OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19015, 10 November 1923, Page 5

OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS

By Amplics. Never prohibit anything you cannot pro* Dibit. — George H. Archibald. NEWS AND NOTES. On Monday evening the -ueligious Education Training- School will hold its break-up ceremony in the Waddell Hall at 7.30 p.rn., and this gathering will bo combined with the annual meeting ot the Otago Council of Sunday School Unions. The' students have maintained their enthusiasm to the end splendidly, and not a tew are quite sorry that Uio course IIU3 for the time being come to an end. It is intended to have a social supper at the close of the meeting. “It is well to remember.” says Thiselton Mark, “that what the class is at any moment prepared to learn is of far greater importunco than that which we had come prepared to teach.” The annual display of expression work arranged by the Auckland Sunday Schools’ Union took place at the Auckland Y.W.C.A. last week. Mr J. W. Court presided, and the work, which consisted of models in plasticene ami glitter-wax. paper cutting and folding, and posters, was of a very high standard. During the afternoon addresses were given by the following:—Cradle roll. Miss Earley; beginners, Miss Green; primary, Miss Knight; juniors. Miss Osborne. Miss B. M. Knight presided at the evening mooting. Miss Wxnstone, speaking Vo Sunday school teachers, emphasised the need for personal preparation for teaching and for sincerity in life and purpose. Mr J. VV. Shaw, speaking of the methods of Sunday school work, , contrasted (a) guidance and control, and (b) freedom and initiative. Ho did not believe in “cramming.” Education was not a matter of pouring in. but of seeking individual expression. The very essence of education was expression, and sincerity and sympathy were the two essentials of helping the child. The meetings were continued the following day. CHILDREN'S EXHIBITION. The great Children’s Exhibition has come and gone, and those who toiled and w rought and planned for it so whole-heartedly have had their reward in its complete success. One feature of it of which little public mention has so far been made was the special lessons given from day to day in file model departmental rooms. These demonstrations were given by various schools working in conjunction with students ot the Religious Education Training School. Under their direction various groups of children did expression work and worked out typical lessons suited to their age. The expression work included modelling, block-making, plasticene modelling, sand-tray work, chalk drawing, paper cutting, folder work, and poster work. The demonstrations, which aroused a great deal of interest, covered a wide range of subjects. In the beginners’ department there was a summer story lesson, a lesson on the Good Shepherd, baby day, Noah’s ark, and Indian day. The primary department had a Christmas lesson, a Chinese lesson, and one on the call of the fishermen. Among the junior subjects were an Easter lesson and the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and in the intermediate department Knox Sunday School girls worked out an excellent sand table map of the Sea of Galileo and its surroundings. The community has undoubtedly been stirred in an unusual and remarkable way by the exhibition, and now that it is all over the question is: How are. the results to be conserved? What is it all going to lead to? How are the impressions formed and tho enthusiasms engendered to be transformed into action and life before they fade for over? That is a difficult problem and a vital one. At least it may be said that tho exhibition has been the means of enlisting many in the ranks of the active workers for tho young who will not quickly forsake the joy of such service. Others not new to the work have become more deeply and closely involved in it. V cry many who take only the most casual interest, in Sunday schools must have gained a quite new conception of their possibilities. £incl of the devotion and the skill and ability with which they are carried on. At the ' Women’s Christian Temperance Union Convention this week several very complimentary references were made to tho Exhibition, and attention was drawn to the fact that tho founders of tho W.O.T.U. began their groat work of winning America to prohibition through the Sunday schools and day schools. Tho suggestion was made that not only should every school child in our community be in the Sundav school but every Sundav school child should bo in a Band of Hope. _ Whether this particular typo of organisation could or should be universally adopted is open to question, but there can bo no doubt that more regular temperance teaching ought to he given m the Sunday schools. The broad Christian truths of temperance—as apart from various methods of practising or enforcing them everv child is entitled to know; and it is a significant fact that this method of cducation is not available for the use of antitemperance forces. The confidence with which tho decision qf America is attributed to tho continued training of the young is a striking tribute to tho power that can be weildcd by the Sunday school. A SUNDAY SCHOOL TRIP IN THE HOLY LAND. Making a Sunday school trip in a Ford car in Palestine is a decided contrast to some of tho pilgrimages of the Master Teacher in an early decade of the first century. Rev. George H. Scherer, _of Suk-el-Gharb Svria, is the representative of the World’s Sunday School Association in that country. A friend was found in America who was ready to increase Mr Scherer’s usefulness by the gift of a Ford car which was specially equipped for work in Syria and Palestine. Here is a partial description of the journey“ Going south tho first day we drove to Nazareth and slept out in the car on the hills overlooking the plains of Esdraelon. The hacks of the throe scats in the car come down and fit in between the seats, so we bad a comfortable bed, longer and wider than a Pullman berth We had our thermos flasks with us and had our two meals the first day. and two the second day. We reached Jerusalem at 2 p.rn. the second clav. after travelling leisurely and comfortably. Great progress has been made in carrying forward the Sunday school work in Jerusalem, largely due to the personal interest of one of the missionaries in that city. PAGEANTRY AND DRAMATISATION. The price of all tho hard work and slavery to detail in the preparation of a pageant is recompensed in the great satisfaction of having touched the hearts and understanding of your audience whether it be of adults or children. The pageant is more powerful than the sermon or tho lesson. One of the city-bred , children, after having hoard the story of the shepherds following the Star of Bethlehem, never quite new what it meant until on Christmas Eve in tho great church auditorium, amid the solemn reverence and in a flood of worshipful blue and amber lights, he saw the “Keeper of the sheep” and Wise Men in Oriental costume pay their tribute and bring their gifts to the feet of Joseph, Mary, and the Christ-child. A youth never knew the full meaning ol Christian service until he participated in that tremendous pageant, “ T he Light of the World,” when 200 young men and women sacredly fol lowed that, “Light.” As it is with tho pageant, so it is with tho dramatised Bible story. A ten-year-old bnv did not know what the story of the “Good Samaritan” or _ “Joseph and His Brethren” involved until last summer in a Maine camn out under the (all pines lie was the man who “fell among the thieves” and was Joseph who was sold to the caravan.—Religious Education, volume XVIII, No. 2. QUALITY BEFORE QUANTITY. Schools whose chief interest is the quality of their product will almost always he small. But the smallest school may he the most useful, for a leader’s greatest service is often the establishing of a model for others to copy. And training a few people thoroughly may bo the quickest way to transform Iho world. It certainly is the way that Christ chose when He spent most of His working life in training 12 men. There is much for our church schools to ponder in the reply of a leader in scientific management who was asked to define a successful church, and said : “ I think a church could be called a success if, each year, it produces three people who have so thoroughly caught Christ's spirit that each can in turn influence three others to tho same degree.”—Dorothy Dickinson Barbour, in Religions Education.