THEY have grown out of the idea of the Public-school Teachers' Institutes, which have been sustained for many years with interest and profit, the expenses being cheerfully met out of the State Treasury. Our Sabbath-school Institutes are modeled somewhat on the same plan. The object is, by means of practical essays, model lessons, lectures, and drill exercises, to train the teachers and officers for their work. Institutes differ from other conventions in calling out the audience in responses, recapitulations, and more detailed instruction. They will take their character very much from the character and course pursued by the conductor. No two persons, perhaps, would conduct them alike. For instance, one man would give more attention to superintending, addresses, public exercises, singing, etc. Another to the blackboard, object teaching, and sacred geography; while another still, would give more attention to methods of teaching, teachers' meetings, normal classes, model lessons, etc. We would prefer to combine ALL these things in their due proportion, in every Institute, and make as complete and clear work on every point as possible. The great object is to make them useful. If this is secured, they will be all the more interesting. There are two great subjects which should always be before every Institute, as well as every convention, viz., 1. The extension of Sabbath-schools, so as to reach all of the neglected; 2. The elevation and improvement of existing schools; and they need improving, if not reforming, in every part.

The first idea of a Sabbath-school Institute that ever entered the mind of the writer was suggested to him by a pastor, Rev. W. A. Niles, in the State Sunday-school Convention at Buffalo, New York, in 1864. An experiment was soon successfully made, and since then they have become almost universally popular and useful. The same thought, we have since been informed, had been considered, and Institutes held by the Rev. J. H. Vincent, in the Western Methodist Conferences; and as long ago as 1827, the New York Sunday-school Union, in its Eleventh Annual Report, particularly recommended this plan "of a school for the training of Sabbath-school teachers."

The forms of these Institutes are various. Many are made up partly of convention and partly of Institute exercises. Ordinarily two or three days and evenings are entirely devoted to one, by a county, or district comprising a dozen counties. Another plan, when held in a city, is to devote all the evenings and a part of the afternoons of a week to it; as in New York city last year, and recently in Brooklyn; also, prefacing it with an elaborate sermon on the Sabbath evening previous. Another plan still is to devote the usual weekly Teachers' Meeting of a school to a regular normal class or training Institute. All these plans are useful in the hands of a good conductor.

The Subjects

for consideration in an Institute may be suggested as follows:

  1. How to form new schools.
  2. How best to gather in the children.
  3. Their conversion and culture.
  4. Organization and classification.
  5. Superintendents' duties.
  6. Opening and closing exercises.
  7. The library and record books.
  8. The Bible classes.
  9. The intermediate classes.
  10. The infant-school.
  11. Anniversaries and concerts.
  12. Reviews and catechisms.
  13. Children's prayer-meetings.
  14. Training of converts.
  15. How to teach; with model lessons and examples of good modes.
  16. Illustrative teaching.
  17. Object teaching.
  18. Pictorial teaching.
  19. The use of the blackboard.
  20. The art of questioning.
  21. The art of securing attention.
  22. The preparation of the lesson.
  23. Teachers' meetings.
  24. Sunday-school music.
  25. Children's prayers and devotions.
  26. Map drawing.
  27. Bible geography, history, etc.
  28. Temperance meetings.

The Exercises

of an Institute may be—

1. Devotional exercises for specific objects.