The Sunday School’s Proper Place
By Editor
The Sunday school has been a fruitful source of dissension and difference; it has been a free field for theory and experiment. In some directions it has been magnified until the church has shrunk to a mere appendage beside it; in others, by a very natural reaction it has been denounced as uncatholic if not unchristian. At last, however, order seems to be arising out of confusion, and a larger and truer ideal of the training of children in the elements of faith and morals is winning way. That at least would appear to be the witness borne by the very interesting meeting of the Sunday School Institute in Baltimore last week. It is clear that the path of reconciliation between those who ardently support and those who disparage the Sunday school lies in the direction of putting the Sunday school into a right attitude towards the three circles of natural and necessary relations, the home, the community at large, and the church. The Sunday school holds a place entirely subordinate and auxiliary to all these, and it is the forgetfulness of that fact that has brought the Sunday school into ill-repute, as needless and impertinent. And to our mind this is about the truth of the matter. The Sunday school or Sabbath school has no right to command or demand; it should be just what is needed, yea, demanded, by all those in the circle which it is designed to fill. Under God and the church, let it be a teacher and winner of souls. In Mr. Cleveland's letter of acceptance of the nomination to the office of chief magistrate of this nation, he said:— Paternalism in government finds no approval in the creed of democracy. It is a symptom of misrule, whether it is manifested in unauthorized gifts or by an unwarranted control of personal and family affairs. Mr. Cleveland is now president-elect. It will be remembered that it was a Democratic House of Representatives which passed the Sunday closing act of the World's Fair, a mighty stride toward "paternalism in government." Mr. Cleveland will have brought before him, doubtless, other measures involving the same principle. Will he stand to the good words above? President Harrison promised before his election that his influence would be cast against anything tending to a union of Church and State, and yet his signature made a law of the Sunday-closing measure,—a step taken at the demands of the church, and which literally unites Church and State. SATOLLI, the representative of the pope now in America, thus speaks of the people of this country:— From the want of prejudice I have remarked in America, it looks as if many were Protestants more in name than in reality. And there is truth in the prelate's observation. America has few real protestants against Rome, while many of those that do see the advancement Rome is making, hold principles themselves which are as subversive of human liberty as is Romanism. The present efforts for the enforcement of Sunday laws are as wicked, and have as great possibilities of evil within them, as Rome's efforts concerning our public school. Both parties are but factions under the same banner of the mystery of iniquity. The future will demonstrate the truth of this statement, as the Scriptures and logic now evidence it. THE Church Militant, for December, publishes a "Call for a General Conference of Christian Prohibitionists" to meet in Philadelphia, Pa., January 24, 1892. This call is signed by H. A. Thompson, D.D., LL.D., Hon. Neal Dow, Hon. J. W. Bruce, and twenty-two other prominent Prohibitionists. The Church Militant is not the originator of this movement. It looks like a political, partisan, Prohibition Church, such as now exists in Newburg, N. Y., and such as efforts are being put forth to organize in this city. We wonder how success can be hoped for from this quarter; if church members upon whom no compulsion is brought will not vote prohibition by a secret ballot, what hope is there that they will join a Prohibition Church? We shall have more to say of this hereafter.