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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- 1. ■U IM ■ ■ ' ■ A. . 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. 9