Why Our Children Should Go to Church School
By MRS. I. H. E.
The children of the church are its most precious asset. They are its hope, its promise. Properly instructed, surrounded by holy influences, they grow up to carry the burdens that must be laid down by older hands. The church that fails to hold its children, though it moves heaven and earth to win men and women to its fold, must ultimately fail. The churches of America realize this, and within the last decade a movement has sprung up having for its object the winning and holding of the boys and girls. Thousands of children, and of youth in their teens, now flock to the Sunday school, where hundreds went before; and earnest men and women are putting forth every effort in their power to make churchgoing and Bible study a habit with them. Boys as well as girls are interested; and in village and suburb, as well as on the congested streets of our biggest city, it is no unusual sight on Sunday morning to see groups of boys from ten to sixteen years of age going churchward with their Bibles under their arms. Every movement that tends to make the children familiar with the Bible is to be commended; but with one notable exception most of the churches drop their responsibility in this matter when the Sunday school and the Junior Pulpit hours have passed. The Catholic Church, however, never lets go of its own children, gathering them into its church schools, and instructing them daily in its doctrines, polity, and worship. Not only so, but thousands upon thousands of the daughters of Protestant parents have been won to Catholicism through the influence of its schools and teachers. “So true is this,” says the president of a woman’s college, “that in their schools for girls in particular there is no need for proselyting effort, because the all-prevailing presence of the Catholic worship, to which they must conform, inevitably accomplishes its task.” All this goes to prove, if proof were needed, that the daily influences surrounding a child during its foundation-laying school years determine in large measure the course of the later life. If we choose the worldly school because of its convenience, its lack of expense, its popularity, and commit our children to its care, can we wonder if they form their friendships with the children of these schools, and are more or less, even perhaps unconsciously, drawn away from the truth by worldly influences? The years from eight to twelve are called by one writer “a plateau in the life of the child.” What is thoroughly learned during those years can never be entirely lost. “The child’s mind receives peculiar impressions at this time. Drill, habituation, tables, even dates, and to some extent statistics and vocabularies that are essential, can be indelibly stamped on the mind, so that when the child later comes to years of maturer age and intelligence, it will rejoice to find itself in secure possession of fundamental acquisitions that are indispensable for the conduct of its life.” If it is important—and many wise and good men are declaring that it is—to send young men and women to denominational colleges, is it not likewise doubly essential that during these early formative years the children shall be taught in the home school and the church school? Moses, taught by his godly mother, never forgot the God of his fathers nor lost sight of the promised deliverance; and dare we, standing in this later day of deliverance, neglect the means provided in the church school, not only to give spiritual development to our children, but also to prepare them for future usefulness in giving the message to others? “For children who are receiving a Christian education will be witnesses for Christ. As Jesus in the temple solved the mysteries which priests and rulers had not discerned, so in the closing work of this earth, children who have been rightly educated will in their simplicity speak words which will be an astonishment to men who now talk of ‘higher education.’ As the children sang in the temple courts, ‘Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,’ so in these last days, children’s voices will be raised to give the last message of warning to a perishing world. When heavenly intelligences see that men are no longer permitted to present the truth, the Spirit of God will come upon the children, and they will do a work in the proclamation of the truth which the older workers cannot do, because their way will be hedged up.” “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI, pp. 202, 203. In a few weeks thousands of children from Seventh-day Adventist homes will reenter school or begin it for the first time. Shall we carefully weigh the question of where they shall go, and for whose service they shall be trained? If the church school needs help, are we willing to sacrifice for it? Shall we not pray for it and for all who bear its responsibilities? And having done all we can to help it, shall we not send our children there to receive the blessing of daily instruction in the things that pertain to righteousness? MRS. I. H. E.