The Allan Bequest
The Christian Education and Nurture Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria takes this opportunity to acknowledge the benefactor, Robert Allan, by whose generous financial legacy this project has been made possible.
Unfortunately, not a great deal is known about the man himself, his life, connections, profession, and so on. We do however, know that he was a man of considerable Christian conviction who desired that 'our people [i.e. Victorians] may... become noted as a Bible reading, Bible-living community'. This inspired in him a passionate vision that children should be taught about Jesus Christ through the 'Sabbath School' system of the day and, to this end, he devised 'a syllabus of two years course of religious instruction' and tested it very successfully in various Presbyterian churches. It is lamentable that there are no known examples of the course material for us to see for ourselves but Allan did, in his will, describe it as 'a systematic course of instruction in Bible proofs, covering a period of two years, at the end of which the same course is repeated, but with different Scriptural illustrations and testimonies [using]... a method of instruction which embraces daily and quarterly written examinations on the subjects which have been taught'.