The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1911-08-04
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
The Importance Of Keeping the Young
Girl In Sunday School and Way
to Accomplish This.

In all the Sunday schools Of which l
have been member there has been
tendency on the part of the girls be-
tween the ages of IA and IS years, to
quit the Sunday school or to attend very
irregularly; their childhood's love for,
and interest in the Sunday school be-
gins to wane and We soon see them no
more in their accustomed places.
This is a matter for serious consider
alton. Too much stress cannot be
placed upon its Importance, and so little
consideration is given to it. The argu-
ment is advanced that the girls will,
and do attend better than the boys, and
the effort must be put forth in behalf |
of the boys, when it is fact that there |
are as many, and sometimes r.ore
boys than girls of that age who attend
the school. That great sin of indiffer-
ence begins to assert itself just here in
the girl as well as the boy, and if some
thing is not done to keep up their inter-
est and keep them as regular members,
we lose them entirely, or at least for
several years. And these years they
lose are their best years, for then their
minds are better prepared to study,
learn and apply the truths in the Bible
stories they have been told in the pri-
mary class and studied for themselvs,
through the junior and intermediate
classes. They have new meaning to
them.
AS the Bible is our textbook in the
great school of life, and the Sunday
school our only school where the Bible
is made the special study, We should
keep our girls there at the age when
they are better able than they have
ever been to understand what they
study, and, too, at a time when they
are more easily impressed and the i'm
pressions are most lasting. The rules
of life are embodied in that textbook
and from it they study and learn how
to deal with their fellow man, working
it out by the Golden Rule, and the way
to be happy, by the suggestions given
in the Beatitudes, and to use the Ten
Commandments and the last and great
est commandment, as an outline or
guide to follow in the formation of
that character which is necessary to be
fit subjects of that kingdom of right
living, for which we pray daily, may
come.
1t is always said that girls are more
easily influenced than boys, but if they
are they cannot be influenced by the
Sunday school unless brought under its
influence by regular attendance.
Aside from the good the girl derive:
} from the Sunday school, we need her t.
"come with US, for she will do u,
. good" for the Sunday school is largel,
: dependent upon the women for it,
, teachers, very few men acting in tina
r capacity. And teacher who has stud
led the Billie in the Sunday school
from her youth up, is much better pre-
pared to teach others than one VIII
! only remembers the Bible stories an,
truths she learned in childhood.
The greatest and most imrortan
reason, though, lies in the fact this ag
is the turning point in the girls life.
is then the decisive step is taken fo
the right or wrong. She is either in
fiuenced by her worldly friend
and associates or her thoughts are di
rected to the higher things of life, an
being in the Sunday school. she is mad
to think on these things at leas
once a week. A comment on our mex
r Sunday school lesson gives US food fo
g thought along this line. 1t is as fol
lows: The best time to save man
II while he is boy, for it is both easie
h and vastly more important t.
= correct the latter end of it. Betwee
= those marvellous years from Is to i
the great majority of boys either b
h come deeply religious or they plunl
g rapidly into immortality and crime
!. These years are their most importar
n ones. They give set, tendency,
character, to all their future years.
-. Girls become religious or decided
|. irreligious year or two before boy
" but somewhere about seventeen
+ eighteen the boys and girls of the i
o termediate class decide whether the
!. manhood or womanhood shall be go
IN or bad.
. Our girls of today are the futu
- mothers, and it has been said by som
a one, IA christian motherhood is t
hope of a nation
)c At a gathering of one hundred a
(, twenty clergymen, who were telli
their experience and ancestry. one hu
I'd drei assigned the reason for their &C
version to the influence Of q christi