SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

Southland Times, Issue 866, 16 December 1867, Page 3

SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

The Bishop of Oxford has been making another speech on education. The occasion was a conference of Sundayschool teachers held in the Isle of Wight, at which his Lordship presided. It seemed to him, he said, that they must divide the children who came to the Sunday-school in different classes. Those who were taught during the week should be treated in a different manner from those who came only on Sundays. In great towns, perhaps, they could not get a poor ragged set of children together on any other day, and such they should endeavor to teach. Those, however,

whom they had under their care every day in the week they should, as much as possible, avoid teaching on a Sunday. Sunday was as much a day of rest for children as for grown-up persons, and it was a mistaken idea to take children, whom God had made volatile, who could not be still for a moment, because it was not their nature, who were always dropping off to sleep on the benches they sat j upon because they needed sleep, and | would begin to whispei 4 and laugh, just as the bee needed to buzz when he flew about — it was a mistake to take children whom God had made in this way, to set them on a hard bench, and to make horrid faces at them when they began to buzz, or to knock them on the head when they went to sleep. In his experience Sunday-school teachers failed very much on the "be good system." That was the beginning and end of all their teaching, and marvellously unfruitful teaching it, would be for men, women or children. They could not expect the elder children to continue attending a Sunday-school, where all the little ones of the parish were being taught. The rook never frequented the same ground with the starling, who was a busy, talkative gentleman, while the rook was "a quiet sort of fellow, and, therefore, when the starling came near, the rook looked at him with a peculiar cock of the eye and flew away. In the same way the fourteen years' old pupil flew away from the little volitile things who sat dozing upon the hard benches. As to these younger ones, no one who was at all acquainted with children would expect to get any real knowledge into them. When these Sunday-school children were sent to church, not with their parents, | but in a body together, and were placed, as they generally were, a long way off the clergyman lest they should disturb the congregation, how was it possible but that the little volatile things should begin whispering to one another and kicking their legs about, and how could they be expected to pay any attention to the service when they had been tired out with two hours' previous teaching at school ? Then, perhaps, in the afternoon, the little things having had rather a better dinner than usual, would fall asleep, which was the best thing they could do. No doubt a good deal might be done in showing kindness to these little ones, whose parents did not take them to church — afc all events they might be kept away from the Devil's school, where they played at chuck-farthing and made dirt pies. At the Sunday school everything should be done to make the children happy. Of course there should be some coloring of Christianity and religious teaching about it ; but particularly the little things? shoald be taught to sing, for which they were always ready. The teachers ought to be a great deal ahead of the scholars if they would teach them anything of the Church system. If the teachers only had a general foggy impression about the Church — aud that was frequently the case, especially with persons who were continually talking about " Our beloved. Church" — nothing useful would be done. It was not by dreary dull teaching, not by sending a man round to knock th& children's heads when they fell asleep., they would do good, but by making Sunday schools the opportunity of showing a. kindly interest in the little ones sent. there, and then by the leavening principle of the love of Christ they would make their schools not wearisome to the little ones, nor useless to the older ones, but would make them instruments for touching their hearts, and thus would get a great deal of truth in the narrownecked mouth of the bottle, until, by God's grace, they could fill it as full as it could bear.