The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-05-28
Tho sabbath School WOrk-A Great
Reform Needed.

II has long since laid aside that character.
We have our Mission Schools, it is true, but
the Sabbath School, as an institution, has
come to be one of the established agencies of
the Church for the instruction of its own
children and youth. 1t has extended to all
denominations of Christians, and even to some
Jewish congregations, and has become, appa-
rently. an inseparable adjunct of church or
panization. church, at the present day,
without a Sabbath School would be deemed
an anomaly.
And yet there is very general feeling on
the part of intelligent Christian men and
women that the Sabbath School, as at present
organized and conducted, is doing but very
little compared with what it ought to do and
might be made to do. We remember hearing
that distinguished man, the late Bishop
Aonzo Potter, eminent not less as an edu-
Gator than as a divine, in a public speech
animadvert in terms of severity almost, upon
the ineffciency in many respects of the pre-
sent system of Sabbath School organization
and instruction.
In recent number of one of our leading
religious journals we find discussion of this
topic, in which the Sabbath School of the
present is described as "a gathering of an
hour, to exchange one feeble fiction for
another; to reoite few verses to Indifferent or
incompetent instructors; to hear a few plati-
tudes from the superintendent or visitors; to
sing few really brisk and childlike songs. X
An endless repetition and absolute non-move-
ment of mind or heart. X The tame
reiteration of few Scripture passages, with
out any penetration as to their force, their
relations, their origin, or their application
This may be somewhat of an exaggeration,
yet in many instances, we fear, it is faithful
portraiture. Drop into almost any Sunday
School in our city, and how many classes will
you find evidently entirely uninterested, or
but slightly so, in the lessons of the dayl-the
members listless, engaged in conversation
with each other, or in lettering about the
school-room, and displaying none of that at
tention and spirit which indicate mental or
moral interest in the employment of the hour.
How difficult do many teachers find it to secure
the regular attendance of their scholars In
how many schools is there a painful lack of
order and discipline And how general is the
disinolination of the older class of scholars to
remain in connection with the Sabbath
Schools
The article from which we have above quoted
proceeds to discuss the remedy for this state of
things, and asserts that it consists in making
the Sabbath School more of what it processes
to be, school. 1t would have our Sabbath
Schools arranged with view to long and con-
tinuous courses of study, in which the student
should progress from class to class. "Teach-
ers," it says, "should be required to 90
through as thorough course of study as
students of divinity-not necessarily before
they become teachers, but they can study
while they teach. Scholars should be put into
regular classes, and curriculum covering a
period of five or ten years should be adopted.
The highest scholarship can thus find its home
in the church school; and the children and
youth-by studies, lectures, essays of their
own, by debates, and all other forms and ap-
paratus of education-can become by simple
weekly exercise, accomplished masters of the
brOadest and grandest realm of thought"
The field of study should embrace the
whole range of Biblical science and literature
The following is given as the curriculum:-
"There is the text of the Bible; its nara
tives; its poetry its history; its precepts; its
doctrines. There is the relation of Judaism
to Christianity, and of both to all other reli-
gions. Antiquities, oriental customs, N.Y.
thology, Christian history, sacred geography,
ethics in relation to individual and national
Life, the shadows of truth in reverent heathens,
sibyls prophesying of the unseen Christ,
modern opinions for and against the creed of
Christendom, the doctrines of the Bible con-
cerning God, Christ, Man, the Future-the
range of study is of the highest and widest.
There ought to be classes in Hebrew and the
Greek Testament for those who desire to
pursue their study"
We confess that this plan strikes one at first
view as ohimerical, and as attempting what is
far beyond the range of proper or practicable
effort for Sabbath School. Yet it doubtless
contains the germ of reform, and, with proper
notifications, might be realized. AT least, we
are told that the Sunday School agent of the
Methodist Church, the Rev. Mr.. Vincent, late
of Chicago, has been appointed to inaugurate
this system of education in the schools of that
Church, and is doing so with much success
He has visited Europe and the Holy Land
solely to better fit himself for his work, has
organized Glasses in some of these branches
chiefly sacred history and geography, com