purpose are legion, and strangely enough every such form but one has its
headquarters outside of the local church it seeks to serve. The one
exception is the form known as the Boys' Organized Bible Class, an
integral part of the Sunday school with no allegiance of any sort or
kind to any organization but the local church of which it is a
part--bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh, muscle of its muscle.

These organizations that flourish in our modern church life naturally
fall into three classes: religious, semi-religious and welfare. Other
nomenclature, characterizing them might be used, and would be by their
founders, but these words classify them for the purpose of our
investigation. The _religious_ organizations have for their sole aim the
deepening of the religious impulse, and the missionary objective of
carrying this impulse to others. The _semi-religious_ are built around
religious and symbolic heroes, make a bid for the heroic and the gang
spirit, and seek to inculcate more or less of religious truth by the
sugar-coat method. The _welfare_ type aims at the giving of all sorts of
activity in order to keep the boy interested and busy, and so raise the
tone of his life in general.

The religious type of organization includes the forms that may be
classed under the church brotherhood idea--the junior brotherhoods of
various sorts. They originated because of the need of some kind of
expression for the religious impressions that were continually coming to
the boy in his church life. The idea was good, but its release poor.
Senior forms of organization were imitated, adult forms of worship and
service diminutized, and juvenile copies of mature experience
encouraged. Junior brotherhoods and junior societies thus have tended to
destroy the genuine, natural, spontaneous religious life of boys, and
have unconsciously aided the culture of cant and religious unreality.