The Boy and the Sunday School | Page 9

worship God as his Father and Christ as his Saviour. The means it employs for these great purposes are Bible study, Christian music, the association of the boys in classes, and Christian leadership. To these the school is beginning to add through-the-week meetings for what have been called its secular activities. All this has come after a great deal of campaigning on the part of groups of devoted men and women interested in boy life and welfare. The Sunday school has had to overcome many handicaps in reaching the boy of teen age, among which were the lack of efficient, virile teachers, a misunderstanding of boy nature, lessons not adapted to the boy's needs, music that was not appealing, and the indiscriminate grouping of boys with members of the other sex. These, however, have been rapidly overcome, and today the school is fairly well organized to meet the needs of the boy.
There are yet some definite things to be written into the life of the Sunday school to win and hold the boy of teen age in its membership for life.
The first of these is the incorporation into the Sunday school activities of those things that interest and touch and mold every phase of a boy's life. It means the allotment of a definite part of the school period for the discussion of the things the group of boys will engage in during the week, and a through-the-week meeting as a real part of the school work. This allows and provides for the athletic, outdoor, camping, social, and literary outlet for the boy spirit.
Another forward step is graded Bible study, graded athletics, graded service, graded social life, and graded mental activities. The work of the school, to hold the boy, must be new and diverse in its interests, and big enough and broad enough to command his constantly changing attention. As his years so shall his interest be. To his years the work of the Sunday school must correspond.
The Organized Bible Class that is self-governing must be added to the above. Better have the gang on the inside of the church with a Christian-altruistic content, than to permit the boys to organize under self-direction on the outside. The Bible Class, too, has advantages over every other form of organization. It has the Bible at its heart, the one thing necessary to assure permanence, and never allows the thought of graduation. Other boy organizations meet the need of certain specified years; the Bible Class meets all the needs of all the years, and is flexible enough to include all the special needs that are met by other forms of organization.
The greatest need of the Sunday school is capable teaching. By it the Bible Class becomes efficient or the reverse. For the boy the teacher should be a man, a Christian man, who has personality enough to command the boy's respect, and ability enough to direct the boy in doing things. This means a comrade-relationship of work and play, Bible study and athletics, spiritual and social activity, Sunday and week-day interest, and a disposition on the part of the leader to get the boy to do everything--government, planning, presiding, achieving--for himself. This is true teaching and leadership. The greatest thing in the Sunday school is the teacher. For now abideth the Lesson, the Class, and the Teacher, but the greatest of these is the Teacher.
In view, then, of all that has gone before, what shall be said of the Sunday school and the boy? Each to each is the complement; the two together form a winning combination. On the one hand, the modern Sunday school should meet the boy's need at every stage of his development in a physical, social, mental, and spiritual way. It should give him variety and progression in the processes of his maturing, and suitable organization and trained leadership for character-building and man-making. On the other hand, the boy will render the Sunday school and church his service, and through both give his heart's thought, devotion, and worship to his Lord. This is the whole matter of the Sunday school and the normal boy, and is our vision of the future of the church. The past did not do it! The past is dead!
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE BOY AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
Boys' Work Message (Men and Religion Movement) ($1.00).
Foster.--The Boy and the Church (.75).
Lewis.--The Intermediate Worker and His Work (.50).
--The Senior Worker and His Work (.50).
Robinson.--The Adolescent Boy in the Sunday School (American Youth, April, 1911) (.20).

VI
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK WITH BOYS
Five fundamental principles must be kept in mind when work with boys in the Sunday school is attempted, and without these five principles very little will be accomplished:
1. The first of these is the Fourfold Life. A boy lives physically, socially, and mentally, as well as