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THE KING’S BUSINESS
lesson had Christ in it, or contained some significant words that would allow you to tie it on to Him. Teacher, I wouldn’t teach a Sunday School lesson that I couldn’t bring around to Christ. And I wouldn’t go before my class until I had found Him in that particular lesson. God forgive you if you do. You say, but we are teach ing the Graded Lessons in our Sunday School, and just now we are studying the lives of missionary heroes. Now I knbw there are some people who are criticising the Graded Lessons because they do not take the scholar into the Bible for study, but God pity the man who condemns them because he cannot preach Christ to his or her scholars. Poor fools. If you cannot teach Christ from the lives of our mission ary heroes, I guess the fault is your own. Because it was Jesus Christ who led them all to the foreign field, and surely you wouldn’t talk about a man laying down his life in a heathen land without looking for his motive, would you? Bless your soul! I could teach Christ from the life of Bob Ingersoll or Judas Iscariot, by showing how they were denying the only Saviour that could save them; the manner of death of each, compared to the death of Moody or Wesley, would be sufficient proof that they had missed something. In class-room then is one ws^y for you to take up definite work of evangelism with those whom God has entrusted to your care. I said there were two ways. The second is by personal work. Talking with your scholars one by one. Nineteen times Jesus stopped to speak to individuals. Philip was halted by God in the midst of a big revival in Samaria and sent away down across the, desert to speak to one man, and he was a foreigner. I would sooner undertake to win a class of ten boys to God in ten weeks, by talking with them one by one, than I would in a year by teaching them col lectively. Mr. Moody said if his soul’s salvation depended on his winning 1000 souls in a year’s time, and he was given his choice of doing it one by one or by preach ing to crowds, he would take the one-by-
Scoville, the United States had a Christian President? But coming nearer home—and facing a practical and perplexing problem in our , present-day Sunday School—yes, a problem that is most alarming—I want to ask what is the matter with our Sunday School today!1 I know it is true that ninety per cent, of all church members come from Sunday School. But in the face of that, I want to say to you that less than twenty- five per cent, of Sunday School scholars ever are saved and unité with the church. . What’s the matter? Where is- the leak? Can it be stopped ? HOW TO STOP THE LEAK . I have talked to the pastor, I have talked to the superintendent and officers, and now I want to say something to teachers. First, the leak is a natural one; second, it can be stopped ; third, you are the logical per son to stop it. I said the leak is a natural one, and it is. It is just as natural for that boy and girl to drift away from the Sun day School as it is for a log to drift down stream. In their natural condition, they have no more life or power of resistance to the things that are constantly and insistently calling them from the church than the log in mid-stream has to the cur rent that carries it along so rapidly. So, unless the supernatural comes into their lives, something outside of and above them selves; unless Christ comes into their lives, we needn’t expect the church to retain its hold on them after they reach a certain age. They leave the Sunday School just as naturally as the young birds grow rest less and leave their nest when the outside world begins to call. Unless the members of your class believe in Christ and accept Him as their personal Saviour, you needn’t expect them to do anything else than drift away, and shun and abhor those things which we want them to love. Now the teacher has two ways in which to present Christ. Either is good. Both are better, as one is supplement to the other: First. In the class-study. I said a while ago that every Sunday School
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