John Wesley, Jr. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 273 pages of information about John Wesley, Jr..

John Wesley, Jr. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 273 pages of information about John Wesley, Jr..

“Speaking of the Board of Sunday Schools,” the elder Farwell resumed, for this was a hobby he missed no chance to ride, “it made all the difference with us in our work for a better Sunday school—­gave us expert backing, you know.  And I notice by its latest annual report—­yes, I always get a copy, though J.W. thinks it dry reading—­that it is helping Sunday schools by the thousand, not in this country only, but wherever in the world our church is at work.  Of course you know how it starts Sunday schools, and how often they grow into churches.  Well, it didn’t quite do that here, but this church is a sight better and bigger because we began to take the Board’s advice when we did.  It was a good thing for our boy, and many another boy and girl, that the Board woke us up.”

“It hasn’t all been easy work, though,” the minister suggested.  “I remember that when I came I found there was a good deal of discontent over the Graded Lessons.”

“Sure there was,” said J.W., Sr.  “We had all been brought up on the Uniform Lessons, and most of us thought they were just right.  Besides, we rather enjoyed thinking of ourselves as keeping step with the whole Sunday school world—­all over the wide earth everybody studying the same scripture on the same Sunday.  And that was a big idea to get into the minds of Christians of every name everywhere.”

“Yes, but, Dad,” put in J.W., “what was the good of it if the lessons didn’t fit everybody?  Did people think that the kids in the primary and their mothers in ma’s class ought to study the same lesson? or did they think they could fit the same lesson to everybody by the different notes they put into the Quarterlies?”

“Well, son,” his father replied, “I reckon we thought both ways.  And I’m not so sure yet that it can’t be done.  But if one thing more than another reconciled me to the Graded Lessons, it was that they made being a Sunday school teacher a good deal bigger job than it had ever been.  It was harder work, because every lesson had to be studied by the teacher, and in a different way from what was thought good enough in the old days.  And I’m for anything, Graded Lessons or whatever, that’ll make people take Sunday school teaching more seriously.”

Then Mrs. Farwell ventured to take up the story.  It was about that time, in the very beginning of the Drury pastorate, that J.W. joined the church on probation; much to her surprise and humbling.

“I hadn’t even thought of it,” she said, “though I should have been the first one.  He had been getting ready in the Junior League, as I very well knew, but one day, as you may remember”—­Brother Drury did, for that day was the real beginning of this story—­“you made an invitation at the end of a real simple sermon, and if J.W., Jr., didn’t get right up from my side and walk straight to the front!”

After that there had been a probationers’ class, with J.W. and perhaps twenty others meeting the pastor every week for straight religious teaching, so that at Easter, when they came up for membership, what with their Sunday school and Junior League training, and what with the pastor’s more personal instruction, they were able to pass a pretty fair examination on the great Christian truths, and on the general scheme of the church’s work.

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John Wesley, Jr. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.