PREFACE. THE design of the following work must secure the approbation of all who consider the present extent and increasing importance of the Sunday School system of instruction. We have arrived at that important era of the moral history of this country, when by an unconstrained election, the lower classes of the community have chosen their better instructed neighbours as the guardians of their children's minds and manners. It is an interesting fact, that the next entire generation of those who are to work in our manufactories, to labor in our fields, to minister about our persons, to defend our liberties, and who, according to their moral character, diffuse through a thousand chanels, the curses or the comforts of society, are voluntarily placed in our hands for the culture of their hearts and the formation of their manners; they A 2 are in mass looking up to us for instruction, and virtually saying, "Make us what you would have us to be." This is a circumstance of a most deeply interesting nature, and is worthy the attention of the philanthropist, the patriot, and the christian. It is a valuable and sacred deposit for which we are accountable both to heaven and earth; to the present and to every future generation of mankind. Any effort therefore to guide the benevo lence of those who have gratuitously under taken the active duties of instruction, deserves at least the acknowledgment which is due to good intentions, and which, probably, is the only debt that the author can justly claim of the public for this unostentatious little volume, the history of which is simply as follows: -- Having been repeatedly solicited to print a second edition of an Address delivered to the Sunday School Teachers of the Birming→ ham Union, the author was preparing to comply with this request, when it appeared to him that the subject admitted of enlargement, and he therefore resolved upon publishing a fuller account of the duties of their office, formed upon the basis of the original address. The fruit of this determination he now offers to the public. He has thought fit to embody every sentiment and almost every expression of the address in the present volume, in order that those who desired the former, might find in the latter, if they should be disposed to purchase it, the very object of their wishes. Every thing of a controversial nature has been carefully excluded, that it might be rendered unobjectionable to all religious denominations. If any should be disappointed in finding nothing said about the regulations of Sunday Schools, he begs to observe that his object was with the moral, and not the mechanical part of the institution. It is not improbable that in the estimation of some, he may appear to have invested the institution with an undue degree of importance, and thrown upon the subject too much of the seriousness of religion and the solemn grandeur of eternity. To this however he cannot plead guilty, convinced as he is that the original design of Sunday Schools was religious instruction, and consequently that their ultimate object must be the salvation of the immortal soul. He acknowledges his peculiar obligations to the Sunday School Repository for the information he has derived from it relative to the origin, progress, and improvements of the system. The author now sends forth this unpretending production, conscious that it has many faults, which have been multiplied by the frequent interruptions attendant upon the situation in which he is placed. Should it however serve no other purpose than to provoke an abler pen, he will rejoice, even when sinking into the shadow of his successor, that he has not labored in vain. EDGBASTON, Oct. 14, 1816. |