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

in relation to Sunday Schools.
was so wholly gratuitous and voluntary, that it was something
like a Roman Catholic supererogation to attend to it. But
when they found that they were, as Christian subjects, bound
to this duty as strongly as any other missionary, or minister
is to his charge, the trust was seen to be as serious as any that
could be committed to them, and that they were held by their
fidelity to their Redeemer, to bend themselves to this commission until their Mlaster should designate some other service.
Thus, at length, there has arisen a dawn of promise that
the true fundamental principle of the Sunday School institution is about to be extensively understood, and made the object of direct aim in all its provisions.
It has resulted from the recognition of this character of the
service, that the efforts of teachers to become more practical
have been directed to simplify and adapt the system of instruction. According to the ancient mode of practice (we
speak, of course, generally,) it seems to have been considered
that the injunctions of the Gospel are not intelligible by children. The precepts of morality and the ceremony of prayer
were strictly enjoined, but the duties of faith and repentance
were, tacitly, postponed to a season of more intellectual maturity. Children were practically considered as placed by
their minority under a religious disability. The mode of teaching, the phraseology in which they were alluded to, the absence of direct endeavour to bring them to God, all showed
that their training was prospective. It is true, the Church
and pious parentage provided for their religious instruction,
but it was after a manner which insured in many cases a lasting repugnance to the obligations of religion.
To how few of the present generation are the religious reminiscences of their childhood delightful! How many of us
now recur, with no agreeable associations to the Sunday penance of reading the Bible and reciting the catechism, with
the impression still vivid in the memory that the tedious intervals of the Sabbath services were to be killed by a course
of reading which it was not expected we should understand!
And yet all this waste of time and application was unnecessary, and these remembrances of the Sabbath days of childhood might be universally, as, in many instances, they are,
cherished with unmingled feelings of happiness, had parents
been alive to the fact that no book is more easily made entertaining than the Bible, or more intelligible, by familiar ex
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