THE Sunday school is the door to the Church through which enters the
great majority of its members. This fact alone would account for the
increasing interest that the Church now manifests toward the school. As
the institution which trains the young for the Church, and leads both
young and old into the Church, the Sunday school is entitled to the
Church's support and care.
The housing of the Sunday school is one of the most important subjects
that can come before the Church as the guardian of the school. Too often
the work of the school is impeded by unsuitable and inconvenient
quarters. Just as the public school building now claims the attention of
architects and sanitary engineers, the Sunday school hall is also
attracting notice.
It is only twenty-two years since the first building thoroughly adapted
for the uses of the Sunday school was erected at Akron, O. This
building, the joint conception of the Hon. Lewis Miller, superintendent,
and Mr. Jacob Snyder, architect, has furnished most of the ideas
peculiar to Sunday school construction, and is therefore entitled to
preeminence in the record. Others have improved upon the details of the
Akron plan, but its fundamental principles have never been superseded,
and can never be. Those principles are only two, and they seem almost
incompatible with each other. They have been called "aloneness" and
"togetherness;" that is, that each class in certain departments shall be
isolated in a separate room, and yet that all the classes may be brought
together into one room for general exercises without delay, without
confusion, and without the change of seats by the classes.
[Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN