5. Instead of opening exercises have closing ones, as extended and as interesting as possible. Have pictures selected from the Sunday-school rolls, and, at each session, make one of these the subject of a little gospel-talk. Ask the pupil best versed in English to be your interpreter, and use such English as he can understand. And, even though you have no interpreter, five minutes given to a Bible story will not be lost, if you have a picture that is apt and suggestive.
Then sing the gospel to them, asking them to read the verse after you, word by word, and then sing it with you. I will gladly supply, at bare cost, Song Rolls in Chinese, containing familiar gospel hymns translated into Chinese and so conformed in metre to the English original that the time remains unchanged, and the teachers can sing the English words, if desirable, while the Chinese use their own. There is no more effective preaching of the gospel than that in song.
6. The Sunday-school, at its best, needs to be supplemented by some sort of week-day work. The Chinese Sunday-schools of California, though started with great éclat, would long ago have perished utterly, but for the mission schools whose work knows no cessation. Our Christian Chinese are now so widely scattered that it seems as though there could scarcely be anywhere Eastward a city of considerable size without at least one of them. If there is one, he will hear of your Sunday-school and will be there. Utilize him to the utmost. Make a missionary out of him. And it seems to me that the evangelistic work which we have been doing—imperfectly as yet—in California, ought to be extended to the Eastern cities, and that among our Christian Chinese some ought to be appointed to this work, spending (say) a month in each city where any considerable number of Chinese are found, endeavoring to reap the harvests that are ready, and to organize for Christian work whatever converted Chinese he may find. Already, without any such special agency, our "Congregational Association of Christian Chinese" reports one "branch" with sixteen members, in Brooklyn. I am sure it would be well, if the same thing, or something similar, were organized elsewhere.
7. Finally, I must caution the American workers against too ready an acceptance of pious talk on the part of their Chinese pupils as an evidence of real piety. Grievous disappointments, involving reproach to Christ and to all missionary work, sometimes grow out of this. Herein consists, in part, the benefit which would attend the visits of reliable Chinese evangelists. They would "take forth the precious from the vile" (Jer. 15:19), and would give to the American workers not only much greater results of their labors, but a surer confidence in such as they have.