Mexico weekly ledger., 1893-02-02
Mr.. Williams, Address.

Mr.. Williams Address.
! Mr.. Chairman and Co Workers In the Sunday
| School Cause.
l have been assigned "The Model
Superintendent" as the subject up
on which am to talk. | have OF
ten heard it said that if you want a
man who can tell you all about how
to edit and publish a newspaper,
pick out a man who has had such
an experience for three or four
weeks. He usually knows more
about it then than the veteran Horace
Greeley did of the business; or if
you want a really wise politician
select a man who was never outside
the confines of his own state or SUBJ
scribed to other than his country
crossroad paper and he can tell you
more about how New York or Califor-
mia, or even Ohio will 60 at the COM
ing election than the Chairman of
the National Committee of either of
the great political parties; and as l
have only been Superintendent of
a Sunday School since January 9Th,
1898, upon the rule just laid down
you may expect me to tell you all
about model superintendent and
what are the essential Characters
tics of this very important and re-
sponsible position. But men usu-
ally have these visionary and decept-
i've ideas before they arrive at the
age at which the poet, Pope, fixes
the limit when he graphically says,
"At thirty man suspects himself to
be a fool, knows it at forty, at fifty
resolves and re-resolves then dies the
same" Having been forty-fve
years in Sunday School 1 may ven
ture, perhaps, to say that 1 have a
vague idea of what a model superin-
tendent should be and yet l do not
remember that ever saw one. You
may be surprised that l never met a
model superintendent and yet you
will not be when l tell you that my
conception of a Sunday School su-
perintendant is transcendently high
er than that of any other parsonage
commissioned alone by man to hold
an office. The minister of the gos-
pei is made SO by being set apart by
"The laying on of hands and fast
ing and prayer" But the Sunday
School superintendent who shapes
the material, who moulds the brick
that build this spiritual temple of
which the minister is the chief
earthly architect is commissioned to
his office by the little lambs of the
flock that make the great herd of
humanity, for whoever heard of one
being superintendent whom the
children did not love. Then the
children make the superintendent
and as flowers love sunshine SO
children love a heart that is sympa-
thetic, tender and true. Then l
will say the first essential character
istic of the model superintendent is
love, love for God and love for
children. The heart that does not
or cannot sympathize with the joys,
sorrows, smiles and tears OF child
hood is not the heart of model
superintendent, the tongue that can
not truly say with the poet.
| Backward, turn backward, Oh. Time, in your
fight,
Make me a child again just for might"
The man that cannot live over and
over again the joys of happy child
hood and often wish them duplicat-
ed is not my ideal of a superin-
tendent. Then he must (though his
head be gray) have happy heart.
The man who gloomingly sings:
How tedious and tasteless the hours when
Jesus no longer see,
Sweet prospects, sweet birds and sweet flowers
have all lost their sweetness to me-
doesn't singthe song that catches the
sweet prattle of childhood and melts
into harmony the hardened heart OF
the outcast or charms the ear of the
careless, dancing girl or the Sunday
base ball boy. Oh, no wonder the He
brew captives hung their harps to the
winds on the willows of Babylon and
answered: "How can we sing
the songs of Zion in a strange
land9" No congeniality, no com
mon cause, no co-partnership. Then
he must make a common cause
of his work. He must be in partner
ship with every little chick and child
in his school and thus win them over
to his way of doing and thinking.
1t has been said that no one will
make a model superintendent who
cannot go up stairs three steps at a
time. think perhaps l have bet
ter test. 1t is one INDUCED in by the
model superintendent of Mexico,
who, at the age of sixty-fve, stood
on his head Tin proper place) over
the general results of last election.
May / say that old age or gray hairs,
or a long face, or a graveyard voice
is not an essential element Of success
in the superintendent. Pardon me
for referring to an incident In my
own home life. Some twenty-five
| years ago my dear old father and /
| were saving down the corners on
H. o.l,~ hayfpu had caasidor-