eadolescence, age. The hero-worship stage is then, at hand, and the
lesson material should be arranged to meet the natural demand of the
child for action and adventure.

In planning a graded series of lessons it is not less important to meet
the needs of the _seniors_, or adolescents, than of the younger pupils.
This has not always been accomplished. Here again, as in the earlier
years, the immediate interests and needs of the learner are to be the
key to the planning of material. A series of unrelated topics dealing
with a distant time and civilization, with little or no application to
the problems and interests that are now thronging upon the youth, will
make small appeal to him. The youth's growing consciousness of social
problems, his interest in a vocation, his increasing feeling of personal
responsibility as a member of the family, the community, the church and
the brotherhood of men are suggestions of the nature of the topics that
should now form the foundation of religious study and instruction.

It is possible that the forgetting of this simple fact in the planning
of material for adolescent pupils is one chief reason for the tragic
loss of interest in the Sunday school which so often occurs at the
adolescent stage.

Text books of religious material.--The _text book_ type of religious
material differs more in the organization and arrangement of material
than in the subject matter itself. The lessons are not based on a set
cycle of biblical material, though, of course, such material is freely
used. Usually one topic or theme is followed throughout the text, the
number of lessons or chapters provided being intended for one year's
work. The following titles of texts now in use suggest the nature of the
subject matter: "God's Wonder World," "Heroes of Israel," "Heroic
Lives," "The Story of Jesus," "The Making of a Nation," "Our Part in the
World," "The Story of a Book," "The Manhood of the Master," "Problems of
Boyhood," "Social Duties," "The Testing of a Nation's Ideals."

Beyond question, the material we teach our children in religion should
be organized and published as real _books_ and not as paper-covered or
unbound serial pamphlets. There is really no more reason why we should
divide religious material up into lessons to be dated, and issued month
by month, than why we should thus divide and issue material in
geography, history, reading, or any other school subject. Children who
are accustomed in day schoo