Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1917-10-29
Obe
Peoples Forum
Why Adults as Well as Boys and Girls
Should Attend Sunday School.
Number iii.
(By H. G. Gilmore.)

(By H. G. Gilmore.)
This letter is intended more par
ticularly for the adult members Of
Sunday schools (although 1t strikes in
many directions), those who have had
the opportunity in their more sober
moments to realize the accuracy of
the matter of fact truths ] shall ad-
vance in this my weekly contribution
to so vital a subject as the education
and proper bringing up Of the youth
of our beloved land. One of the
greatest assets of our country Is the
possession of that human element
from which springs the future men
and women of our great Common
wealth. Reared and educated in sit
uations where the fear (love) Of God
is constantly before their eyes, the
young man and young woman are,
indeed, in their respective spheres,
indispensable blessings in the perpet-
uatioD, consolidation and government
of the human race: Solomon of old
had staunch and very decided views
touching the bringing up of youth.
In one place in his book of wisdom
he says, "Spare the rod, spoil the
child" and in another he utters un-
disguised truth when he suggests that
the young should be carefully and
sensibly trained so that, in after
years, the habit will have been per-
manently formed, not only to get the
most there is out of the secular de-
mands of our daily pilgrimage, but
conform to the spirit of that petition
which asks us all to lead a godly,
righteous and sober life"-a conse-
Grafton that hath the profit of our
present existence and that which is
to come.
The Sunday school, as we under
stand it today, is splendid institu-
tion and, at whatever trouble and ex-
pense, ought to be perpetuated with
no Stacking hand. 1t has been said by
workers in the vineyard, brought face
to face with the actual conditions in
life, that, restricted to one or the
other, the Sunday school can always
be more advantageously manipulated
in the building up of rural and out
lying parishes, than the church itself
With the voluntary system as the
basis of all its operations, the Sun
day school is, oftentimes, handi-
capped to degree that is distressing
in the extreme. Scarcity of teachers,
incompetency, and the uncertainty of
retaining teachers for any length Of
time all initiate against any sort of
a sound forward movement for the
bettering Of the Sunday school in our
land. Incompetency on the part even
of the most religiously disposed and
well-intentioned individuals have, in
many large parishes and charges in
the east and middle west, resulted in
the employment of trained teachers,
at salaryl The question, "Why boys
and girls should attend Sunday
school," is answered, in nutshell,
by set of figures furnished recent
ly by the chaplain of Joliet Peniten-
tiary, Illinois, who says, plainly
enough, that If the young men of the
nation had only attended Sunday
school in their youth with some de-
gree of regularity and earnestness,
and manfully walked in the paths of
civic righteousness and true holiness,
the legion of young men who have
never found their way into a church
but many times, perhaps, into peni-
tentiary, might, at this very moment,