The Boy and the Sunday School | Page 2

Bible Class 74
IX Bible Study for Boys 93
X Through-the-Week Activities for Boys' Organized Classes 104
XI The Boys' Department in the Sunday School 120
XII Inter-Sunday School Effort for Boys 135
XIII The Older Boys' Conference or Congress 138
XIV The Secondary Division or Teen Age Boys' Crusade 158
XV Sex Education for Boys and the Sunday School 176
XVI The Teen Boy and Missions 193
XVII Temperance and the Teen Age 202
XVIII Building up the Boy's Spiritual Life 208
XIX The Teen Age Teacher 215
XX Danger Points 265
XXI The Rural Sunday School 268
XXII The Relation of the Sunday School to Community Organizations
277

FOREWORD
A great deal of material has come from the pens of various writers on
boy life in the last few years. Quite a little, also, has been written about
the Sunday school, and a few attempts have been made to hitch the boy
of the teen years and the Sunday school together. Most of these
attempts, however, have been far from successful; due, in part, to lack
of knowledge of the boy on the one hand, or of the Sunday school on
the other. Generous criticism of the Sunday school has been made by
experts on boy life, but this generally has been nullified by the fact that
the critics have had no adequate touch with the Sunday school or its
problems--their bread-and-butter experience lay in another field.
"The Men and Religion Forward Movement," in its continent-wide
work, discovered not a few of the problems of the Sunday school, and
attempted a partial solution in the volume on boys' work in the
"Messages" of the Movement. It was but partial, however, first,
because the volume tried to deal with the boy, the church and the
community all together, and second, because it failed to take into
account the fact that there are two sexes in the church school and that
the boy, however important, constitutes but a section of the Sunday
school and its problems.
In view of this, it may not be amiss to set forth in a new volume a more
or less thorough study of the Sunday school and the adolescent or teen
age boy, the one in relationship to the other, and at the same time to set
forth as clearly as possible the present plans, methods and attitude of
the Sunday school, denominationally and interdenominationally.
In the preparation of this little book I have utilized considerable
material written by me for other purposes. Generous use has also been
made of the Secondary Division Leaflets of the International Sunday
School Association. A deep debt of gratitude is mine to the members of
the International Secondary Committee: Messrs. E.H. Nichols, Frank L.
Brown, Eugene C. Foster, William C. Johnston, William H. Danforth,
S.F. Shattuck, R.A. Waite, Mrs. M.S. Lamoreaux, and the Misses
Minnie E. Kennedy, Anna Branch Binford and Helen Gill Lovett, for
their great help and counsel in preparing the above leaflets. Grateful
acknowledgment is also made to Miss Margaret Slattery, Mrs. J.W.
Barnes, Rev. Charles D. Bulla, D.D., Rev. William E. Chalmers, B.D.,
Rev. C.H. Hubbell, D.D., Rev. A.L. Phillips, D.D., Rev. J.C. Robertson,

B.D., and the Rev. R.P. Shepherd, Ph.D., for their advice and
suggestions as members of the Committee on Young People's Work of
the Sunday School Council of Evangelical Denominations. The plans
and methods of these leaflets have the approval of the denominational
and interdenominational leaders of North America. I wish, also, to
make public mention of the great assistance that Mr. Preston G. Orwig
and my colleague, Rev. William A. Brown, have rendered me in the
practical working out of many of the methods contained in this volume.
Two articles written for the "Boys' Work" volume of the Men and
Religion Messages, and one for "Making Religion Efficient" have been
modified somewhat for this present work. The aim has been to set forth
as completely as possible the relationship of the Sunday school and the
boy of the teen years in the light of the genius of the Sunday school.
No attempt has been made in this volume to discuss the boy
psychologically or otherwise. This has been done so often that the
subject has become matter-of-fact. My little volume on "Boy Training,"
so generously shared in by other writers who are authorities on their
subjects, may be referred to for information of this sort. "The Sunday
School and the Teens" will, likewise, afford valuable technical
information about the Sunday school, it being the report of the
International Commission on Adolescence.
This book is largely a volume of method and suggestion for leaders and
teachers in the Sunday school, to promote the better handling of the
so-called boy problem; for the Sunday school must solve the problem
of getting and holding the