The Boy and the Sunday School | Page 6

education which has not yet been solved is the vast possibility of the directed play life of our boys. It is well known by students of boy life that the character of the boy is very largely determined by the informal education which comes from his part in sports and play. In some cities the public school has sought to give partial direction to the play life of the boy through public school athletic leagues, but even these leagues touch but a small part of the boy life of any community. Besides the injection of industrial and vocational training in large quantity in public school curricula, more thought and place will have to be given to the expression of the boy life in play than is now provided for.
In addition to this, the home and the church must render a united cooperation to make the school life of the boy what it ought to be. The Parents' and Teachers' Association in the public school is doing much to bring this about between the home and the school, and it may be that a Teachers' Association, consisting of officials and teachers of the public school and the officials and teachers of the Sunday school, might bring about a closer cooperation in the secular and religious education of the boyhood of the community. Both these associations, if fostered, would certainly tend to create a wholesome school atmosphere, which would render a tremendous service in safeguarding the moral life of the boy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON PUBLIC SCHOOL
Baldwin.--Industrial-social Education ($1.50).
Bloomfield.--Vocational Guidance of Youth (.60).
Brown.--The American High School ($1.40).
Crocker,--Religious Freedom in American Education ($1.00).
--Religious Education (.65).

III
THE CHURCH AND THE BOY
If the foregoing facts considering the home and school life are absolutely true, and the consensus of opinion of the students of boy life would have it so, it means that the church has a larger opportunity than formerly supposed to influence the boy life of the community.
The investigator into the life of boyhood has revealed to us the fact that a boy's life is not only fourfold--physical, social, mental and spiritual--but is also unified in its process of development. If this be so, there must be a common center for the boy's life, and neither the home nor the school can, because of social or economic or political conditions, become this center. The only remaining place where the boy's life can be unified is the church.
The life of the church, generally speaking, is largely manipulated in the services of worship, the Sunday school, and such auxiliary organizations as the Brotherhood, Christian Endeavor, Missionary societies, and other like organizations. At the present time the church organization itself is but little adapted to the needs of the growing boy, the church being a splendidly organized body for mature life. On the other hand, until lately, the Sunday school has been recognized as a place for children under twelve years of age. With the Adult Bible Class movement of the past few years, there has come a revival in the Sunday school in adult life, so that the place of adults and children in the Sunday school has been magnified. There still remains, however, the need of a modification of Sunday school organization to meet the need of the adolescent boy.
The opportunity that faces the church and the Sunday school in this adaptation is tremendous. Investigations of the past few years have demonstrated beyond a doubt that the time to let loose impulses in the life for the development of character is between the ages of fourteen and twenty, or the plastic years of early and middle adolescence. Recent studies have shown that the break in school life occurs at about fourteen and a half or fifteen years, and that the majority of cases in the juvenile courts fall in the same period. More souls are born into the Kingdom of God in the early years of adolescence than at all other ages of life put together, and the vantage ground of the church lies at these ages, the effort necessary being the minimum and the results being the maximum that can be attained.
The problem of the church in touching these adolescent years is to make the right use of all the facts of boy life. Too long has the church looked upon the boy as a mere field of operation. Too long has she considered the boy as a dual personality and regarded life as both secular and spiritual. Today she is beginning to understand that all boyhood life is spiritual; that there are no secular activities in boyhood, but that every activity that a boy enters into has tremendous spiritual value, either for good or for bad. It is especially true in a boy's life that the spiritual finds expression through the physical. It should be true of