an be no
question that church membership is most largely recruited from the
Sunday schools. Thus in our survey of Tompkins County, New York, we
found that out of 175 persons admitted to the rural churches on
confession of faith, 61 of whom were adults and 114 children, 134 were
previous members of the Sunday school.

The rural Sunday school in the small church has the same difficulty as
does the district school, in that it has too few scholars of
approximately the same age to form classes of sufficient size to command
their interest and enthusiasm. Likewise it is forced to depend upon
untrained and frequently-changing teachers. Although there has been a
marked advance in the grading and organization of Sunday schools and of
the literature for their study, yet there is a growing conviction that a
period of twenty minutes a week is inadequate to secure effective
religious education. On the other hand, although the separation of
church and state in this country prevents the giving of religious
instruction in our public schools, educators have come to recognize its
importance in the education of the child. As a result there is now a
definite movement for the organization of week-day schools of religion.
When these schools are conducted by trained teachers and their work is
of an educational standard satisfactory to the public schools, the
pupils are given credit for their work toward promotion in the public
schools. The State of New York has enacted definite legislation
permitting the schools to dismiss those pupils whose parents so desire,
for a definite period each week when they may attend whatever school of
religious instruction their parents may designate, and for which the
public schools shall give credit when satisfactory as to educational
methods. Such week-day schools of religious instruction have been
carried on in some of our cities for several years, and at the present
time are being introduced into rural communities in various sections of
the country. Sometimes each church maintains its own school, but
inasmuch as this movement is usually promoted by the inter-denominational
Sunday school associations the tendency is to secure the cooperation of
all the protestant churches in establishing one school for the community.
This movement is still young, but if it makes the progress which now
seems probable, it should be a powerful agency toward the elimination of
weak churches. It makes possible the organization of g