listening to the voices of all these organizations that would help her from the outside.  The church is awake to the need, but is confused in the method, because she recognizes that no single organization that knocks at her door is sufficient and complete enough for her task.  She needs all their methods without their organization.  She cannot assume their organization, because it is not of her own flesh and blood.

A boy’s allegiance cannot be split up among gangs.  He must be a member of the gang. One organization is all that he can comprehend with loyalty at one time. This organization must be also of the local church. But the church needs no new organization.  All she needs is activities suitable to the boy’s growth. She has an organization that the boy cannot outgrow—­the Organized Bible Class. At fifteen he is through with the Scouts and the Knights, and at eighteen or twenty he is through with fraternities and orders, or ought to be; for, if a boy be not starved for these things when a boy, he will outgrow them as he outgrows a suit of clothes.  Graduation from these orders very often means graduation from the Sunday school and church; for no single organization can be conceived, that with ritual and form can bind together the activities of twelve to fifteen, fifteen to twenty, and twenty to thirty.  However, there can be no graduation from the Organized Bible Class, flesh of the church’s flesh, blood of her blood, muscle of her muscle; and the Organized Bible Class is flexible enough for an adjustment to every stage of boy development, and to all its physical, social, mental and spiritual needs.  The organized class between twelve and fifteen can include all the interests of those years, and when the next stage of growth is on, can discard these for the interests that lie between fifteen and twenty, and so on to the end.

The Organized Bible Class is simple in organization, is modern and elastic, affords the minimum of organization and the maximum of efficiency, is big enough to meet all the boy’s needs, and is the church’s own.  Into it can be poured all the activities of all the organizations ever known, and it can be made the richest and best adapted organization to the boy life of the Church that has yet been conceived.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON METHOD AND ORGANIZATION

Alexander (Editor).—­Boy Training (Chapter on Auxiliary Organizations) (.75).

—­Sunday School and the Teens (Chapter on Organizations) ($1.00).

Foster.—­The Boy and the Church (Chapter on Books and Notes) (.75).

VIII

THE ORGANIZED SUNDAY SCHOOL BIBLE CLASS[2]