izations for
utilizing the non-professional ministry in systematic religious labors
is the Sunday-school. The considerable development of this
instrumentality begins to be recognized after the Second Awakening in
the early years of the present century. The prevailing characteristic of
the American Sunday-school as distinguished from its British congener is
that it is commonly a part of the equipment of the local church for the
instruction of its own children, and incidentally one of the most
important resources for its attractive work toward those that are
without. But it is also recognized as one of the most flexible and
adaptable "arms of the service" for aggressive work, whether in great
cities or on the frontier. It was about the year 1825 that this work
began to be organized on a national scale. But it is since the war that
it has sprung into vastly greater efficiency. The agreement upon uniform
courses of biblical study, to be followed simultaneously by many
millions of pupils over the entire continent, has given a unity and
coherence before unknown to the Sunday-school system; and it has
resulted in extraordinary enterprise and activity on the part of
competent editors and publishers to provide apparatus for the thorough
study of the text, which bids fair in time to take away the reproach of
the term "Sunday-schoolish" as applied to superficial, ignorant, or
merely sentimental expositions of the Scriptures. The work of the
"Sunday-school Times," in bringing within the reach of teachers all over
the land the fruits of the world's best scholarship, is a signal fact
in history--the most conspicuous of a series of like facts. The
tendency, slow, of course, and partial, but powerful, is toward serious,
faithful study and teaching, in which "the mind of the Spirit" is sought
in the sacred text, with strenuous efforts of the teachable mind, with
all the aids that can be brought from whatever quarter. The
Sunday-school system, coextensive with Protestant Christianity in
America, and often the forerunner of church and ministry, and, to a less
extent and under more scrupulous control of clergy, adopted into the
Catholic Church, has become one of the distinctive features of American
Christianity.

An outgrowth of the Sunday-school system, which, under the conduct of a
man of genius for organization, Dr. John H. Vincent, now a bishop of the
Methodist Church, has expanded to magnificent dimensions, is that which
is suggested