the Negro made rapid strides out of barbarism into the elements of Christian civilization. So effective was the work that in 1860 careful estimates give nearly one-third of a million colored people who were receiving regular religious instruction. In addition to this, be it remembered, the Negro worshipped in churches for the whites; heard the best preaching; got the rudiments of religious thought; was brought into touch with God; in song and prayer and worship he was touched by the power of the world to come. He learned the Scriptures; he could not read and so stored the Bible in memory, until many a slave became mighty in the Scriptures. He wove psalm and prayer and prophecy into those pathetic and immortal melodies that yet clutch the heart. In fact, he got strong hold of the rudiments of the Christian religion. The seed fell into good ground.

The crisis of the war broke off these old associations. Under freedom new relations obtained-the old sense of obligation on the part of former Christian masters was largely lost. During Reconstruction days the gulf was widened. Yet with all its blunders, Reconstruction lifted a race out of slavery into citizenship. The ballot gave the slave a name. For the first time he stood érect and counted as one-no longer a chattel, but a citizen. It gave him a sense of personality. It made all men anew realize the force of the great dictum of Kant, “Always treat humanity, whether in yourself or in another, as a person, never as a thing." Reconstruction acts first gave the South a system of common schools. And even in poverty such facilities have been given that today six-tenths of the Negro race can read their Bibles.

This furnishes a basis for broad and effective Sunday-school work. Let it be kept in view, however, that this separation of the races in church life and work left the Negro, on the threshold of freedom, to the instruction and leadership of a meagerly taught and unlettered native ministry. Had it not been for the effective religious work done I would have drifted into barbarism. One of the miracles of modern Christianity is seen in the power of preaching, the initiative and skill in organization and leadership shown by the Negro ministry after the war. While multitudes of the youth were touched and uplifted through the schools established by northern benevolence, the older ministry was unlettered; yet they arrested a downward movement of the race, and through the power of God and His Word lifted multitudes into the life and light of Christ, so that today, as the standing monument to their work, we see thirty thousand churches valued at forty million dollars, and a large percentage of adults identified with the Church.

But this work has been done largely by a preaching ministry and

not by a teaching ministry. It is a serious question whether the ministry has kept pace with the rising generation that has been to school; that reads, that thinks, and that demands a ministry that reads and thinks, and through its intelligence and moral leadership is fitted to command the thought, mold the conscience and direct the higher life of the youth of the race.

Turning to the Sunday-school we find it is the weakest part of their church enterprise. It is weak in organization, meager in equipment, largely inefficient in leadership, teaching and in work. Yet with the youth not properly provided for in the plan of church work, the Sundayschool, properly organized and equipped, gives greatest hope for the future. Leaders and teachers must be trained. The problem is, how shall this be done? Such is the magnitude of the task, such the race conditions to be met and mastered, that the Negro must furnish the forces for permanent work.

The idea developed at the Clifton Conference, under the leadership of Mr. W. N. Hartshorn, is, that through the schools there may be raised up the trained forces that shall lead in Sunday-school work and give adequate Bible training to an entire people. Here is a task of such magnitude and importance as to make strong appeal to the conscience of the whole Church, for it concerns not machinery, but life.

The plan would include the broadening of courses of study in the schools now under Christian auspices, so as to give adequate training in Sunday-school organization, methods and work. Credits should be given for Sunday-school and Bible work just as is already done in certain schools in the North.

As a practical example of what may be done, take the city of Atlanta, with its six institutions representing four denominations, with nearly two thousand of the picked youth of the race. Let a teacher, thoroughly equipped for instruction in Sunday-school methods and Bible work, be secured; a man with a sense of genuine consecration to a high task; a man whose ability and contagion of spirit would command the respect and awaken the enthusiasm of the entire student body. One day each week could be given to each denominational group of schools. The work should be on a sound scholastic basis. The methods should be as thorough as obtained in any other part of the curriculum, with credits as in any other study. One day a week should be given to the instruction of teachers in the city already engaged in Sundayschool work. The colored Sunday-schools of the city should be organized, as far as practical, on a modern basis. On Sundays hundreds of the students in special training should be placed in the church and

Mission Sunday-schools for practical work under careful supervision. In this manner the schools of an entire city could be organized, officered and equipped, and thus serve as models.

At other centers in the South, such as Nashville and New Orleans, where several schools are located, the same type of work is made possible with similar practical results.

During the summer vacation months such an instructor should go throughout the state, meeting the numerous conferences, institutes and conventions held at this season. In these assemblies opportunity would be given to instruct and inspire thousands of preachers and teachers in the interests of more effective Sunday-school organization and work. He would also impress upon them the importance and value of coöperation with the young teachers sent forth from the colleges in organizing the Sunday-schools on a modern basis. It is evident that the effect of such training of capable young men and women in the schools and colleges would be cumulative. Going forth into a thousand communities as teachers, preachers, physicians and industrial leaders, they would be so imbued with modern Sunday-school ideas and work as to make each school touched by them an example and an inspiration to each community.

The method proposed, in the first place, is apostolic. The Master trained the seventy and then sent them forth into every town and village. It is also the method of the foreign mission field. The work of reaching the young lagged and failed until trained native workers from the Christian schools were sent forth into Sunday-school work. It is the method of the modern college, the plan of which is to train the comparatively few select and capable minds of youths, who shall go forth to be the intellectual and social leaven of the race.

The basis for effective work through the Sunday-school is found in what Stanley Hall and others have emphasized-the genius which the Negro has for religion. No race surpasses the Negro in religious endowment. In the youth of a race of ten millions, a race woven into the warp and woof of our Anglo-Saxon civilization, through the Sundayschool, we face the problem of shaping the life of oncoming millions. It is the work of the potter with the plastic material of a race, naturally religious and with its face toward the Light. The danger is that through neglect the clay will harden and set with its face against God.

READ BY REV. E. M. SEIN, SECRETARY

The Sunday-school work in Mexico is the most hopeful part of the mission work in said country. Men and women are annually converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ and are added to the churches; but the real increase and permanent value of the work lies in the fact that out of a total membership of 21,467 enrolled in the Sunday-schools, threefifths are found between the ages of seven and fifteen years and are within our very walls and therefore can be brought to Christ in the course of a short time. As an evangelizing agency the Sunday-school today is well equipped to carry out our Master's great commission in every mission field if we are only faithful in using opportunity and every practical help in conducting this great institution.

In Mexico there is great need of Sunday-school evangelism to make pastors and people understand the resources of the evangelistic fruitfulness possessed by the Sunday-school, and this has been from the beginning part of the program of our work. We still find in some places that people are averse to the Sunday-school, preferring the preaching service, while in others there is considerable lack of appreciation of the importance of early training and conversion of the young.

To these difficulties must be added the lack of competent workers filled with Sunday-school enthusiasm to develop all the practical features of an up-to-date and soul-winning Sunday-school. We find a help along this line in the periodical district conventions which are now held in different parts of the country and which necessarily tend to show us the weak points in the work and at the same time suggest the needed remedy. Twelve of these district conventions have been held annually under the auspices of our Sunday-school Association and the Secretary has attended most of them giving all possible help to the success of the same. In some sections the interest has been really surprising as evidenced by the convention held in a country community, not very long ago, where fourteen Sunday-schools were represented by seventy-eight delegates, some having had to walk several miles to honor their appointment. The convention idea is slowly but firmly gaining ground and we think the day is not far distant when many others can be organized. The fact that some of the Sunday-schools, if not a large proportion of them, are so far apart, is a difficulty of no small consideration when the bringing together of officers and workers for convention or conference is planned.

The best National Convention ever held in Mexico was that of last year, the year of the Mexican Centennial, held in Mexico City in September. Every State in the Republic was represented, and delegates registered from Sonora in the Northwest to Yucatan in the Southeast. The beautiful Sunday-school banners displayed on the walls of the Convention church, some exquisitely embroidered, bore clear testimony to the fact that interest was at high mark and that the outlook for the future is full of promise, for which we thank the Lord very sincerely. The Convention was greatly favored by a distinguished delegation of thirty-eight visiting brethren from the United States and Canada, who came with Mr. Marion Lawrance, General Secretary of the International Sunday-school Association, with the specific purpose of attending our sessions and helping with their presence and words of counsel. Never before had such great honor been paid to the Sunday-school work of Mexico, and all our people appreciated it very much. The wise and cheerful words of Mr. Lawrance, as well as his Sunday-school addresses, made a deep impression upon our workers. As somebody expressed it, “Mr. Lawrance's visit to Mexico was like the coming of soft rain on a field of young corn. Besides this important feature of that Convention, there was the granting of diplomas to teacher-training graduates and the adoption of the Graded Lessons.

The departmental work has not been developed so far, but efforts have been put forth to arouse interest in Teacher Training, Home and