASSWELLER, of Derby, moved a vote of thanks to the Chairman, which was seconded by the Rev. W. HILL, of Barton, and carried.

A vote of thanks to the Rev. J. P. Mursell, and the deacons of the Belvoir Street church, for their kindness in granting the use of their chapel for the meeting, finished the business, and the day's proceedings were brought to a close with singing and the benediction.

MISSIONARY SERVICES.

WEST RETFORD.-On Sunday, May 22, two sermons on behalf of the Foreign Mission were preached by the Rev. J. Cookson, M.A., of Lincoln. On Monday evening the cause was again advocated by T. Cotton, Esq., chairman; Revs. G. Hester, of Sheffield; E. Dixon, Wesleyan minister, Retford; T. Mee, pastor, and W. Bradshaw, Esq. Collections and subscriptions, £9 3s. 11d.

Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by T. HILL, Esq., Baker Street, Nottingham, Treasurer; and by the Rev. J. C. PIKE and the Rev. H. WILKINSON, Secretaries, Leicester, from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books, and Cards may be obtained.

THE

GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1870.

THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE.*

FEW subjects are of greater importance at the present moment, or should engross more of the attention of Christian men than the Sunday Schools of the Future. Great as the good is which has been accomplished by our united and prolonged efforts, it is readily confessed that the best days of Sunday schools have yet to come. Our organizations need to be perfected in their several departments. Our machinery waits to be applied to all the different classes of the community. Much of the teaching power of the church remains unemployed, and what we have at work requires to be raised to a higher degree of efficiency. The link between the church and the school is still missing, or so loosely formed that it rarely unites together the various works of each with such thorough completeness as to secure the highest success. The special and exclusive occupation of the church in the Sunday school is not everywhere understood; and even where it is, the necessity for elementary education is so strong that time and pains have to be given to that which ought to be wholly devoted to the

cultivation of the spiritual life of the children.

But light breaks in upon us. We are beginning to understand our wants; and what is better, there is much hope that our hearts and hands will soon be free for our specific work. The horizon of national life is bright with promise; for I hold that the present agitation of the educational question cannot subside till we have reached a just and satisfactory conclusion. Different theories are in fierce conflict, and difficulties are sufficiently numerous to tell us the end is not yet. However it requires no prophet's eye to see what that end will be when it does come. Religion and arithmetic must be severed. Catechisms and ciphering cannot be joined together in a system of national education. Government may teach children to read, reckon, and write, as it may teach the soldier to use a rifle, and the policeman to keep to his beat, but it has no more right to instruct the young in formularies of faith than it has to endow Mormonism in the army, or Mohammedanism in the navy. In that final settlement of the mode and

*Paper read at the Sunday School Conference of the Centenary Association, June 22, 1870. VOL. LXXII.-NEW SERIES, No. 8.

conditions under which every child of the nation shall receive an elementary education, it seems certain we shall have a further application of that principle of total separation between the administration of politics and the teaching of dogmatic religion, which is gaining such emphatic approval throughout the civilized world. Eternal justice demands it, and with such energy and decision that it will avail nothing in the long run to resist.

This solution of the educational question will place the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in a new position, devolve upon the members thereof fresh responsibilities, and inaugurate a new era in the development of the practical Christian life of these realms and therefore we are bound to ask how shall we prepare ourselves to discharge our responsibilities, and by what means shall we utilize to the utmost extent the Sunday schools of the present, so that they may be ready for the needs of the future.

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The character of those needs will be determined largely by the circumstance that the work of the Sunday school will be henceforth mainly, yea, may I not say exclusively, spiritual. We shall not teach reading and writing. This will be done for us, and our valuable time will not be occupied with such preliminary service. We shall have to lead the children into a loving and trustful regard for Christ Jesus, to a felt sympathy with His spirit, and a practical acceptance of His teaching and rule, so that by Him who is the way, the truth, and the life, they may come to the Father. This will be our goal, and our only goal, and we may not rest until we reach it. We see it definitely and distinctly before us, and we must make our way towards it with all the directness, wisdom, and energy of those who feel that though their work is great, it is enjoined upon them by

Him who has promised to give liberally and upbraid not.

I. THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH.

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One of the most manifestly needed changes in the present condition of our Sunday schools is to organize within them, or within the churches to which they belong, an apparatus of means which shall more effectively lead the children to Christ, increase their attachment to His person, and perfectly develop their love for His service. It is certain this is not done now on any extensive scale. The cry is still heard, and not without reason, where are our senior scholars." The number of those who unite with the church still bears a mournfully small proportion to those that pass through our doors. The offspring of the most pious parents do not give the evidence we desire that they are taught of the Lord. We need a remedy for this; and I have long believed that it is in our hands if we have but faith and courage enough to try it. There are immense resources of power in our Sunday schools for the conversion of children, and for guiding and guarding and perfecting their spiritual life. But what we want is appropriate system. We have it for adults in the church proper, for young men in mutual improvement societies and Christian associations, for young women in Bible classes; and with reference to the cultivation of one virtue by children, we have an admirable arrangement in our Bands of Hope; and now it remains for us forthwith to complete the series by adding the Sunday School Church, where believing children may come together, be under proper superintendence, and receive appropriate teaching and aid, so that from their earliest years they may grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This "Children's Church," as we may call it in the

The Sunday Schools of the Future.

absence of a more convenient designation, would hold to the whole Sunday school relations similar to those sustained by the church ordinarily so called to the common and miscellaneous congregation, and whilst not in any way interfering with that adult community, would form, in many cases, an introduction to its society, and a training field for the duties of maturer Christian life.

Such an organization is one of the most urgent necessities of our school life, and ought to be provided immediately. Common principles of every day experience strongly commend it. No objection that we can imagine bears examination. It is vain to leave things as they are and tell us the church as it is should do it. We have been told that quite long enough. The true worker seeks out fitting tools, and owes as much to his good tools as to his tact and energy. Galileo, Newton, and Herschel, can do little for astronomical science without the telescope. Steam does not become our servant before the engine is invented. Light does not paint for us till we provide the camera and appropriate chemicals. The winds blow in vain for the ship that has lost mast, and sails, and helm. Without the printing press and Bible societies the Church of Christ would often have been at serious disadvantage in the modern crusade against paganism abroad and ignorance and vice at home. And who shall say how many thousand Phebe Bartletts and Adoniram Judsons have been lost to the church and the world because the fit and proper agency for drawing out and strengthening the spiritual nature of the young has been lacking? Appropriateness of food is one of the chief conditions of growth. Carrion for the vulture, grass for the ox, milk for the child, and strong meat for the firm-muscled man. Not 66 new-born babes," but such as are of "full age" and who "by reason

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of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil, ought to leave the "first principles of the doctrine of Christ." The piety of a child is not that of an adult. is the blossom, bright, beautiful, and fragrant; the other is the luscious and well ripened fruit. Here is the green blade of grass just breaking through the soil, there it is long and ready for the mowers' scythe. This is the simplicity and playfulness of childhood; that the severity and caution born of a long experience of the world. They dwell in different atmospheres, feel differently, hope differently, love and pray differently, and therefore of necessity require a treatment specially adapted to the conditions and aims of each. Proper placing has much to do with the growth and usefulness of men; how greatly it affects that of children it is impossible to conceive! The best seed in bad soil will not yield a good harvest, and the strongest frame will not remain for ever proof against poisoned air. Good and able men misplaced often work in vain, and a child's destiny may be predicted with a painful accuracy from a knowledge of where its lot is cast in life. Everything in its place; and surely the place for training the lambs of Christ's flock is found when they are carefully folded apart and watched over with all the delicate gentleness and spiritual sympathy their susceptible hearts need. Child culture is not the culture of manhood and womanhood, and it is certainly not wise to expect the end to be gained in each case by the adoption of the same means. Hence the separate service that has obtained favour in so many directions ought now to be extended to an arrangement by which the youngest and feeblest spiritual life shall be diligently nourished and fully prepared for all that may be expected from it by the church and the world. Working with the teachers, the pas

tor of the church, or some competent person, should gather together our pious and believing children, register their names, make each feel that a personal and individual interest is taken in them; let them have their own meetings conducted expressly for them, and give them their own work, and then the Sunday schools of the land would, in larger measure than ever yet realized, fulfil the mission assigned them by Him who has said to all who love Him, "Feed my lambs."

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Many advantages would result from wisely carrying out a plan of this kind, one or two of which we may mention. Judicious system is not life, but, as every one knows, life moves more economically and powerfully with it than without it. Civilization, notwithstanding the many defects that cling to it, is a substantial advance upon the barbarism of our ancestors. The family, which is the organized unit of society, is better than a wild and reckless individualism. Unity is strength. Method is power. Good organizations prevent collision and waste, husband resources, and promote the highest degree of efficiency. trust in them as though they were all that is needed, and leave them to work of themselves, is absurd; to depreciate them as if inherently wrong is one of the lowest depths of unwisdom; but to raise them to perfection and fill them with the fullest and richest life, is to walk worthy of God." Directness of aim, simplicity of method, and patient watching of work would be fostered in the minds of all engaged in the common tasks of the school if they were labouring in view of such an organization as we plead for. The church as it is now is too far off to act as an incentive, save as it regards those who are standing on the verge of manhood and womanhood. Bring it nearer, let it be close at hand, and its influence will be felt acting most

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healthily on every teacher. The long distance between the class and the communion table is weakness. Diminish it, and you create a new power in the school. The "little ones" who show a loving trust in Jesus and an eager desire to serve Him, will be encouraged and guided at once, and placed under genial and stimulating arrangements, and not turned out upon the world till maturer years, with no special guardianship whatever save such as may be extended to them in the two or three hours that they meet their teachers on the Sunday. The sapling will be trained from the first, and instead of becoming a withered and blanched and barren trunk, a testimony to a wasted past and an unskilful husbandman, will grow up into a fruitful tree in the garden of the Lord.

Another advantage would be the extension of the area from which the scholars of our schools are drawn. Hitherto we have only gained one class. We must have all. The church's schools, in concert with the homes, should be the religious training ground of all the children of the nation. The wealthy and the welltaught shun the Sunday school as though it retained the pauper objects and features that gave it birth. In some directions the feeling is not yet extinct that the teacher, instead of being an ally, is a Jacob supplanting the parent, and robbing him of his spiritual birthright in his child. But once let it be seen and felt that the Sunday school renders a service which the day school and the family together do not; that it stimulates devout thoughts, evokes and trains a spirit of reverent and joyful worship of God, cultivates habits of solicitude for others, and is, in fact, through its "children's church," a successful pioneer of the church proper; and then the rich and the poor, the well-taught and the ill-taught, the children of the

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