id
quartette alone means the way of least resistance and of least benefit,
and it is a harmful device if it means the failure of the church to
enlist boys in the rare religious development to be achieved in sacred
song and in participation in public worship. It is to be regretted that
hymns suited to boyhood experience are very rare and that so little
effort is made to interest and use the boy in the stated worship of the
church.

But if these evils were remedied there would still be the problem of the
Sunday school which, although generally a worthy institution, usually
succeeds at the cost of the church-going habit which might otherwise be
cultivated in the boy. To make a Sunday-school boy instead of a church
boy is a net loss, and with the present Sunday congestion there is
little likelihood of securing both of these ends. Probably it will
become necessary to transfer what is now Sunday-school work to week-day
periods as well as to renovate public worship before a new generation of
churchmen can be guaranteed.

In the meantime, loyalty cultivated by a variety of wholesome contacts
largely outside of traditional church work must serve to win and retain
the boys of today. For loyalty to the minister who serves them readily
passes over into loyalty to the church which he likewise serves.
Wherever the club is made up predominantly of boys from the church
families, it will be well to have an occasional service planned
especially for the boys themselves--one which they will attend in a
body. Such a Sunday-evening service for boys and young men may be held
regularly once a month with good success, and the value of such meetings
is often enhanced by short talks from representative Christian laymen.
Demands for service as well as the important questions of personal
religion should be dealt with in a manly, straightforward way. Beating
about the bush forfeits the boy's respect.

In preaching to boys the minister will appeal frankly to manly and
heroic qualities. He will advance no dark premise of their natural
estrangement from God, but will postulate for all a sonship which is at
once a divine challenge to the best that is in them and the guaranty
that the best is the normal and the God-intended life. They must qualify
for a great campaign under the greatest soul that ever lived. They
engage to stand with Him against sin in self and in all the world about,
and in proportion as they take on His mission will they realize th