Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-06-16
ADDRESS OF REV. A. q. STRONG.

proceedings. The address was the leading
feature of the entire session and was re-
markable throughout for simplicity, clear
ness and power. We confue ourselves to a
few extracts:
Our meeting here this evening is a sign
of the times. Half & century ago, a Sun
day School Convention would have been
impossible, because Sabbath Schools them
selves had scarcely ar existence, and the
Church had scarcely begun to believe in
the conversion Of children. How wonder
full a change has been wrought in fifty
years!
In every village of our new and growing
states, where population sometimes doubles
in a year-in the great centers of trade n
of vice SIS well, where only a few years ago
thousands of children heard no more OF
Jesus than If they lived in heathendom,
far across the sea, in manufacturing Eng
land and imperial France, and emancipated
Italy, you now find d-etachments Of this
great Sunday School army, gathering in re-
cruits and training them to fight the good
fight Of the Lord. The Sunday School is
becoming one of the great powers Of Chris
tendon, and that not because some new and
moral force has been discovered in the
world, but simply because the Church has
begun to see the needs Of the children, and
TO use q new and powerful auxiliary for
their conversion.
We are very apt to imagine that these
children are playthings to amuse Us, at the
very moment when their little minds are
like the sensitive plate of the daguerrean,
receiving indelible impressions from every
motion and word of ours-resdy to take IN
ideas Of God and love and duty-and also
as ready to imbibe our worldliness, and
sloth and insincerity, and TO reproduce in
miniature our petulsnce, pride and self
will.
Oh what an age is that TO make tender
and subdued with the thought Of Jesus
love, and to Irvine the little shooting tendrils
Of 8 will, around q Savior's cross. How
dreadful the sin to give this chi!dlike nature
that calls for bread, a stone ofhard- hearted,
unspiritual talk How awful to have q child
| expecting truth Of you and then to I'll its
| little trustful mind with the worlds gossip
or the common knowledge Of the schools
| alone, while there is a heart there forever
unsatisfed, until it knows God as a dear and
intimate communion, and has Jesus for its
Savior and friend.
Do you say that little children can not
know these high things ? All, they can learn
more really than we it takes us years and
years to travel back to thst rhildlike spirit
in which alone the things of the Kingdom
can be received and apprehended. ] do not
wonder that mothers and teachers are some
times tempted to idolize the little trusttul
creation put into their care, seeming, as 1t
does, SO much better than themselves but
it is one of the saddest things on earth for
mothers and teachers, with ell this idolitrY,
to be perpetually dragging down to earth by
their worldly and gnspiTitUal training this
soul that might be taught to plume its Sight
towards Heaven and the Holy One who
1 -TT-4L--s r. --tL -I1g- --s-l go
their trust there is q conscience, too, that
has net been beuumbed and blunte1, and
that often speaks out clearly against the
hypocriticai f~alsities amid which it is edu-
Gated. The parents may " the thought
of obligation to q crucifed Redeemer, but
the child instinctiYely recognizes it and is
troubled. There IS an easily flowing iOun-
tain of sympathy that gives tears in profu-
sion when YOU tell the unworn unTGrnish-
ed story of the cross. The childish heart
loves all without distinction, trusts even in
darkness, and hopes without bounds. It de-
lights in the subsection to the fathers
authority, and finds the service perfect free
dom. And all these natural tendencies and
suseeptibilities Of childhood are so many
natural water confess through which the
streams OF divine grace may be made tG
hOw. Growing age chokes them up with
the rubbish ofthe world, and only the labor
of years and many a sad struggle in after
life can open these channels once more. SO
that the currents of Gods life may flow
gladly and freely through them.
A character changed in these early years
is immensely more promising Of growth
and power in the world than one which has
been dragged years through the mire Of
sin and so that the good, which iz aefom-
plished in Sabbath school instruction, is
more than in other kinds of labor, prOdur-
tive Of great aud widespread results. |
do not understand the talk of some men
who imagine that a personal knowledge and
experience of the worlds evil is necessary
to the largest development of character and
the highest usefulness. What the church
wants is men whe from their youth have
had but a single aim, and who have lent
to that one aim all the youthful fire and
freshness of their natures men who have
not wasted their fine enthusiasm upon
worldly frivolities, but have consecrated
them to the cause Of Jesus men IN whom
purity has been an ever-growiIg principle,
to whom Christ has been unfolding his
glories more fully with every passing year,
and whose life-work is no half-hearted ser
vice, hampered by a still lingering love for
the world, but q single, lifelong blow for
truth and righteousness, in which every
energy and faculty Of the soul has been
gathered up. Who would think, if he de-
sired to make Of himself q great painter,
that the best way would be to shut himself
up for fifteen or twenty years to the car
penter's trade, or what great musician was
ever bred in a saw-mill?
God has bordered the path of the Sabbath
School teacher with promises, and though
this may not catch the first glance of the
eve, they are like the flowers in the woods
in early spring. You cannot search for
without finding them. And then, what
Indictment to labor there are in the blessed
fruits of that toll, ever which seems at first
most unsuccessful. The instruction that
does not Immediately lead to the conversion
of the children is not therefore in vain. II
NAV act as a-eheck upon an evil disposition
which, else, would rush on to destruction.
We are told by Prof. Tyndall that in some
valleys of Switzerland, exposed to the
snow slides Of the spring, the villagers as
ceud the mountains, that overhang their
dweIling-pleces, and literally nail the ava
lanches to the ground by driving little pegs
into the earth along the margin of the snow.
By this means they either keep the i'm
mense mss in its place until it is quietly
melted by the warm wind OF summer sun,
or else divide its pressure go that it breaks
away in harmless sections when the time Of
movement arrives. 1t is astonishing what
l AALL4E EAAlk6 ~ = VIC " AAlCoE Tux NCNNA
opment of evil, either physical or moral, if
the resistance be applied at the right time
and in the right place. A few blades of
grass even, left uncut by the mowers and
afterwards frozen into hard spikes, have
been known to prevent the launching of av-
alanehes. And just so the faithful words
of a Sunday School teacher in early child
hood have preserved many & young man
and woman from rushing headlong down
the slopes of perdition.
To teach children, we need TO be chill
dfen ourselves. Stiffness and formality
will never win them. only the Aexibility
and ready sympathy of true love can.
! believe that our Christian progress snd
the progress of the church may be measured
by our regard for the children. I believe
that with the energy OF Christian love and
the power of the Spirit OF God together, our
efforts, the very means which we now en-
plov, may be used to accomplish mighty
things for the next generation. A wonder
full future is before our Nation-a wonder
full future before our Churches wonder
full future before our Sunday Schools, if we
are only faithful to our trust. May God
qualify US for our work and give US the In
speakable happiness OF rescuing many q
Jewel from the deflements Of earth, and of
setting it washed and polished in the dia-
mem Of our Savior, to sparkle there forever
and eYsr.
INTERESTING TO SoLDKRs-PENsIoSs IN