Mr. Tate, teaching also in one of the small towns in which church-going
was out of fashion, said to his boys and girls:
[Sidenote: Correlate Church and School]
“Mr. Corithers told me that he was going to preach about Phœnician ships
next Sunday. I wondered how he could make a sermon out of that subject,
but he wouldn’t tell me. As we’ve just been studying about this matter,
I suggest that we all hear this sermon Sunday, and then we’ll discuss it
Monday.”
He and Mr. Corithers had talked over ways and means, and had together
planned a series of sermons that should correlate with some of the
school work being done. They planned to have simple and dignified music,
and talk little about eternity until the young people had been led far
enough in the spiritual life to know they had souls. The services,
concrete and beautiful, and the sermons, which were planned to reach
their hearers, were attended and enjoyed by Mr. Tate’s pupils.
Mr. Tate did not urge his pupils to go to church without a conviction
that they should do so, and a knowledge that they would hear something
they could understand. He and the minister planned earnestly and well to
get results, and won.