ART. VIII.-OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LITERATURE.

WE propose to treat this very important question in the most practical manner possible, because of the fact that it is daily increasing in significance in regard to the religious and moral training of our children. The war that is just now everywhere being waged against the Bible and moral and religious teaching in our common schools will virtually soon relegate all the school training in the matter of religion to our Sundayschools or to the family. And because in the latter, in so many instances, religious precepts and teachings are entirely wanting, the child must depend for the culture of its higher and better nature solely on the school that it visits, and the advantages that it enjoys on the Sabbath day.

As the significance of the Sunday-school is therefore yearly increasing in our social, and even national life, so must increase in importance in the same ratio the responsibility of providing in these schools the means of supplementing the failures elséwhere. And this question is, therefore, now one that weighs heavily on every Christian heart. And we are sorry to say that in our own personal experience of a superintendency of some years in a Sunday-school, we have seldom known the question of its literature, or, in other words, its library, to be met in a thoughtful and intelligent manner. It is either a blind, overweening confidence that accepts every thing because it is in the library, or a wholesale distrust of the entire collection because some of the books are manifestly not worthy of their place. At a recent teachers' meeting, at which we were present, the librarian's report declared urgent the necessity of largely increasing the number of books, because some had been read by nearly all the school, and others were totally worn out. In the course of the discussion one of the male teachers, a man of more than ordinary intelligence, declared that it were better to throw the whole library into the fire instead of increasing the number of the books to demoralize the children; while the most thoughtful and intelligent teacher present said that he never read his child's books, but supposed them all proper because they had been selected by a competent committee for the school.

Now the error is wholesale denunciation or wholesale acceptance, with very little true appreciation of the case. In the first place, the best of men differ as to what should be the ruling character of Sunday-school literature, and mostly come to their conclusions under the guidance of what they would have possible rather than of what is possible. It is a very easy thing to say that only such and such books should be admitted to the Sunday-school library, and to rule out all that do not treat of strictly moral and religious questions discussed in a serious and didactic style. But here, again, we would call attention to the practical workings of the case. A few months ago we happened to have at our command a large assortment of the very best Sunday-school publications of our own Book Concern. Taking advantage of the opportunity, we invited our two principal librarians to call and examine then with a view of selecting some for our own school. To our surprise, one book and another and another of the collection were laid aside as not desirable. Why not desirable? was our question. "Excellent books of their kind," was the reply; "but the children will not read them; and there is no use of putting them into the library." And this is not an uncommon objection to a book-" The children will not read it." The stern censor will reply, "They should be made to read it." But let himn then undertake the task of literally making a child do any thing in a Sunday-school! In the first years of our Sundayschool labor we tried the system to our satisfaction, and it was sure to result in one or the other of the party going to the wall. If a child is to be made to do a thing in the strict sense of the term, it must perform that duty or leave the school. Now in the case of absolutely vile and incorrigible conduct in school, there is the remedy of expulsion from the school. But if this course is adopted, we are told, and perhaps justly, that the Sundayschool is the place where the wayward scholar should be kept and reclaimed, and not whence he should be expelled, and very few superintendents are justified by the Church in resorting to so stern a measure.

In short, the law of the Sunday-school is that of love and moral suasion; and when these cannot conquer, the battle against evil is lost. And this principle, we opine, is to be carried all through the Sunday-school work, and even into SunFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXVIII.—21

day-school literature. Not by any means that we are to admit a single improper book into the library, but that we, if possible, are to fill it with such books as shall be sure to convey useful information and moral and religious instruction in words and style so attractive that the young will instinctively feel, on opening them, that they have found friends and companions rather than stern and exacting teachers. Many of them may sadly need the latter, but the Sunday-school has no means of providing them; these have their place in the secular school or the well-regulated family.

Starting, then, from the proposition that the Sunday-school library must contain such books as the children can be induced to read, or indeed will gladly read, or none at all, we meet the question of possibility of compliance with this demand, while at the same time attaining our own desirable end of providing a literature that will instruct the mind, induce thought, cultivate the heart, and lay the broad foundation for a moral and religious life. Make the library do this, we say, or else abolish it. But do those who would adopt the latter as a cure reflect on the issue? Children will read, and ought to read. It is the greatest gift and mightiest engine of modern civilization that by the cunning art of types they may read. And so soon as they are able to do this they will read, yea, the most of them will consume by the hour, such books as have the art of attracting them; and in these days of manifold publication of all sorts of matter, from periodicals to magazines and books for all ages and classes, if they do not have suitable books they will be quite sure to obtain those which are unsuitable; for these are, alas! not only spread broadcast everywhere, but many of the most vicious and depraving are smuggled into our schools and households in the most surreptitious manner. The presence of these fiendish engines of moral destruction makes it absolutely necessary for us to provide, as far as possible, a counteracting literature; and the general means of dissemination to all is the Sunday-school, because a pure and harmless literature finds the doors of so many families closed either from poverty or indifference.

This responsible question, therefore, demands a categorical reply: Can we not, in this age of thought and mental ingenuity, so much of which is coupled with the best talent and purest purpose,

supply such a literature for the Sunday-school as shall attain its end of reaching the children, while it at the same time imparts to them nothing that is simply a pastime, nothing that does not instruct the heart and tend to develop the noblest and purest elements of their nature, and eventually, if not directly, lead them to God? We believe it can be done, and that the Church fails to do its duty that does not exert its best and choicest efforts to that purpose. And here arises, in the first place, the question as to the leading characteristics of such a school of literature. There are many who would exclude all works of fiction and every product of the imagination, and this, we believe, would largely tend to set aside many of the most useful and desirable books. The imagination is one of the choicest powers of the human mind, and fiction a mode of conveying knowledge as old as the world. The child whose imagination is not allowed to roam at times in the realms of the fairy world, or feast on the thousand-and-one products of fancy, loses the purest means of cultivating the most delicate and sensitive portion of its nature, and is deprived of the freshest charm that can delight its tender years. As long as the child's reason is not developed, we have no right to demand that it shall be a reasoning being, and be treated simply to hard and angular facts. The storytelling instinct in children is so decidedly a portion of their nature, that the mother or the nurse who has not her favorite treat for the little ones has lost one of the most powerful attractions over their innocent natures; and we all know the popularity of the grandfather who has his tales with which to beguile the children who gather at his knees.

There is a period in the development of the infantile mind when the suppression of the imaginative faculties is equivalent to a check on the growth of reason, for they clearly advance for a time in harmony. If during this period, and this alone, they are cultivated in unison, this blending of the tender with the stern can alone produce the perfect work. But the imag ination needs to be cultivated at the proper period, to be led into proper channels, and to cease, as a controlling power, as soon as reason has become strong enough to supplant it. Children under its influence ppear to us sometimes in their innocence already as higher beings; and in proportion as with growing years we remain susceptible to its power, in that pro

portion do we retain the innocence of childhood. Imaginative works of fiction have their origin in the Orient, and many of the most beautiful figures adopted in our Saviour's teaching to his disciples partake of this element. The story, properly so called, has a sort of cosmopolitan character, because it seems natural to all races of men, and to all realms of nature. Men, animals, plants, and stones hold communion with each other, and we are thus able to draw a lesson from all that we see and hear. But just here lies the secret of usefulness, namely, that we can draw a moral from the story. And this is the great blemish of the tales of Grimm and Andersen, that they seldom convey a moral; and the crowning glory of Esop and his imitators in later history, that no fable passes without a moral as beautiful and effective as the story is simple. The most lasting impressions that our own childish mind ever received, and those most likely to follow us to the grave, were conveyed by the homely pictures and ingenuous stories in Webster's spelling-book about the farmer who first threw grass at the boy in his apple-tree, and was finally compelled to throw stones; or about the milkmaid, with her milk-jug; or the cat and the meal-bag. In these we confess to have learned lessons that have followed us like faithful friends, simply because of the mode in which they were conveyed.

The trouble now is that we have abandoned the good old way, and have taken the imaginative from the realm of entertaining and instructive story, and carried it into the domain of the passions. These need no stimulation, and the Sunday-school book that in the least tends to this is rank poison, and should be excluded without mercy not only from the Sunday-school, but from every other place within the reach of childhood and youth. We have heard pious and intelligent parents declare that they must take their children away from a certain Sunday-school because of the character of the library, so many of the books being little or no better than novels, that lead their children to fancy this style of imaginative literature and to endure nothing else. And we fully justify them in their anxieties, but suggest that they in such cases might better appeal, book in hand, to the Sunday-school authorities, and by insisting on expurgation of the offensive books, do their share toward purification of the source. If the preacher and the intelligent laity of the Church