GATHER THEM IN | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1881

GATHER THEM IN.

WE often tell over with a smile the old-fashioned ways of Sabbath-school teaching in vogue when we were children. Our young folks smile too, and almost wonder we could have been induced to attend of our own free will. Perhaps the latter consideration had less weight than now, in deciding how children should spend the Sabbath. But though far from saying that “the former times were better than these,” we have yet many of us cause to remember, with grateful emotions, that souls were born into the kingdom in those antiquated Sabbath-schools. Where this is a leading result, a school has a fair record. Where it is wanting, no matter how brilliant the system, the school is a signal failure. If it is not a means of saving souls, it does little more than give the children a kind of Sabbath entertainment.

One Sabbath-school made its strong point happiness. “The happy Sabbath-school” was its chosen motto; all the hymns sung in it were of a joyful order. The superintendent preached to the children in the happiest strain, and all the teachers were exhorted to make the hour as full of happiness as they could. It might have seemed a little uproarious to a stranger, and there seemed no place for the serious, earnest pleadings of the Spirit to come in. But the superintendent was entirely satisfied with his system. If the children were only happy, was it not the next thing to being safe? Very likely this, too, would come in time, but one would almost think that it was counted a secondary consideration. Men do not reason that way when a ship is exposed to fearful peril by the winds and waves. It is not enough that we teach them that God is a merciful, loving Father; we must also teach them the grounds on which this mercy is offered to us. You may desire to go to St. Louis, but if you take the train for New York it will be of no avail that you think you are going right; you will never reach your destination. Beware that you are not blind guides to any of these little ones. “Gather them in,” not only to Sabbath-school, but also into the heavenly kingdom.—Augsberg Teacher.