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Untitled Article
received the preparatory discipline of a plain , systematic , and ele ~ mentary instruction ! How trifling the good of that prayer which expresses the utterer ' s sentiments , not the child ' s—the utterer's wants , not the child ' s—in which at the most the child has only a vague and therefore evanescent sympathy—of that singing which is little more than a vocal effort , in which the heart takes no share , by which the soul is not kindled !
The Sunday School , it may be said , cannot do what you require . I answer , it has done much , it may do more ; and as the teachers improve—as they grow in knowledge and goodness , in piety and love , it will do more . And speedily would it do much more were teachers imbued with right sentiments for their work
—did they look on themselves as the moral and spiritual nurses and parents of their classes—did they preside in them with the spirit of beneficence and piety—did they , out of a pure and holy spirit , labour to pour into the hearts of their scholars the love of God and man . Their influence has been contracted because
their notions have been narrow . An enlargement of mind and an elevation of spirit would multiply their usefulness , and sanctify all its results . 1 do not think it impossible that the discipline of a Sunday School should resemble the discipline of a truly Christian family—that virtue and piety should be communicated in every part , and the whole of the routine—that the purer and more refined and elevated motives should be cultivated , and those of a lower and depraving nature be repressed .
Well do I know that the best exertions of those benevolent persons who engage in Sunday School tuition may be , and too often are , checked and counteracted by the adverse influences to which the children are subjected in their homes . But might not even this difficulty be met by Sunday School missions ? I cannot but think that if every School would undertake to send out into its immediate vicinity , and especially into the houses whence its pupils come , pious , kind-hearted , and earnest Christian men and
women , who would seek by the means of books and tracts—of conversation—of example , the moral and religious improvement of those whom they visited , that the melioration of the discipline of Sunday Schools would be easily effected , and the labour which it requires , prove not only , as it is , a labour of love and self-denial , but of far greater utility than at present .
I am inclined to think that by a mission of mercy , such as that to which I have now alluded , another , and I grieve to say , a prevalent evil , and a most powerful check to the Sunday Schools , might to some desirable extent be alleviated , —I allude to the squalid penury which abounds , at least in some districts of the kingdom . I know , for I have seen with my own eyes , the moral devastation that extreme poverty commits . Perhaps no other thing has so fatal an efficacy in demoralizing the human being , — in extinguishing every better principle of his nature , and reducing
Untitled Article
236 Sunday School Education .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 236, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/20/
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