Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1914-10-08

PRESCOTT, Oct. Especial to, the Yuma Daily Examiner-Dr. w. w. Will kinson, president of the Arizona Sun day School association now in ses- sion at Prescott, Friday night deliver ed the following stirring address as his annual message to the Sunday school workers of the state upon the occasion of the seventeenth annual session of "she association.
 Marvellous and unprecedented in the history of the church has been the growth and development of the Sun day school during the past twenty seven years. In 1887 our North Ameri- can enrolment was 1,O0O,0O0; it is now eighteen times that number. Then our Sunday school budget, for this continent, was $3OOO; now it is $1OO,- O00 Twenty-seven years ago there was not a salaried officer in connec- tion with the International Sunday School Association of America. Now there are twenty-seven. New mem bers have joined our schools to the average number of II ,655 every Sun day for the past three years. Over half that number, or 6,765, Sunday school scholars have joined the church every Sunday during the triennium just passed.
 When we consider that after twenty years of age only one person in a hundred ever joins the church., and after thirty years of age only one per son in a thousand, and after the fourth decade only one person in ten thou sand ever joins the church, we realize how fully the Sunday school is full filling it's mission, when 6,765 of our boys and girls join the church every Sunday.
 Why this tremendous growth? God has watered the seed sown by our con secrated Sunday school workers.
 Again, why has God so singularly blessed the Sunday school? Because it is the only organization in the Pro- testant church where denomiantional lines have ceased to divide the work CTS in the campaign for the advance ment of the Redeemer's Kingdom.
 Our Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. eX- cepted, the Sunday school is the one institution in all Professionalism that if fulfilling our humble Masters fer vent prayer of John 17 and 21: ''That they all may be one; as thou Father are in me, and I in thct, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me . divisions:
 The Sunday school.
 The Christian Endeavor, Epworth league or B. Y. P. U.
 The Women's societies, and
 The Brotherhood
 We have been considering the gigan- tic growth of our Sunday school under non-sectarian state and national orga- nization. With the other three divi- sions similarly organized and officered efficient state and national general secretaries, the church would harness it's great numerical strength and could do anything that ought to be done l and thus become a dominant factor in solving alright the labor, social and | moral questions of our day. May the | day not be far distant when our di-
 vision of the church shall have as efficient state secretary as Clarence R. Craig. Not until then will we have
 m effective state federation of our various church societies, and become indeed one body of which Christ is the head.
 | As a step in the direction of commu- | nifty service I would recommend. tha. our state Sunday school association promote the initiation of such law as Pennsylvania has enacted, making it compulsory for every public school teacher to open each days session | 5y reading not less than ten verses in | Scripture.
 When I was a boy all the children marched with their parents to the cemetery on Memorial day, carryin , | flowers, and taking an active part in the program and in decorating the
 graves of our heroic dead. The value of the patriotic lessons thus taught | cannot be Over-estimated, and if our general secretary would urge the Sun | day schools of each community to unite in appropriate exfrcises and the decoration of the graves of all good citizens and dear friends, as well as those of our brave boys who have so nobly answered their country's call, and followed the Stars and Stripes on ioY IL