our Churches, what mighty streams of influence like those which flow from this Eden of God.

We are told in the Book of Genesis that the river that watered the Garden of Eden was "parted and became into four heads," and these four streams flowed in different directions to water and make fruitful the surrounding lands. We find in our Sunday-school work four great rivers of influence that are sure to bless the coming century: I. The stream of a simple, soul-saving creed. In an age so full of materialism, so devoted to science, so worshipful of mere success, it is a grand thing to have our children thoroughly educated to believe in the soul, in its need of pardon and regeneration, and in the abundant provisions of God for its renewal and everlasting happiness. They may or may not be able to formulate these truths as does the catechism, but they may so believe them that they shall act as a bulwark against all advances of skeptical thought. We do a great thing for the child when we make the name of Jesus "high over all," when we mark out for him the great channels into which his religious thought shall flow.

II. The stream of a host of young people trained to organized Church work. It has always been our glory to be "the Church at work," and we do a great thing when we familiarize our children with our own peculiar methods of Church work. Our unwritten practical creed is that every member should be a fellow-laborer with Christ in the salvation of souls, and that every one who has an experience ought to be able in some way to tell it to some one else. We believe that every sinner is a subject of grace, and that he ought to be and may be saved now. Around this creed have grown up our organized methods of work that give practical expression to pur beliefs. "The altar," "the experience," "the exhortation," "the class-meeting," are vital to Methodism. We are training our young people to these things, and through them we shall be able to perpetuate everywhere that which is so important to the preservation of Methodism. But while we cling to the old, we may never forget that mere methods are not divine, and that many Churches have lost their glory and power by clinging to their old forms and usages as though they were as much inspired as the fundamental doctrines. We ought to hail the coming of new methods that are effective, and welcome "Children's Hour," "Societies of Endeavor," "Christian Bands," and all forms of organized work that seek to build up the religious life and usefulness of the young. Many of these new methods of work are full of promise that by their aid we shall see even better ways of training to organized work than in the past.

III. The stream of youth trained to Bible ideas of benevolence. The Church has never had half the money it needed to carry on its grand plans. Yet "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." The habit of giving a penny a week to missions while a child will make it easy to give the larger sums when adult years are reached. We ought to make it easy and pleasant for the children to give. This is a part of our work, and with this grand stream of trained childhood it will be easy to double our charities. We may have given too little attention to this in the past, but the large sums raised in our Sunday-schools for the cause of missions show grand things for the future. The Sunday-school was but lately a child of charity, and is even now grudgingly supported by the Church, but all this will be changed when the child becomes a man.

IV. The stream of active sympathy with the cause of reform. The Bible is the greatest agitator and reformatory agent in the world. We can not study its teachings, but we are made to feel our duty to be workers for our fellow-men. Every great reform starts from the truth of God. We are coming to an age when the greatest moral and social problems will press on us for recognition and settlement. The true solution of every such problem is in the Word of God rightly understood. Many of these difficulties can only be reached by a better trained class of children. We must enforce the relations of religious obligation in a broader way than in the past. It becomes the duty of the Christian to deal more conscientiously with his own body, that God has make a temple. The question of Christian temperance is sure to be a far broader and deeper question than in the past. The obligations also of care for our neighbor are of increasing importance, and the Sunday-school has very much to do in giving right ideas and directing wise efforts for reform. Children may not understand or discuss the deep philosophy that underlies these great social and moral questions, yet they can be put into sympathy with the right. We may, for instance, most wisely organize temperance and anti-tobacco societies among the children, and soon secure a generation in sympathy with cleanliness and godliness. We may train a race of young people fa.miliar with the facts and arguments for reform, and accustomed to these methods of work.

What we need to-day, more than any thing else in the Church, is a new journal devoted to the interests of our youth; not another paper for the Sunday-school lessons, but one that shall give direction and discussion to all these important questions that pertain to the future power and success of the Sunday-school as it seeks to train up stalwart Christian men and women for the coming century of Methodism.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL.

F. B. CARROLL, D. D.

Ar the Christmas Conference, which met in Baltimore a century ago, the question was asked, "What shall we do for the rising generation?" The answer to this question is the Sunday-school of American Methodism. As we now look back upon a hundred years of our history, it is natural for us to inquire:

(1.) What treatment has the Sunday-school received from Methodism? We answer, the names of the great Methodist leaders, both in England and America, are connected with the beginning and progress of the Sundayschool. John Wesley urged his people to adopt it. John Fletcher's last work was laying the foundation of Sunday-schools in his parish. Thomas Coke, the great missionary bishop, was one of the first preachers in its behalf, and Francis Asbury, the "apostle of American Methodism," was president of the conference in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1790, when the preachers resolved "heart and soul as one man to establish Sundayschools in or near the places of public worship."

(2.) Three things would incline these great evangelists to the Sunday

school: (a.) The relation which they understood the children to hold to the Christian system. They have been redeemed by Christ, and are a part of his Church. They are the lambs of his fold, and properly belong within its visible inclosure. They are entitled to baptism, the sign of their redemption by Christ, and to careful Christian nurture. The Sunday school would feed these lambs. (b.) The high estimate they set upon a distinctively religious education. With Wesley, Coke, and Asbury, who led in the work of founding institutions of learning in England and America, education was to be essentially religious. With them nothing deserved the name of education which did not give the first place to religion. The Sunday-school would be a great aid to this. (c.) The practical philosophy of the Methodist movement, viz.: The great purpose of Jesus Christ to save the world is not subordinate to fixed forms and methods, but is free to seize upon and use new measures and methods, as the Spirit of God may direct, according to the need of the times. Out of this philosophy the great features of Methodist economy were born-field-preaching, lay-preaching, the itinerancy, the annual conference. A simple result of this philosophy was the organization of the American Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784. Methodism used both old and new things; it was not afraid of the new. It had set the old Gospel in new forms and methods, and it stood ready with strong faith and a glowing experience to welcome any means approved of God to hasten the world's conversion. Of course, such a philosophy and spirit as this would take up the Sunday-school at John Wesley and Francis Asbury, who had called laymen to their aid in the pulpit, would be quick to make room for the large, unused lay force of the Church as religious teachers of the young.

once.

(3.) From the first Methodism looked upon the Sunday-school from its own standpoint of evangelism. Every measure, new and old, was subjected to this test. So the Sunday-school. It was not a mere philanthropic agency; it was spiritual; it was evangelical. "It seems," says Wesley, "these schools will be one great means of reviving religion throughout the nation." John Fletcher saw in the Sunday-school a power to stop two great sources of national corruption, ignorance and the profanation of the Lord's day, a power which would speedily affect the whole country for good. "Let God arise," says Mr. Wesley, as he looked upon the Sunday-schools at Bolton, in which the children were being converted to God; "Let God arise and maintain his own cause out of the mouths of babes and sucklings." At the South Carolina Conference in 1790 the true missionary, evangelical idea of the Sunday-school was set forth. So from the first Methodism viewed the Sunday-school from its highest point of usefulness,. and welcomed it into its providential, practical system for evangelizing the world. Protestantism owes much to the overflow of spiritual influence and power from Methodism. Does it not owe much to the spirit of evangelism which Methodism gave to the Sunday-school movement in the early years of its history?

(4.) Furthermore, the hand of Methodism is visible upon all the great progressive measures of Sunday-school work. Francis Asbury in America and John Wesley in England were more instrumental in diffusing the system of gratuitous teaching than any other men of the times. Gratuitous teaching by teachers appointed for the purpose was the plan recommended by the South Carolina Conference above referred to in 1790. And this step

from hired to unpaid teachers was the first great advance in the spirit and method of Sunday-school work. John Fletcher had conceived the idea of a Sunday-school literature, and was about to begin work on it when death ended his labors. The Uniform and International System of Lessons we trace back to Dr. Vincent. The Sunday-school Institute was first suggested by Dr. Kidder. The names of Haygood, Cunnyngham, Carlisle, and Lyons— secretaries, authors, earnest workers-are now signs of power in the Sunday-school work. (a) Methodism, naturally, has shared largely in results. At present the Methodism of the United States and Canada-the Methodism organized into a Church a century ago, and then without one Sundayschool-numbers something more than 36,239 schools, with 2,453,331 teachers and scholars. In 1882 the two leading branches of Methodism in the United States reported 31,801 Sunday-schools, 291,900 officers and teachers, and 2,122,321 scholars. At the Methodist Ecumenical Conference, which met in London, England, in 1881, for the entire Methodism represented there were then 59,260 Sunday-schools, with 5,387,908 teachers and scholars. Great publishing houses supply these schools with instructive and wholesome literature and aids to study, and for their accommodation millions of dollars are invested in church buildings and furniture. Note among the signs of the future rapid growth of Christianity, (1) The children of these schools are willing givers to the cause of education. (2) They have become a great aid in missionary work. During this centenary year the children of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, have begun a permanent fund to be used in pushing forward Sunday-school work in needy places—a noble and beautiful idea-children carrying forward missionary work for the children. Juvenile societies organized among the Sunday-school scholars are a prominent feature of woman's missionary work. Thus the Sunday-school is co-operative with the great aggressive and benevolent agencies of the Church.

(5.) The Sunday-school has clearly set forth the Savior's idea of childhood religion. It has interpreted to the faith and heart of the Church the words of Christ: "Suffer the little children to come unto me," and "Feed my lambs." At the highest point of Sunday-school work the results are glorious. "The great majority," says Dr. Kidder, "of all ministers, missionaries, and communicants of all Protestant Churches in the world at this time are alumni of Sunday-schools." During the year 1880 more than 125,000 members were graduated from the Sunday-schools in the evangelical Churches of America. In 1882, of Sunday-school scholars in the Wesleyan Methodism of Great Britain 177,965 were over fifteen years of age, and 93,127 were members of society or on trial as members. Since 1846 over a million converts have been reported in the Sunday-schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church alone. At a fair estimate the schools of other branches of Methodism will add a million more. This is at the rate of 52,684 conversions annually for the past thirty-eight years. The conversions in our Sunday-schools more than equal the loss by death to the entire membership of Methodism. The figures show that the Sunday-school largely contains the Church of the future.

(6.) The Sunday-school is a sign and bond of Christian unity. It has powerfully concentrated the forces of Protestantism upon Christ's one great purpose to save the world. In the family the little child is the bond of unity; in it all hearts blend into one. So it is in the Church. The great,

diverse family looks into the face of childhood and feels itself one. Where will you find another such token and bond of Christian unity as millions of children studying the same lesson on the same day, and thus forming an unbroken electric circle around the open pages of God's Word? The Sunday-school thus refutes the charge of Romanism, that there is no spirit of unity underlying the various forms and names of Protestantism.

(7.) The Sunday-school has become a wall of defense to sacred Scripture. For it has brought the whole Church to the systematic study of the Bible, and the Bible understood is its own best proof. The intellect, the heart, the scholarship of the Church are now given to the elucidation of the Bible in the interest of the children, and its truth shines out with its own peculiar glory as never before. The Sunday-school is a standing proof that there is, amid the blaze of scientific light in this nineteenth century, no decay of faith and no loss of interest in the Word of God.

(8.) Glance at the ground for numerical advance. In the United States and British American provinces there are 9,146,028 teachers and scholars in the Sunday-school. The population of these countries is 53,951,175. More than one-sixth, then, of this entire population is in the Sunday-school. This is a fair showing for these countries. But the entire population of America is over one hundred million. Less than one-tenth of the population of this continent is now numbered in the Sunday-school. The vast countries of South America are almost an unknown land to this mighty agency for bringing the world to Christ; 153,000 teachers and scholars all told. In the United States, where we have 8,712,551 teachers and scholars, there are between eleven and twelve million more of suitable age to enter our Sunday-schools. Upon a wider view we find that less than one-sixth of the Protestant population of the globe is in the Sunday-school, and less than one-twentieth of the entire nominal Christian population of the world. And if we divide the entire estimated population of the globe into eightyone equal parts, then the Sunday-school of to-day is but a fraction more than one of these parts. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. The true ideal aim is to bring all this vast population to Christ. How one's heart thrills as he thinks of a system of Sunday-schools and Sunday-school lessons which shall embrace the children of the entire globe. America is now a great center of missionary operations. Chistianity is going to the East by way of the West. From Methodism, which has won its grandest results in the pulpit and Sunday-school on American soil, must go forth much of the evangelical Sunday-school work which is to be a great factor in bringing the world to Christ.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL IN ITS RELATION TO THE CENTURY OF METHODISM.

GEORGE L. CURTISS, D. D.

THE founders of Methodism in England, and the organizers of Methodism in America saw with a clearness of mental vision almost prophetic that if she would make grand triumphs for the kingdom of Christ it must be from the ranks of the poor, and from among children. Methodism was wise in looking after the children. In so doing she now cares for the adults.