From the mural paintings by Edwin A. Abbey in the Boston Public
Library]




RELIGIOUS TRAINING


[Sidenote: Sunday School Teachers]

If the common school is not sufficient for the secular education
of the child, certainly the Sunday School is not sufficient for his
religious education. In the common schools the teachers are more or
less trained for their work. It is a life occupation with them; by
means of it they earn their living, and their daily success with their
pupils marks their rate of progress toward higher fields of endeavor.
Nothing of this sort is true in the Sunday School. While occasionally
it happens that a day school teacher becomes a Sunday School teacher,
this is seldom true, for most teachers who teach during the week
feel that they need the Sunday for rest; and while some Sunday School
teachers betray a commendable earnestness and zeal for their work, and
associations and conventions have latterly added somewhat to the
joint effort to better the conditions, still it remains true that the
teaching in the Sunday Schools is far below the pedagogic level of
the common schools. Yet the subject which is dealt with in the Sunday
Schools, instead of being of less importance than that dealt with in
the common schools, is of pre-eminently greater importance. Because
of its subtlety, its intimacy with the hidden springs of conduct, it
calls for the exercise of the very highest teaching skill.