be hard to find, but the purpose is worthy of the effort. Third, use only those means of worship which are worthy of a permanent place in the growing religious life of the individual. The religious activities of young people under eighteen or twenty years of age are the foundations upon which, in most cases, the entire structure of their mature religious life is built. As you value a sound basis for an experience which is to grow throughout a life-time, do not permit the use of worship elements which are merely attractive, or merely adapted to immediate use. The prayers, Scripture readings, masterpieces of religious writers, hymns and tunes used in the devotional exercises of the Sunday school should be subjected to this exacting test. Attractiveness, immediate helpfulness, permanent worth. The ideal is not easily realized. But it has been realized as to prayers, in the Lord's prayer and some of the prayers which have been used in the Episcopal Church for centuries. It has been realized in Scripture readings in scores of passages from the Bible which are not only enjoyable and helpful to the young person of Sunday-school age, but, having been memorized, have been of great permanent value in the life of the growing and mature Christian. Note the first, the twenty-third, the thirty-seventh Psalms, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and literally hundreds of other favorite selections.

Only in the singing of our Sunday schools do we ask for a new book of songs every two years, or as soon as the covers are worn out. Here the sole test has been attractiveness, not intrinsic worth, either temporary or permanent. Yet the real value of a hymn lies in its frequent repetition, in its store of precious associations. A hymn sung at a time of deep religious feeling becomes forever after a part of that experience. If words lacking both religious truth and literary merit are set to unworthy music and built into the structure of such a religious experience, then in later years when knowledge and discrimination have discredited both words and music the whole structure is weakened or destroyed.

As there are prayers and Scripture readings which stand the triple test mentioned above, so there are hymns and tunes. Now for the practical application of this ideal. Let the Religious Art section of the Religious Education Association select fifty persons each of whom shall submit a list of fifty hymns and tunes for

use in Sunday school. Let these be submitted to three groups of competent judges, who shall pass upon (1) subject matter, (2) literary form, (3) musical worth, keeping in mind also the above test of attractiveness, immediate helpfulness and permanent value. When the final list of fifty has been selected, let superintendents and choristers urge the memorizing of these songs. Familiarity with good music will soon secure the same degree of heartiness which is now attributed to the fact that the music is easy. Let a few generations of Sunday-school scholars commit to memory fifty worthy hymns and good congregational singing will no longer be the discouraging problem it is today.

III.

MRS. B. S. WINCHESTER
Winnetka, Illinois

The educational value of any exercise of the Sunday school depends upon its relation to the aim of the school as a wholethat is to say, religious education. Bearing this in mind, the opening service offers exceptional opportunity for the practice of that attitude so essential to deep religious life, and unhappily too often absent from the experience of young people, the attitude of reverence and worship.

My own study and experience has been confined to what is generally termed the Intermediate department of the Sunday school, but the principles involved in the treatment of this exercise may be applied with equal advantage to upper and lower grades.

First and most essential is the necessity for an uninterrupted period, whether it be for five minutes or twenty-five. All the mechanical arrangements of the school should be rigidly shut out. They may be attended to before or after, but not allowed to come into this particular exercise. This secured, attention may be directed to the development of some one or two ideas which properly come within the experience of the grades considered.

Take as an example the thought of "The Happy Life." After a prelude, which should be a part of the service, not merely something to cover up confusion, let the school repeat responsively or antiphonally the twenty-fourth Psalm, and sing some hymn of praise, like

"My God, I thank Thee, Who hast made
The earth so bright."

Prayer by the leader may conclude with some such song response as this:

"Searcher of hearts, from mine erase

All thoughts that should not be,
And in its deep recesses trace
My gratitude to Thee.

"Hearer of prayer, O guide aright
Each word and deed of mine;

Life's battle teach me how to fight,

And be the victory thine.-Amen."

The Beatitudes, in unison or responsively, follow naturally, and "O Happy Band of Pilgrims" is an appropriate hymn. A short reading from the Sermon on the Mount, and the hymn, "The Son of God Goes Forth to War," brings the service to a suitable close. This will not occupy more than fifteen to seventeen minutes. The pupils will have had opportunity to utilize intellectual exercise in memorizing. Hymn, verses, and prayer in their natural and proper way passages from the Bible given out for memory work in the class exercises. These will assume a distinctly religious value, and be something more than an intellectual exercise to memorizing. Hymn, verses, and prayer lend value and meaning to each.

A service with the theme, "God is Love," affords large opportunity. Use the one hundredth Psalm, perhaps for opening, and a hymn which emphasizes its sentiment. I John 4:7-14 leads up to "Love Divine, all Love Excelling," and the thought turns naturally to some incident in the life of Jesus which the leader may select. Then is the time for that beautiful hymn taken from Whittier's poem, "Our Master," which will sing itself into the lives of the young people as they grow up, "We may not climb the heavenly steeps."

Such a service is more easily followed and hence perhaps more generally participated in if printed, but absence of a printed program is no barrier to a coherent service. A service of this. kind is worth repeating for several weeks in succession until familiar, and afterwards at intervals when appropriate. Hymns

may be changed for variety's sake, but should always be chosen with extreme care as to sentiment, poetry and musical setting. Children can sing hymns as well as rag-time, and feel the incongruity of poor music to express a noble theme oftener than is sometimes thought.

A difficulty in the matter of learning the hymns may occur to others as it did to me. I was firmly resolved not to make the opening service a time for practice, yet how to get sufficient familiarity to have hearty singing was a problem. The solution in this instance proved to be a children's choir, which was purely voluntary and met on a week day. The choir does not sing as a choir in the Sunday school service, as classes all sit in their appointed places. The esprit de corps has been maintained by occasional appearances in a church service, while by the regular practice the music of the school has been vastly improved.

To recapitulate: Helpful features in making the opening program of value in the work of religious education are these: Continuity in time, coherence in thought, use of biblical passages and hymns which are within the range of experience, repetition to the point of familiarity, but variety in theme and treatment, and best of all the co-operation of all, officers, teachers, pupils, in the act and attitude of worship.

IV.

REV. TYLER E. GALE

Minister Congregational Church, Greenville, New Hampshire

The kind of education contemplated in an attempt to give educational value to the devotional exercises of the Sunday school must be education in worship. Children need training in the customary forms of worship if they are to use them intelligently in later life, and they also need training in the spirit of worship if they are to have the power of allowing public devotions to lift them out of themselves into the presence of God. These needs must be kept in mind in arranging devotional programmes.

Moreover, it is of the highest importance that the service of worship in the Sunday school shall be so constructed that it will be a true expression of the child's worship. I use the word. "child's" advisedly, for the interests of the younger members of the Sunday school must be paramount in this discussion. The

adult members of the school are present for training in Biblical science, theology and ethics—not for training in worship, but the children need this training as well as the Biblical. The adults have the opportunity to express their worshipful instincts elsewhere, but for many of the children the service of worship of the Sunday school is the only directly worshipful influence with which they are familiar.

Certain practical considerations are therefore implied. It is evident that the pedagogical maxim that attention must be aroused through interest in order to secure true apperception applies to education in the forms and spirit of worship as truly as to any other kind of education. We cannot expect that a form of service which would be appropriate for a prayer meeting will appeal to the interests of childhood and adolescence; therefore we must not expect that it will possess educational value.

It also seems clear that a general participation in the service is wholly desirable. This keeps the mind from wandering, gratifies the childish desire to be doing something, and familiarizes the scholars in the most satisfactory manner with the forms of worship.

Variety in form is necessary in order to prevent the service of worship from degenerating into spiritless routine. On the other hand, the danger must be avoided of cultivating, by too much variety, impatience with regular and set forms of worship. The formation of the habit of dignity in worship must ever be before our eyes in planning devotional programmes for the Sunday school. It will be fatal to all our purposes if the religious instincts we would nourish and train in the Sunday school can only be expressed by superficial and undignified forms.

Our school has been experimenting along the lines thus indicated, with considerable success. We use an abridged edition of the same hymnal used at the church services, with the result that the children consider it a matter of course for them to take part in the singing at the church services when they are present. The superintendent often selects the hymns with a view to their appropriateness to the theme that has been discussed from the pulpit at the morning service just preceding, thus connecting the Sunday school with the church in the scholars' minds, and familiarizing them with the possibility of expressing definite religious emotions in sacred song.