[Illustration:  Wesley College, Sheffield.]

In view of these changed conditions, Conference has expressed itself anxious for such a complete national system of education as might place a Christian unsectarian school within reasonable distance of every family, especially in rural districts, with “adequate representative public management”; it has most earnestly deprecated the exclusion of the Bible, and suitable religious instruction therefrom by the teachers, from the day schools; but, so long as denominational schools form part of the national system, it is resolved to maintain our schools and Training Colleges, in full vigour.  Difficulties, undreamed of sixty years ago, surround this great question; but assuredly Methodism will be true to its trust and its traditions.

The cost of Wesleyan schools last year was L215,634, and was met by school fees, subscriptions, and a government grant of L185,780.  The Education Fund of 1896, amounting to L7,115, was spent on the Training Colleges, grants to necessitous schools, etc.

Wesley approved of Sunday schools as means of giving religious instruction to the children of the poor, and Hannah Ball at High Wycombe, a good Methodist, and Silas Told, teaching at the Foundery, both anticipated the work of Raikes by several years.  In 1837 there were already 3,339 Sunday schools, with 341,442 scholars.  Today the schools number 7,147, the officers and teachers 131,145, and there are in the schools 965,201 children and young people.  The formation in 1869 of the Circuit Sunday-school Union, and in 1874 of the Connexional Sunday-school Union, has done much for the schools, in providing suitable literature for teachers and scholars, and in organising their work.  An additional motive to Scripture study is furnished by the “Religious Knowledge Examinations” instituted by Conference; certificates, signed by the President, being granted to teachers and scholars who succeed in passing the examinations.  In recognition of the value of so important a department of the Church, adequate representation at the quarterly meetings is now accorded to the Sunday schools.

It is not in our day only that the pastoral oversight of the young has been deemed worthy of attention; the duty has always been enforced on ministers; but in 1878 there were first formed junior Society classes, to prepare children for full membership.  There are now seventy-two thousand in such classes.

In 1896 we note a new effort to bring young people into the kingdom, in the foundation of the “Wesley Guild,” of which the President of Conference is the head, with four vice-presidents, two being laymen.  The guild is “a union of the young people of a congregation.  Its keynote is comradeship, and its aim is to encourage the young people of our Church in the highest aims of life.”  The story of its origin may be briefly told.