OF THE SUNDAY SCHOOL—TO THE MEN WHO HOLD THE KEY TO ALL THE LIFE AND
PROGRESS OF THE SCHOOL—THE SUPERINTENDENTS OF NORTH AMERICA.
INTRODUCTION
The Sunday school chapter of Church history is now being written. It comes late in the volume, but those who are writing it and those who are reading it realize—as never before—that the Sunday school is rapidly coming to its rightful place. In the Sunday school, as elsewhere, it is the little child who has led the way to improvement. The commanding appeal of the little ones opened the door of advance, and, as a result, the Elementary Division of the school has outstripped the rest in its efficiency.
Where children go adults will follow, and so we discover that the Adult Division was the next to receive attention, until today its manly strength and power are the admiration of the Church.
Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the middle division, called the Secondary, and covering the "Teen Age," has been sadly neglected—the joint in the harness of our Sunday school fabric. Here we have met with many a signal defeat, for the doors of our Sunday schools have seemed to swing outward and the boys and girls have gone from us, many of them never to return. We have busied ourselves to such an extent in studying the problem of the boy and the girl that the real problem—the problem of leadership—has been overlooked.
The Secondary Division is the challenge of the Sunday school and of the Church today. It is during the "Teen Age" that more decisions are made for Christ and against him than in any other period of life. It is here that Sunday school workers have found their greatest difficulty in meeting the issue, largely because they have not understood the material with which they have to deal.