p. 377 | SCHOOL AND CHURCH

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1881

SCHOOL AND CHURCH.

GIVE no countenance to the idea that the Sabbath-school effort is an outside affair, to be managed and conducted apart from the church. It is rather the church, the people of God, exercising their Christian activity in that particular mode. The church has its Sabbath-school, as one of the means of training its own children in the doctrines and duties of religion. The children of the church attend the school, and then as a matter of course remain with their parents to attend public worship. This fact is a good basis of operations for inducing the other children of the school to attend. Let the teachers, and let the church authorities, keep this aim ever before their eyes. There is no way by which an irreligious family can be so surely and effectually benefited, as by inducing them to become connected with a Christian congregation and to attend statedly religious worship. Next to a house to shelter their bodies, a family should have some religious home, a place in some house of worship which they consider theirs, and in which they appear statedly on the Sabbath. There is no means so effectual for securing this end, as an efficient, well-ordered Sabbath-school. Teachers and superintendents should accustom themselves more than they now do, to regard this as an important, indeed a leading part of their work. The Sabbath-school is an immense network of influences, and it should be continually putting out its feelers in every direction, to see what can be done towards reaching and bringing in those families which are without any church connections.—Hart on Sabbath-schools.