The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

make up the General Council. This General Council appoints
an Executive Committee, which is the real power behind the
throne. The throne itself is now occupied by the General
Secretary, Rev. A. L. Ryan, who arrived in the Philippines in
1914 to take up the Sunday school work of the Methodist
Church. He soon proved himself so expert and effective that
the World's Sunday School Association appointed him to cover
the entire archipelago; he has enormously stimulated the Sunday
school work of the Islands ever since.
In 1915 Secretary Ryan opened in Union Theological Seminary a department of Religious Education. An extension of
this department has since been created to meet the rising
demand for home study on the part of pastors and Sunday
school workers. The course, very appropriately called "Training for Christian Leadership," covers a period of three years.
Wherever possible, missionaries or pastors organize classes,
and where this is not practicable, correspondence courses are
conducted directly by the Union Seminary faculty. Each
month the Philippine Islands Sunday School Journal publishes
the names of all who pass examinations and receive credits.
When at last graduation day comes it is as elaborate as a
university Commencement, and is heralded as far as the
religious press can reach. Secretary Ryan is a practical
psychologist.
The Philippine Islands Sunday School Journal, mentioned
in the last paragraph, is a monthly magazine which was first
issued in January, I923. Its publication was made possible
by a subsidy of:250 per month given by Honorable Teodoro
R. Yangco, Ex-Resident Commissioner at Washington, "noted
philanthropist, and grand old man of the Philippines."
For the greater part of their English literature, the Sunday
schools are dependent upon America. The lessons studied in
the Philippines are just one year behind those studied in the
United States, so that the same lesson material may be used
first in the one country and then in the other. This has saved
the Philippine Sunday schools thousands of dollars each year.
It has however delayed the coming of graded lessons to take
the place of the uniform lessons, since the change would mean