At any rate, whatever be the course of study, the teen age boy needs to have his life and activity center about the dynamics of the Bible.  “The Art of Living Well” can only be learned out of the textbook of the experience of the ages.  The ordinary tasks and interests of boys, as well as daily conduct, can be made great channels for life’s best achievement only in proportion to the dynamic throb of the Word that has inspired men to heroism amid the commonplace and the uncommon, to self-sacrifice and peace.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON BIBLE STUDY

Alexander.—­Sunday School and the Teens ($1.00).

Horne.—­Leadership of Bible Study Groups (.50).

Starbuck.—­Should the Impartation of Knowledge Be a Function of the
Sunday School? (.65).

Use of the Bible Among Schoolboys (.60).

Winchester.—­The International Graded Sunday School Lessons (American
Youth, April, 1912) (.20).

X

THROUGH-THE-WEEK ACTIVITIES FOR BOYS’ ORGANIZED CLASSES[5]

The Sunday school has at last begun to realize that a boy demands more than spiritual activity to round out his life into symmetrical development.  It also comprehends that religion is more than a set of beliefs—­that religion is a life at work among its fellows. “For to me to live is Christ”—­to live, play, love, and work.  Because of these two reasons, the Sunday school assumes its obligation to direct and foster the through-the-week life of its boys, as well as the Bible period of the Sunday session of the school.

Contact.—­Of course, for a long time the leaders and teachers of Boys’ Organized Bible Classes have felt the need of a through-the-week contact with the members of the class.  The school period of one hour or an hour and a half has been found by most teachers to be too meager for a healthy class life.  Then, too, most teachers are realizing that really to touch the life of the boy more contact than the teaching of the Bible lesson is necessary.  Some teachers are taking an interest in the school or working conditions of the teen boy.  Quite a few teachers are now deeply interested in the leisure time of their pupils, and have begun to direct the physical, social and mental activities of the teen years, as well as the spiritual.  They have realized that the teen age is not made up of disjointed and disconnected activities, but is in a continual process of development, and that its growth is normally symmetrical and its activities intertwined.

The Organized Class.—­The great majority of Sunday school teachers have no desire to try any auxiliary organization in combination with their classes.  They are somewhat dubious of the machinery, ritual, etc., which are concomitants of these schemes.  Again and again they have voiced a demand, not for new organizations, but for activities to deepen interest in the organization that the teacher understands—­the Bible Class.