The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-08-06

for Sunday schools, employed poor women at shilling a day, and gathered in the poor children which he found on the streets. Today, not excepting the secular public school system of the United States, the Sunday school. is the greatest edu- cational factor in the world! A mighty army of young, embracing 100000 chill dren and teachers! Sixty per cent of the children of the school age in America!
 A host of good men and good women or culture, refinement, education, and conservation, endeavoring for the uplift or these children through the powerful, quickening, vitalizing forces of the Booki The whole republic girded on each Sab bath by belt of melody floating from the Sunday school bells. An inspiring thought that this mighty mass of inn questionable, teachable young, at the tap of the bell, from Maine to California, and fro mthe Great Lakes to the Gulf, are intent. heart and mind, upon the same lessons from the Book!
 President Garfield once defined a uni versity as a log, with Mark Hopkins on one end and an intelligent student on the other, with a book between them. Three very simple elements, and yet em- bracing the whole scheme of education. And so the vast mental and spiritual activity of this great Sunday school movement reduces itself into the same primal clements: A teacher, with strong personality, and abiding love young; and the youth, full of hopes and fears, doubts and beliefs, laying out his plans, for veal or for woe, for life's hovel or palace, and between them and the great chart of life, the master builders preliminary sketches, blue prints, plans and specifications. Can the personality of the older man, thro 1c1a tI, I;,,,, of Lof hON in touch with the inner life, the emo- tions, the passions, the ideals, and the visions of the young man? That is the problem.
 TWO LINES OF STUDY
 Well, with the interest once awakened in that young heart, the contact once established betwen mind and mind. know of no patent method of promoting the study of the Bible with him. But broadly speaking, there are two we'll defined lines of Bible work worthy of attention. A book written by man, the Bible has it's human side-inspired by God, it's divine side As all other books, it must be studied with the intellect. I am sure that it is not to be mastered by mere instinct It cannot be ab- sorbed from the atmosphere. As no other book in the world, 1t is to be studied in a devotional manner, with the religious sense. AS a book written by men, we may weigh it with all points of diction and style and subject mat ter and power; while only with reverent minds can we consider it as the verita- ble word of our great Creator, as mighty life-giving essence, or power, or breath flowing into our hearts, quick ening dead sensibilities and awak- ening within us the very thought and feelings of God himself
 Certainly strong emphasis should be placed in teaching the Bible upon the value of this broad and sound intel lectual appreciation of it's teachings. Without this clear-cut knowledge of the teachings of the Bible, what is religion? Oftentimes fanaticism, superstition and bigotry Without this knowledge, do we not oftentimes see men and women throwing all the enegy of their being upon secondary and nonessential ele- ments of religion? And how is it pos sible to discriminate fine questions of duty without fine intellectual insight? Yes, a student of the Bible needs not only to be devout but intelligent; not only conscientious, but enlightened. Creed comes before deed, and no more can one be the best of Christians with out a precise Knowledge of the Bible than one can be the best of lawyers without a precise knowledge of Black stone The greatest Christian in my es- timation, that the human family has ever prone was Saint Paul. and surely he was the greatest student of the Bible that the world has ever. known
 Now, if student is made to feel in a direct and practical way this real, genuine, vital connection between ac- curate religious knowledge and accurate