A few years ago the author prepared a little Manual entitled "The Sunday-School Worker Assisted," etc., which was so favorably received as to call for a large edition without any special advertising. What has seemed to be a most imperative call has again come up, from various sections of our land, and from many denominations of Christians, for a fuller and more complete work, illustrated with examples. If our pastors, superintendents or teachers, wished for specific details of all the departments of the Sabbath-school, they complained that they were compelled to purchase a dozen English and a dozen American works, and even then there were important topics of information still unreached. Besides, books written a quarter of a century ago will not fully meet the requirements of an intelligent Sabbath-school man at this day. The cause is making constant progress, and many real improvements have been made during the past few years which are worthy of special record and notice.

Never before has the Holy Bible been so exalted, so taught, so applied, and made so interesting as now. Never before were our best Sabbath-schools devoted to such pure, simple, child-like worship of God as now; and never before was the high and holy aim of immediate conversion of the scholars to Christ, and then their thorough religious training, kept steadily in view, as it is in many Sunday-schools at the present time.

The Sabbath-school, as the true working-field of the Christian churches ("The Bible School," as Dr. Chalmers called it), is now the grand rallying cry of the faithful.

The aim and design of this work is to observe, collate, and condense, as far as possible, the best thoughts, experience, and observation of Sabbath-school laborers and authors, not only in this country but also in Great Britain, and to combine these with the observation and experience of the writer during the last forty-five years. The author is greatly indebted particularly to the London Sunday-School Union publications, and to The Sunday-School Times of Philadelphia, as well as to most of his fellow-laborers and writers in both countries. Gladly would he give credit in every instance, but their works have been so read and their thoughts gathered up, preserved, and noted for use during many years, and their views so assimilated with the author's and made his own, that he is now quite unable to trace them accurately to their right sources. They have become the property of all, and he has appropriated and adopted them into the line of his own thought in the one great work.

The best examples and the best new improvements are here given for the Sabbath-school artist to copy. No one man or school or country embodies them all. None, however, are mere theories. Everything here stated has been tried and proved.

The future progress of the Sabbath-school will be carefully watched, in order to add to or modify subsequent editions of this book, so that the Sabbath-school worker, with no other guide-board but this "Index," may be enabled, by divine grace, to enter the right path and to do a good Christian work in training up the children and youth of his generation.

THE AUTHOR.

New York, February, 1868.