Why should we thus ignore the educational progress of the age, starve our children spiritually, and hamper them in their religious development by this obsolete system of education which has been long since outgrown in the public schools?  Why should we not ignore tradition, prejudice, and personal preference, where these are in the way, and let the needs of the child decide?  Why should thousands of church schools to-day be using the Uniform Lessons?

Some use them because they are cheaper; others because they always have used them and do not like the trouble and disarrangement of a change; others because of the doubtful theory of the inspiration that comes from having all the members of the family studying the same lesson at the same time (we do not expect all the family to read or study the same material in other lines); and perhaps others because they have not been accustomed to thinking of religious education following the same principles and laws as other education.  But whatever the explanation of the use of the Uniform Lessons in our church schools in the past, let us now see to it that they give way to better material.  Let us not be satisfied, even, when the ungraded uniform lessons are “improved”; they should not be improved, but discarded.

Graded lessons.—­A large and increasing number of our best church schools are now using some form of graded lesson material based on the topics supplied by the International Lesson Committee.  Each great denomination has its own lesson writers, who take these topics and elaborate them into the graded lessons such as we know in the Berean Series, the Keystone Series, the Pilgrim Series, the Westminster Series, etc.  All such lesson material, which seeks to adapt the material to the needs of the child as he progresses year by year from infancy to adulthood, is infinitely superior to any form of ungraded material.  It is easier and more interesting for the child to learn, less difficult for the teacher to present; and its value in guiding spiritual development immeasurably greater.

Some form of closely graded lessons is the only kind of material which should be used in our church schools; the children have the same need and the same right to material graded and prepared to meet their understanding in religion as in language or in science.  But when we employ graded lessons we must make sure that the child, and not the subject matter; is the basis of the grading.  We must make certain that the writer of the lessons knows the mental grasp, the type of interests, the characteristic attitudes, and the social activities of the child at the different stages, and then arranges the material to meet these needs.  We must not simply aim to cover so much biblical material, even if we select it as well as we may to come within the child’s grasp; we must have his real religious needs, his religious growth, and his spiritual development in mind, and provide for these.