price but by a principle. That
principle is the attainment of the pupil in the studies of the system. A
competent instructor could find by examination the true place of any
pupil in any city public school. Such a statement is so self-evident
that it excites no surprise. It is as it should be. The method of
assignment and promotion is the public school system. Without it that
system would not be what it is.

Apply now these essentials as tests to the Sunday schools. How are
pupils there assigned and promoted? The answer must be that such
assignment and promotions are there unknown. Here we touch a radical
defect and weakness. The statement of that weakness hardly needs
elaboration.

As we study further the public school system we find there a course of
study. That course of study, comprehensive and complete, the work of
educators, is the glory of the system. It is this curriculum that makes
its pupils students. In these points also compare the Sunday school.

A summary of these conclusions may be made. The modern Sunday school is
not the peer of the modern public school. The Sunday school has a
defective system of unrelated, independent departments. The modern
public school has a perfect system of correlated dependent departments.
The Sunday school has no system of promotions, no training school for
teachers, and no course of study. Do its pupils study? Why, they are not
required, nor examined.

Is there a remedy for such defects? Could its department be perfected?
Yes; but the disease is deeper than that. Could a system of promotions
be devised? Undoubtedly. Could a teachers' class be formed? Many schools
have that. To treat these symptoms separately is not to reach the source
of the disease. It is but to tamper with difficulties.

The solution lies in a "Course of Study." In the public school the
system rallied around a common center--its course of study. All the
agencies employed were to render that course effective. Out of a
supplemental lesson system will arise conditions that will crystallize
into correlation of departments, methods of promotion, a Normal
Department with its commencement day, and, best of all, by the help of
the home and the church, an atmosphere of study for the scholar without
which a school cannot be.

It is believed that such a course of study is practicable. Is it not
thus that the modern Sunday school as a school must be improved?

It is evident that the course of instruction in the S