The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-04-05
STATE SUNDAY SCHOOLS
MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION IN
THE UNITED CHURCH.

Miss A. j. kellogg on the Need of Sunday
School Work In Our Small Towns and
VilIages-Rev. W. G. Fennell on the
Need of the Hour Church Should Live
In the Future.
The Connecticut Sunday school asso-
citation held meeting last evening in
the United church. Cullen B. Foote,
state president, was in charge of the
exercises.
The first speaker was Miss A. j. Kel-
logg of Meriden. She said that she
wished to call the attention of the au-
dlence to the hamlets which, she said,
lay just outside the cities and boroughs
and even in more remote districts. She
said further: Men who live in cities
think Of the country as being blessed
by Gods pure sunlight and the air
which the residents are privileged to
breathe, but there is another side-a
dark one. In many Of these hamlets
children are being reared without re-
ligious training.
THE social conditions that are found
in these places are alarming" The
speaker mentioned three causes-the
war, which took able bodied men from
their families and sent them back, weak
in mind and in body, to rear up chill
dren; cider drinking and immortality.
The inhabitants of the cities have no
conception of the effect that cider
drinking has upon the youth of the
hamlets. They begin by taking only
small quantity, until they become so
addicted to the habit that they could
drink a gallon.
Miss Kellogg then related her expert
ence with the cider drinkers of the
small hamlets in the state.
Rev. w. G. Fennell of Meriden was
the next speaker. He said, in part:
1--WE hardly need to be told that the
need of the hour is a marvelously great
one. The student who looks over the
forces that influence our social life real
izes this. l know that it is the fashion
to be optimistic. Now, no man has a
more optimistic mind than I have, but
we should remember that we have no
right for this optimism except upon the
line that God has laid down.
ACl ( io u iliSiily loiSC AL NAlS WA
which is abroad In the land, and we say
the church is the remedy. I know that
we are criticised for this feeling. What
are these evils that are sapping the Wit
ais of our life? 1t Is materialism, sell
fshness; men and women striving to
get the better of their fellow men. 1t
is in the altruism of Christ that we find
the remedy.
But are the churches doing all the
work they should to instill these
thoughts and these ideas? / hold we
are not. There are some men who
have awakened to the need Of the hour
| know we are having much preaching
some of it fanatical, but on the whole
the church is not going about this work
wisely.
THE remedy is the Sunday school.
wish we could call it Bible school Let
us have a Bible school. Christ laid great
stress on teaching and preaching, as
well as evangelizing 1t is In the Sun
day school that the beauties of Christs
love are unfolded. 1t is there that the
teacher touches the personality. of the
child. The Sunday school superintend-
ent and the teacher can get closer to
the child than any pastor. The Sunday
school has the only power to win the
vast hordes of the unchurched There
is continuity in the church of God,
and the way to preserve that continuity
is through the Sunday school
''The weakness of the church is that
1t lives in the present. We do not, like
men Of business and of politics, look
ahead and lay plans for the future
The exercises were closed by Presi-
dent Foote, who gave a detailed ac-
count of the work which was being car
ried on by the association, which was
celebrating the fortieth year of it's ex-
istence.