Sunday School Attendance and Welcome

The sickness of our beloved Superintendent, and the death of our First Assistant, Dr. Karl G. Maeser, leaves it with me to welcome you this evening. I am gratified to see so many present, and trust that all will endeavor to become instructed and edified by what they may hear and see this evening. We have come here as representatives and students of the great Sunday School cause, a cause which Brother Goddard often used to remind us was the largest of all the auxiliary organizations in the midst of God's people in these latter days. And we are still growing, though I regret to say, (owing perhaps more than anything else to the prevailing epidemics), our increase during the last year has not been as large proportionately as in some former years. This I trust will receive the consideration of our brethren who locally preside in our Sunday Schools, that none of the children in our midst who should be at Sunday School may be absent, but that they be looked after. We want them all, we are working for them all. We desire to have them all come within the influence of our schools. In comparing the statistics found in the Church reports, showing the total number of souls in the various Stakes of Zion and then comparing these numbers with the average attendance at the Sunday Schools each Sabbath morning, we discover that in quite a number of the Stakes more than one-third of the entire population is to be found in the Sunday School each Sabbath morning, and in the great majority of the stakes between one-third and one-fourth. Only in one Stake is less than one-fifth to be found. This speaks well for our progress and I think that as in several Stakes more than one-third of the entire number of the people of God, grown up and children, manage to be in attendance each Sunday, that this should be an incentive to others that as large a proportion may be found in all. ¶