What is Vacation Bible School?

In closing we would remark that Sunday Schools should not only be carried on in Assembly halls, but in as many different places as is possible. Meetings among children can be successfully carried on on week-days also, in homes or wherever doors are open. Daily Vacation Bible Schools in the summer-time have proved to be a wonderful way of getting the Gospel to the children and instructing them in God's Word. Bible Camp work among children has also been a great blessing likewise among the youth. May the Lord raise up many able and diligent workers to teach and win the young for Christ.

All these facts show the importance and blessedness of evangelistic effort among children and youth. The purpose of the Sunday School is to teach the children the precious truths of the Bible, the fact of man's sinful condition, the full salvation in Christ Jesus, and the path and work of a Christian in this world. Not only should they be taught these things, but we should seek to win their hearts for Christ and pray for their conversion. In writing about the Sunday School, we feel we cannot do better than to present to our readers an excellent letter on this subject by the well - known servant of the Lord, C. H. Mackintosh. It was written many years ago and is as follows:

Sunday-school Work. The children of the saints are to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and youth is the most favorable time when those in the world can be reached — Gospel Sunday-schools in neglected districts; the little neighborhood Sunday class of children, too, how much work is suggested here! The proper manner, the simple order of conducting Sunday-schools may well occupy our attention.

In the winter months in big cities how easily a band of earnest young Christians can gather the children into a suitable hall, and by means of clear, earnest, simple preaching, illustrated by the blackboard it may be, secure the attention of the children, and gain a hearing for the gospel. The Scriptures abound in incident and illustration, and with eyes, ears, and hearts open we may likewise glean incidents from everyday life, and illustrations from sea, land, and sky.

Then in summer what opportunities there are for open-air or tent services in the villages and country places! On foot or by bicycle, distant spots may be visited, and the whole countryside for a radius of many miles worked. Did not our blessed Lord visit the villages? One day a mountain was His pulpit, another day a fishing boat. Oh, if our hearts were more like His, how simply we should avail ourselves of opportunities! Then, again, how happily and healthily a summer holiday may be spent at some seaside place where children abound, and opportunities occur leading to great results, if only used aright.

Then there is sure to be one or two gospel meetings for the children, and one only needs to look at their bright faces and listen to their hymn-singing to know they greatly enjoy their own meeting.

Strange to say there are those — followers of Christ in some things — who frown upon Sunday School work and have given it up as not being in accord with the mind of heaven for today. Thank God their number is not large. Possibly they think that parents are responsible to teach their own children and that they should not be encouraged to pass on their duties to others. But if I am a Christian parent may not my children sometimes hear the story of redeeming love from other lips than mine? And then the children of our Sunday Schools, for the most part, come from homes where the Bible is never read and where the children are never taught to pray. Oh, it is Christ-like work, let others say what they will, to gather the children together by twos or tens, by hundreds or thousands, if possible, to tell them, for one brief hour a week, of Him, their best Friend, who came from heaven to save them, and who, saving, will be their Guardian and Guide through life.

We will suppose that our reader has been brought up in a Christian home, and had the advantages of training in a Scriptural Sunday-school. There has probably been the memorizing of at least one verse of the Bible for each Lord's Day in such cases. We know of Sunday-schools where this is still practised, though perhaps it has become too old-fashioned for some of the more "progressive" ones. By the time a pupil has reached the age of twelve to fifteen, he has in memory possibly as many as one to two hundred verses, embracing the great fundamental truths of sin, judgment, salvation, the love of God, the person and work of Christ, the necessity of faith, and many other blessed facts. Here is an arsenal supplying weapons ready at hand with which to meet the adversary, and small portions of meat in due season, and refreshment for weary saints or needy sinners.

The instruction included the whole of sacred history, from the creation downwards, and after this the gospel narratives. Then instructions in the subjects of God, of Christ, of the Holy Ghost, of the judgment to come, of the body, soul, etc.

Most of these details should be taught the children at their homes. Many a happy season can be spent with them thus, and our own memories be refreshed as we hear them recite the list of the Bible books with perhaps the number of chapters in each, or engage in a competitive test in finding and reading a half-dozen references.

Speaking of the children, tender memories will arise of how we have sought to make the Bible a familiar and revered book to which they could turn, even for relaxation as well as instruction. The description of some familiar scene without mentioning names; the formation of anagrams such as "God is light" by asking the names of various Bible characters. In this way, Scripture or Bible books at least become familiar to the young, and God can use these things later on.

These Scriptures may well give us to understand the urgency of teaching our children the Scriptures. As they get older, school work and homework will take up their time; and year by year you will find your opportunities grow less. While they are little children is the time to teach them this blessed Book. When we were children, my Mother used to gather us every day, in our holidays especially, and she would read aloud to us; and make the dear old Book live to each one of us. I feel sure that each child in our family looks back with unmixed and unbounded pleasure to those afternoon reads with our Mother. It was no weariness to us, whatever it may have been to her, to sit and listen to stories from the Bible; and what little we may know of the Holy Scriptures, I am sure we largely learned from her. Our Father, too, taught us in the daily morning and evening readings; and we had an Aunt and a Grandmother, who also taught us these Holy Scriptures. They each one loved them, and we well knew that; perhaps that was the secret that unconsciously made us love the Holy Scriptures also.