As a consequence, Sunday School teaching is and must be largely theoretical and still more largely exegetical, and with neither theory nor exegesis is the young mind of the developing child very much concerned.  What he needs is not the historical side of religion or of that great body of religious literature which we call the Bible, but a living faith which links all that was taught by the prophets and apostles, centuries ago, with what is happening in the child’s own town and family at that very moment.  It is a wide gap to bridge, and it cannot be bridged by a semi-historical review backed by picture cards, golden texts, and stars for good behavior.  These things are merely the marks of an endeavor to fitly accomplish a great task, an endeavor almost absurdly out of proportion to this aim, rendered significant, however, because it is the earnest of a great faith and a great hope.

So far as Sunday Schools help children, it is because of this spirit of faithfulness, and not because of the form which it has assumed.

In choosing, then, whether you shall send your child to a Sunday School, choose by the presence or absence of this spirit.  If you know the teachers of the Sunday School to be earnest, loving, and devoted, you may with safety assume that their personal influence will make up for what is archaic in their method of teaching.  Where the spirit is present only in a few, or where it manifests itself only occasionally, as at seasons of revival, you may well hesitate to let your child attend.  A great improvement would come about if parents would show a greater interest and encourage proper teachers to take charge of classes.  It is a thankless task at present.

[Sidenote:  Theory Not Practice]

There is one great danger in the teaching of any Sunday School—­one which the best of them cannot wholly escape—­and that is, that, in the very nature of things, they teach theory and not practice.  Harmful as this may be, indeed as it surely is in adult life, it does not begin to be so harmful as it does in youth, for the young child, as we have seen, is and should remain a unit in consciousness.  His life, his intellect, and his will are one—­an undivided trinity.  The divorce of these three is at any time a regrettable occurrence; the divorce of them in early life is an almost irreparable disaster.

[Sidenote:  Useless Truths]

The current theory is that children will learn many truths in the Sunday School which they will not put into practice then, perhaps, but which they will find useful in later life.  This fallacy underlies, of course, almost all conventional education and has only been overthrown by the dictum of modern psychology, that there is but small storage accommodation in the brain for facts which have no immediate relation to life.  What may be termed the saturating power of the brain is limited, and after it has soaked up a rather small number of truths, it can contain no