Sunday-School statistics.
First in the list of these child-winning agencies stands the Sunday-School. From a series of statistics appearing in the January, 1913, number of the Missionary Review of the World, we take the following figures, concerning Sunday-Schools conducted by the Protestant Missionary Societies of the world.
| Miss. Soc’s U. S. & Canada | Of other Countries | |
|---|---|---|
| No. Heathen Children baptized 1912 | 27,997 | 68,567 |
| No. Sunday-Schools | 19,230 | 11,375 |
| No. Pupils in same | 908,007 | 580,012 |
Would that every Christian woman who glances at these figures could dimly realize what they stand for,—the efforts, the time and energy and love expended, the disappointments and trials, the encouragements and victories. One must never be discouraged, one must never lose faith and hope, one may never stop sowing seeds in little hearts, even though the work seems as small and insignificant as it did in the Japanese Sunday-School at Kawazoe.
Japanese Sunday-School.
Every Sunday at twelve o’clock the children begin to clatter up on their wooden shoes to a Sunday-School which does not begin till two o’clock.... When it begins they sing hymns vigorously if not tunefully, and listen as patiently as any children of the same age. The nurse girls, aged ten or eleven, come with babies on their backs, and, if the babies remonstrate too vigorously, they are trotted out in the sunshine for a breathing space. An average of forty children come every Sunday to hear the Christian stories, and often, passing on the street, one hears the familiar tune and unfamiliar words of “Jesus loves me.” One, two, or more Sunday-Schools seem like but a drop in the bucket in a town of twenty thousand people, but we can only hope that through hymn, or story, or picture, or card, the good news of the love of God may be spread more widely.[87]
But many “drops” fill a bucket, and some day Japan is going to feel the mighty power of the children who have been taught in mission Sunday-Schools. Here is a prophetic instance:—
A Sunday-School rally in Japan.
The teachings which produce the sweetest and most beautiful things in the lives of children, and will make them the truest and best “soldiers and servants” are those given in the Sunday-Schools which are multiplying in Japan. Therefore there is no work better worth doing than that in the Sunday-Schools, and no service more valuable than that of the missionaries who teach the children of Japan.... On the Campus of the Reformed Church College, Sendai, there was held last summer a union gathering of the Sunday-Schools of the city. Some of them were Saturday Sunday-Schools, as there were not hours enough on Sunday for the Christian teachers to instruct all those who are eager to learn, and it is not unprecedented for two or three Sunday-Schools to be taught by the same persons. When the pupils in the Christian schools of Sendai came together they were one thousand seven hundred strong. An eye-witness says:—
“I wish you could have seen them! Our own four Sunday-Schools furnished one hundred and fifty of the number. It did my heart good! Do missions pay? Oh, my, no! One of our students in the training school is the direct result of the Sendai Sunday-School, and another from that Sunday-School enters next year. And to hear those one thousand seven hundred children sing! And back of that great gathering was the story of long and patient labor, days of constant effort, and nights of discouragement.”[88]
A Sunday-School with practical results.