THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the annual series of Un ion Questions, and in the series of Explanatory Question Books. Orange Judd's Lessons for Every Sunday in the Year (1862-65), lessons of the Sunday Teacher of Chicago, 1866, Vincent's Berean Lessons, McCook's Westminster series, and Drs. Newton's and Allibone's Union and Explanatory Lessons, with others, indicated the features of a new system that was coming.
Representatives of the foregoing systems of lessons, and of about twenty-five Sunday-school societies and publishers met in New York in August, 1S71, and appointed a committee of five, who arranged a trial list of uniform lessons for 1872. This proved so satisfactory that the national 4. The Sunday-school convention of 1872 at
Interna- Indianapolis approved the system, tional and appointed a committee of ten (five
Lessons, ministers and five laymen) from five different denominations, to select a seven-years' course of study to cover the entire Bible. This committee has been since continued with some changes and modifications and the addition of the British section to the American. Latterly, persons of nine denominations serve on this committee, comprising about 32 members (12 from the United States, 3 from Canada, 15 from Great Britain, and 1 each from India and Australia). Since 1894, each course of lessons has been limited to six years. In 1902 special lessons were provided for beginners and in 1906 for advanced classes. In general, the plan of study aims to give a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible in six years, the lessons being selected from the Old and the New Testaments alternately, upon some intelligent system, presenting the important salient events, characters, doctrines, and narratives of the whole Bible in the compass of each six-years' course of study. Gradually, the " uniform " idea has been modified by the demand for graded courses of study suited to scholars of the primary department, and another for advanced Bible classes as stated above. The lessons are called " international " because they are used in different countries of the world, and probably more widely than all other current systems of Sunday-school study.
In addition to the above " Uniform Series " of study, the International Lesson Committee began, 1908, a graded series of lessons for Sunday-schools. The plan outlined is for each grade to have one year of study, and a Bible text adapted to each successive grade. It recognizes beginners' department, two courses of one year each; primary, three courses, one year each; junior, four grades, each a year; intermediate, four, and a similar number of grades for senior and advanced departments. Thus, when complete there will be from sixteen to eighteen different grades and Bible texts studied in the same school at the same time.
The Bible Study Union (Blakeslee) system of Graded Lessons has been outlined for about twenty years. Its plan provides six series of lessons to cover the whole Bible; each series has four courses issued in seven grades, as biographical, Old-Testament history, life of Christ, gospel history, apostolic leaders, and apostolic church history. The Bible texts are selected so as to give a uniform text or
theme of study in each department of the Sundayschool at the same time.
The Sunday-schools of the Church of England have a system of their own, adapted usually to the church year. This church system is used, it is claimed, by about one-half of the Sunday scholars in England. A similar system is used by the Sunday-schools of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and in Canada. Several branches of the Lutheran Church also have a series of Bible lessons conforming to the church calendar, and many schools in Scotland and on the continent of Europe have special courses and have not adopted the international lessons.
A new institution of the magnitude of the modern Sunday-school would naturally demand a literature. There was in the eighteenth century no juvenile literature, of moment, in existence,
5. British certainly none of a religious type.
Sunday- Sunday-schools created a religious reschool vival, and an intellectual awakening, Literature, which demanded a juvenile literature. It began in England with primers, and simple " hints " for forming, conducting, and teaching Sunday-schools, followed speedily by books of prayers, hymns for children, selections of Scripture for reading, and small periodicals. Youths' Magazine (1805), Child's Companion, Children's Friend, and juvenile magazines by the score sprang into existence. They were at first small leaflets, monthly, each issue having from four to twelve pages. The Repository or Teachers' Magazine began as a quarterly (1813) of about fifty pages, and was later continued as a monthly for nearly forty years, and followed by the Union Magazine, The Teacher, and by the Sunday-School Chronicle, London, weekly, the leading journal for Sunday-school teachers in Great Britain. The Church of England maintains a scholarly magazine for Sunday-school workers, as do the Wesleyans. Scotland and Ireland sustain similar journals worthy of note. Instructive religious books, narrative and didactic, for youth rapidly multiplied. Authors like Hannah More, Jane Taylor, Rowland Hill, and Mrs. Sherwood devoted their best thought to producing literature of this type. Manuals and hand-books on teaching and principles of education were issued in abundance, beginning before 1840. Training-classes for those intending to become Sunday-school teachers have long been maintained by the London Sunday-school Union, the Church of England Sunday-school Institute, and other societies. Educational writers of note prepared text-books for the instruction of these training-classes, constituting quite a body of literature, specially relating to instruction and methods of teaching. A revival of interest in this branch of the work sprang up in Great Britain and America in the first decade of the twentieth century.
In America, the literary awakening was even more significant. While Great Britain produced many religious periodicals for the young, America gave greater attention to books and a permanent rather than an ephemeral juvenile literature. Men like President Humphrey of Amherst College, ami Dr. T. H. Gallaudet of Hartford, testify that, in