dawning day in which the truth shall drive the shadows away. And if as the day rises it is more clearly seen that the field needs more workers than when you first entered upon it, this will be a call to plan for larger things.

A WORD FROM CUBA

REV. S. A. NEBLETT, SECRETARY-ELECT FOR Cuba.

Cuba believes in the Sunday-school Association, and the evangelical churches of Cuba believe that the organized Sunday-school movement is the solution of many of their problems, and that in the Sunday-school there is the most efficient agency for the evangelization of Cuba.

Six years ago, one of our missionaries, brother H. S. Harris, who in a few days will leave for South America, conceived the idea of a Sundayschool and a Young People's Convention. He presented his motion before the assembled pastors of Havana, Cuba, and it was decided to hold in the following year a Sunday-school convention. A good many people thought the movement was premature, they thought we did not have enough Sunday-schools and young people's societies to make a convention possible, yet the committee went ahead and secured the necessary data and advertised the convention, and in the month of June, 1906, the First National Sunday-school and Young People's Convention was held in the city of Matanzas. We expected an attendance of fifty or sixty delegates, and to our great surprise we had present 126 delegates from all provinces of the island. They had never understood as yet what it meant to be an evangelical Christian, and in the moment of our first assembly in an evangelistic church a thrill went over the entire body as we sang, "Rescue the Perishing" and "Onward Christian Soldiers." In that moment the Sunday-school movement took on a new aspect. The following year we had another convention, and Dr. Phillips was present and he helped us greatly in the matter of organization. Then came Brother Lucas, and he has been visiting us year after year, going from one end of Cuba to the other, meeting Sundayschool leaders and addressing meetings, and has brought us a new conception of the organized Sunday-school. Three years ago at your Louisville convention, some representatives of our association were present. Mr. Ellzey caught a vision and he carried it back to Louisiana, and as a result the good men and women of that state made it their purpose and put it into action to contribute a thousand dollars a year to support the work in the island of Cuba. Brother Ellzey visited us at

the Third National Convention at Cienfuegos, and there we organized after the form of your State and Provincial Associations, the Cuban National Sunday School Association, and that Association has been doing efficient work ever since. At that meeting the executive committee voted to raise $575 to pay on the traveling expenses and office expenses of the secretary, and the spirit of self-support is in the churches of Cuba. I believe the time will soon come when the Cuban Association will be strong enough to pay half of his salary and traveling expenses.

CONDUCTED BY MARION LAWRANCE, GENERAL SECRETARY. Ques.—What should be the Superintendent's last word in dismissing the Sunday-school?

Ans.-Invitation to church-prayer-benediction—something that will fix the lesson truth.

Ques. Should organized adult classes be present at the opening and closing exercises? How much time should they have to themselves? Ans. Better that all should be together in the opening exercises, but that large classes should be dismissed from their own class rooms.

Ques. To what extent should an organized class be independent from the school?

Ans. None; it has a bad effect for any class to be independent from the rest.

Ques. What is the best plan for maintaining a helpful council meeting of officers and teachers?

Ans.-Have definite plan for meeting; have devotions; have speaking; consider one phase of the school at each meeting.

Ques. How may the Teachers' Meeting be successfully conducted in schools using the Graded Lessons?

Ans. Have general business council, and then divide under the leadership of Departmental Superintendents. Graded Unions are a good thing for this.

Ques. What can be done with young people recently converted, so they will not lose their interest?

Ans.-Set them to work.

Ques. To what extent should church membership be pressed upon scholars who have confessed Christ?

Ans.-Line them up with the church.

Ques. How may a Superintendent cultivate reverence in the Sundayschool?

Ans. By being reverent himself.

Ques. Should a Superintendent suspend indefinitely incorrigible boys and girls?

Ans.-No; never have seen one; love is the better way to their hearts. It will win every time.

THE PASTOR'S PLACE IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

REV. W. H. BAGBY, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

The strategic place of the pastor in the Sunday-school is in the pulpit. No Sunday-school program is complete that does not embrace the sermon delivered to the church. If the Sunday-school is the church at work teaching, it should not stop short of its best available means of instruction, which is, logically, the pulpit. The usefulness of the Sunday-school will be greatly enhanced when it shall be more perfectly articulated with the church. So far from being helpful, the Sundayschool will become a positively hurtful institution, if it shall be allowed to reach the point where it will say to the church: "I have no need of thee." In many places it is dangerously near to this point now. In many ways the Sunday-school is being encouraged to feel that it is sufficient unto itself. In many ways the children and young people are being encouraged to think that they need no more than it is able to supply. The importance of church attendance is not sufficiently stressed in the Sunday-school. Frequently it is not urged at all. Often the church service is slighted by a faint mention. Then the feeling of selfsufficiency on the part of the Sunday-school has been intensified by its

being allowed to exercise functions that belong exclusively to the church. For the protection of the sacred supremacy of the church over the Sunday-school, no function that belongs exclusively to it should ever be permitted to be exercised by the school.

As the scholars are taught to look to the church for these things, so they should be taught to look to the church for an essential part of their instruction in the Scriptures. They should be made to understand that what the university is to the college, the church is to the Sundayschool. This is not being done to the extent to which it should. The heavy losses to the Sunday-school are in no small measure due to this failure. The average teaching in the Sunday-school is not of a kind to grip and hold the teen age. This age needs to be gripped by the stronger hand of the church. As it is, it does not feel even the touch of that hand. If the church service were held up as the climax of the Sunday. school service, and the scholars made to feel that they would lose the very best part of the Sunday-school if they missed it, the pastor would find himself in his true place in the school-in its heart and at its head. No pastor can feel that he is in this relation to the school that is not in evidence when he stands in the pulpit. So it is time that we ceased to seek a comfortable place for the pastor in such a school, for there is none. Let us rather so relate the Sunday-school to the church that, as the pastor of the former, he will be in his proper relation to the latter.

FROM THE LAYMAN'S POINT OF VIEW

PHILIP E. HOWARD, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Just what is the layman's standpoint? It is the standpoint of a man who seriously desires to do good work in the field of religious education, and who expectantly and confidently looks to the pastor for leadership. The layman is ordinarily more likely to have had experience in executive work than in the details of a thorough method of Bible teaching. The pastor is the natural leader in this, to whom the layman turns for expert help. The aggressiveness of a certain type of executive genius often indeed leaves the pastor in doubt about any desire on the part of the layman for guidance in the work of the Sunday-school. Some workers give scant sign of any wish or willingness to have a pastor help in this field, while some who try to secure that help find their ardor cooled by the discovery that the pastor is not a trained Sunday-school man. But in any event the standpoint of the layman, generally speaking, is necessarily that of