The Duty of the Church in Relation to Sunday Schools [pp. 377-393]

Duty of the Church
disfavoured quarter, was despised by Protestant Christendom
for more than two hundred years, and we have only just now
celebrated the lapse of the first half century since the intro duction of a universal system of religious education for chil dren.
And yet it has taken that half century to carry the Church
through the first process of awakening. We allude not to
the agitation of contingent questions of lawfulness and expe diency, to the suspicions and misgiving, or to the positive
opposition and denunciation, which the Sunday School sys tem encountered. For, that there prevailed during that pe riod a singular frigidity on the general subject of the moral
training of children, is shown by the absence of all effort to
furnish a substitute for the plan of Raikes, acknowledged
to be worthy of all commendation in its design, bult which, it
was pretended, could be prosecuted only by desecration, and
the accomplishment of which was, after all, essentially im practicable. But, confining our observations to the earliest fea tures of the plan itself, and to the Christian zeal which it enlist ed, we say it is surprising, that it is only since the late Jubilee
that the Church has seemed to begin to be aware of the divine
designs in this neworg,anization. Cases of-what may be called,
in reference to the efforts of teachers-accidental conversions
of children, occasionally occurred, and they were proclaimed
abroad as unprecedented wonders, and received with doubt
orI incredulity by the religious public. But when the Spirit of
God moved through a church, the Sunrday-School room presented itself in a new light to the revived Christians and the
recent converts. Instead of being looked upon as a receptacle for street-idlers; a penitentiary; or, at best, as a place
wNhere the rudimtnts of reading might be conscientiously
tasled into a child by making, the Bible his hlorn-book, it prese; ted the aspect of a gate uf heaven; and teachers felt the
appalling truth that the souls of these children were committed to them, and that there was no other way opened for their
deliverance from hell than had been opened to themselves.
They were led to a more solemn consideration of the nature
of the office itself; and it soon becomes evident to a candid
mind, that when Providence has assigned any moral field to
its culture, there is a responsibility connected with the trust
proportionate to the interest involved. They had, heretofore, been too apt to consider that it was a business of generous self-denial that they had assumed, and that the service
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