SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4472, 20 July 1875, Page 3

SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir, —On the seventh page of the New Zealand Mail is given a report of St, Paul’s Sunday-school, in which occurs the following passage:— 14 It is much to be regretted that the boys do not show so much anxiety to avail themselves of the valuable opportunity which is thus offered to them.” This is a simple way of stating a self-apparent result, and, moreover, it exhibits a lukewarm acknowledgment of a state of things for which there certainly is no easy remedy. Why do not the boys attend the classes as regularly and with as much seeming anxiety to acquire religious knowledge as the girls do ? If the report embodied a reason for this anomaly it would be more valuable than it is—or did the compiler of the report cast about for an answer to the question why these classes are not popular with the boys? If he has not done so, I will endeavor to find a solution to the seeming difliculty. For a period of more than twelve years 1 was a Sunday-school scholar, and for a short term of that period a teacher. Experience m the above capacities taught me that the system, excellent as it is, is not without serious disadvantages, more particularly to the very class for which the institution is designed. ‘ , Toiling during six days of the week in the workshops of our several industries, the boy—unless he be a worthless dolt —feels more or less the restraints of labor, as he sees the bright, sunshine, the green trees, the spreading fields, the grand old hills, the tantalising whispers of Nature in his ear to come away and enjoy the freedom of young and happy existences. But the order of labor is imperative. Chafe and fret as the boy may, he submits to the routine—yet often solacing himself with the hope that when Sunday comes he will enjoy himself. Yet here again the well-meaning but puritanical and formula-en-cumbered individual steps before him, with the ominous phrase, —“ Come to church, come toSundayThe" Sunday-school teachers are generally selected from the class which has leisure for enjoying free open air exercise, consequently when the day of rest comes round they are ready for their weekly imprisonment, and bear it without a murmur (?). And what is remarkable, this class thinks it becoming to regard Sunday walking out as unfashionable, and a practice to be discountenanced. With the girls of the Sunday classes the case is somewhat different, and it is well that the future mothers of our future citizens axe anxious to acquire religious knowledge. The Legislature of the country interfered in the matter of the employment of females, for which our women cannot be too grateful; but who will take up the case for our boys ? Clearly not the compiler of the report I have referred to ; he does not carry sufficient metal for the task. In your pulpit columns —same paper—it is reported of a gentleman that he “hoped that the day was not far distant when they would have Sunday-schools for grown people.” Verily, religion, thou art a hard lesson to learn, and a heavy burden to bear.' To this digression, 1 answer that religion is in its most complete and comprehensive sense contained in the following sentence from Job xxviii. 2S, freely translated —“ The fear of God, and departure from eviL” To return to our boys. At present, and perhaps throughout the future of our country, very many of the boys of the city of Wellington will be employed in the counting-houses of our merchants, and in the shops of oar retail tradesmen. .Cannot something be done by Sunday-school teachers to ameliorate the condition of these youths ? Where are the members of the Early Closing Association? These ought to combine for good. . There are longings and absolute wants implanted in the inmost being of youth for the untrammelled exercise of all his divinely-bestowed faculties, these it were well to consider; first, to nurse, to instruct,- to perfect, and next, to infix in properly prepared soil “the fear of God, the departure from evil.” At present we have too, too much doctrinal cram, too much of the cast-iron methods of instruction. Elasticity, brilliance, loving yet firm barriers placed across the path of the erring, active sympathy for the fallen, downright love of nature, just appreciation of man—** the true Shekinah” is as yet poorly comprehended and but shabbily taught. To the boys of our city I will say :You ought not to be too harshly censured for remiss attendance at the Bible class. One text of Scripture applied will serve you for a month. I hope that the foregoing remarks will be taken in the spirit of consistency in which they are given, and to my young friends I will repeat Buskin’s famous pasage, so beautiful in itself, and so truthfully applicable to the scenery around Wellington:—“ The mountains seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and their cathedrals, full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for th& scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper.”—l have, &c., George Wilson.