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THE PASTOR AND THE SUNDA Y SCHOOL
I can assure the Atlanta Sunday School Union that
I would be very slow to constitute myself a target
for the volley of criticism that is reserved for those
who invade the domain of the pastor, if my in
trenchments were any less strong than they are.
Generation after generation of ancestors who wore
the cloth are behind me. A pastor for a father, a
pastor for a brother, a pastor for a husband,
and a regular army of pastors who are cousins sur
round me, and the hope that the Lord will see fit to
call my son to the same holy office, is before me.
I stand intrenched behind a personal experience
in the life of a parsonage, for not one of the years
of my life has been spent in any other place than a
parsonage, and I have both laughed and cried over
the exacting demands and the unreasonable require
ments made of preachers and preachers’ children
and preachers’ wives.
I stand intrenched behind the highest regard for
the holy office of the ministry, and an admiration
unfeigned for the large majority of the men who
are filling it with such fidelity.
Still further I stand intrenched behind a barricade
of quotation marks. I make few statements that
might, by anyone, be regarded as extreme, unless
those statements are guarded first and last by a
quotation mark. And yet, even in the security of
my intrenchment, I tremble, for so far as the pastors
are concerned, like Esther, I have come before them
unsummoned and unless they extend the golden
sceptre of their kindly consideration, I perish. But
if I perish, I perish, and I trust that with the pro
gram committee at least, any harsh criticism may
be lost in the grandeur and nobility of the sacrifice
they have called for.
The Sunday School’s Greatest Need.
From my strong fort I send forth this firm con
viction: “The Greatest need of Atlanta Sunday
school work is Sunday school pastors.” That one
statement I make unqualifiedly and unquotationed.
Greater than the need of excellence in any single
department is that which will result in excellence
in all departments.
Atlanta’s greatest Sunday school need is Sunday
school pastors, not because there are great short
comings in that direction, but because there are
greater opportunities and graver responsibilities.
This is a strenuous age. It is quite possible you
have heard that statement before. The remark has
been made on several occasions, but no amount of
repetition invalidates the statement. The nervous
prostrations and general breakdowns all around us
would give ever recurring utterance to the fact, if
no one ever made the statement in words again.
Wise Use of Strength.
Men and women in every profession must seek to
use their strength in the way in which it will count
for most if they wish to hold their place in the race.
This is just as true of the ministry as of any other
profession. The people who think a minister’s life
is a life of ease and of undisturbed meditation are
not people who live in a parsonage. They are not
people who have visited in a parsonage. It is not
likely that they even live next door to a parsonage.
The amount of work which our Atlanta pastors do
is a constant source of amazement to me. Their won
derful power of adaptation calls forth my admiring
wonder.
With sympathy as genuine as it is ready, they stand
by the open grave, or in the home over which some
dark shadow has fallen. With scarcely a moment
in which to adjust themselves to different conditions,
they stand in the center of some reception, of which
they are expected to be the joy-irradiating center,
with a suddeness that would dazzle other men
they go from the scenes of the poverty stricken hut
to the banquet at an American palace. With the
same ease and grace with which they accept the
dainty viands from the damask covered table, rich
with rare china and glass, they accept also the hos
pitality offered in earthen bowl from a shining oil
cloth.
A Pastor’s Varied Interests.
They are interested in everything that concerns
everybody. From the election of a president to the
appearance of some mother’s baby’s first tooth, they
are genuinely and intelligently interested. The de
mands on a pastor living in the twentieth century
in Atlanta, Ga., are so many and jso varied that he
has to study his work with the greatest care, and
use every atom of his energy to the best advantage,
if he would measure up to the work before him.
I would not make his work one bit heavier. Our
Atlanta pastors are overworked now. They have no
more time to give to anything, for already they have
cast in all that they have. I would not dare to lay
The Golden Age for October 11, 1906.
By MRS. E. C. CRONK.
a heavier burden on their shoulders, but I do dare
to submit this proposition, that if one half of the
energy the average pastor expends on less important
things were given to the Sunday school, the return
in souls would be vastly greater, and other shoulders
would be being squared for the burdens that are
now rounding his own.
Longing to Help Young People.
The pastor who would like to give more attention
to the young people of his flock but excuses himself
by saying and really thinking that matters of more
importance claim his attention, would be benefited
by an experience similar to the one Henry Ward
Beecher had, which Dr. Trumbull was so fond of
telling. “It was at an annual convention of the
Sunday school teachers of New York state, in the au
tumn of 1858. The closing evening of the convention
was given to a public meeting in Plymouth Church,
to be addressed by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher,
the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, and the Rev. Richard S.
Storrs. The house was packed to its utmost capacity.
Dr. Tyng was delayed in his reaching the house, so
that Mr. Beecher was well into his address before
Dr. Tyng took a seat behind him as a listener. Mr.
Beecher said that the longer he lived the more
he valued those sermons preached, where one man
was the minister and one man was the congregation;
where the preaching was face to face and eye to
eye, with a ‘thou art the man,’ as its unmistakable
application, and it was the opportunity of such
preaching as this that gave the Sunday school teach-
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MRS. E. C. CRONK.
ers a peculiar power, which he as a pulpit preacher
to a large congregation often envied.”
Henry Ward Beecher’s Stirring Words.
But Mr. Beecher went on to say that, as things
were, his work was in the pulpit and with adults,
therefore he was compelled to leave this face to face
work with children to other persons in the field of
his church and congregation. All of this was said
by Mr. Beecher before Dr. Tyng arrived. Then Mr.
Beecher proceeded to give an admirable exhibit of
the Sunday school teacher’s spirit and work after
Dr. Tyng arrived.
At the opening of his address immediately follow
ing, Dr. Tyng referred, in his stately and graceful
way, to the genius and eloquence of the speaker who
had preceded him, and who, as he expressed it, had, in
his remarks, not only touched the entire circumfer
ence of the evening’s theme, but filled the whole
disk within. Then he launched out upon the subject
for himself, saying:
“For years, if the choice before me in my work as a
pastor, has been between one child and two adults,
I have always been ready to take the child.” “ft
seems to me,” he continued, “that the devil would
never ask anything more of a minister than to have
him feel that his mission was chiefly to the grown
up members of his congregation, while some one
else was to look after the children.” The patness
of this thrust at the admission made by Mr. Beecher
before Dr. Tyng’s arrival, was palpable to the audi
ence, and it was greeted with a ripple of involuntary
laughter. Stimulated by this responsiveness, while
unconscious of its cause, Dr. Tyng followed up his
hit with his wonted vigor. Pointing down to the
main entrance door before him of the Plymouth
Church auditorium, he hissed out his satirical sen
tences with that peculiar intensity of his: “I can
see the devil looking in at the door, and saying to
the minister on this platform, ‘Now you just stand
there and fire away at the old folks, and I’ll go
around and steal away the little ones as the Indians
steal ducks, swimming under them, catching them
by the legs and pulling them under.’ ” Mr. Beecher
realized that the laugh was fairly on him, for once,
in his own church. He met the unsuspecting thrust
of his friend with his ready wit, but the incident was
not without effect.
I would in no way depreciate evangelistic work
among adults, but work among children and young
people will always yield the church its largest and
best increase, and so long as we allow the children
to drift away from the church in the hope that we
may bring them back by later evangelistic efforts
just so long will our losses be greater than our gains.
Importance of Training the Young.
It is a fact worthy of the thoughtful consideration
of thoughtful people, that the denomination which
had the largest percentage of growth among the Pro
testant denomination of the United States last year
was a denomination that, while it neglects special
evangelistic efforts to perhaps a culpable extent, de
votes the largest part of its efforts toward the
training of the children and young people.
No matter how eloquent the sermons of a pastor
may be, no matter how brilliant his attainments,
if he neglects the young people of his flock he is as
Dr. Trumbull says, “locating his pulpit hard by the
very gate of perdition to enable him to cry out
to a few of those who are hovering toward that
dark portal under the accelerating impulse of their
long years of sinful descending, while he leaves un
warned and unguided the great masses of children
who are yet far up the road at the foot of which he
is stationed, but who are in danger of the very
perils against which he is uttering his warning cry
to the remnant of their parents’ generation.”
“Fighting a Fire.”
I shall never forget the first big fire I ever saw.
Standing in its weird glare I watched with interest
the tactics of the firemen. A large hotel was burn
ing. The streams of water made almost no im
pression on the mighty volume of flame and smoke
and seething heat. A tiny flame shot up from
an adjoining building. Quick as a flash a hose
extinguished it. The same stream of water that
meant nothing in the one case was sufficient to stay
the flames in the other. Then the tactics were
changed. Every hose began to play on surrounding
buildings. We looked sadly at the old hotel, as it
went down, but buildings not six feet away were
saved, and even as a child I admired the sagacity
of the firemen.
If those men had let the surrounding buildings
become a mass of flames before they turned their
attention to them they would have been guilty of
folloy, insignificant in comparison with the folly
which neglects the little ones and young people until
the world engulfs them, and then seeks to justify
itself by making frantic efforts to reclaim that
which should never have been lost.
The appeals that have no effect on hardened men
and women will change the course of a child’s life.
The Question of Missions.
An ounce of missionary enthusiasm let loose in
the Sunday school is worth a pound in almost any
other place.
The pastor who spends an hour sending his finest ar
rows against the steel plated heart of some argu
mentative opposer of foreign missions and is reward
ed by a ten cent contribution, might in a half
hour’s earnest conversation with that man’s little
son, secure the contribution of another life for Africa
or China or Japan. That pastor who touches not
the young life of his congregation touches not its
future, save in a second hand way.
It is generally admitted that the best way to
get in touch with the young people of the church
and out of the church, too, is through the Sunday
school.
If we all stand together on these points, let us
move on a step further. The pastor’s relation to
the Sunday school is that of pastor, just as he is
pastor of any other department of his congre
gation. He is shepherd, he is leader, or he should
be, of the whole flock. If any department must do
without his shepherd care everything would Indi
cate that the older members, who have had some
training, could more safely be left to the care of
an undershepherd than those who are entirely un
trained.
(Concluded on page 12.
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