The Teacher.

TIBERIAS.

INFLUENCE DEATHLESS. THE influence which mind exerts upon mind is a mysterious and powerful characteristic of our being. It enters into every act, relation, and circumstance of life. It begins with moral agency, and extends along the entire line of existence. It is ever flowing out from us through a thousand chan. nels and agencies, over the surface of society. No man can divest himself of this power, or refrain from exercising it; it is a condition of moral existence; we must exert a deep and lasting influence on the world for good or for evil. A link unseen, yet real, connects us all with the past and with the future. Those influences which are moulding our character, and working out our destiny, took their rise far up the stream of time; we did not create them, and we cannnot arrest or escape them. are living for coming ages; souls yet unborn will feel our influence, and be saved or damned by it. The good man little knows the

THIS town is situated about sixty miles NNE of Jerusalem, and the adjoining lake is called the Sea of Tiberias. In the time of the Jewish wars, it was fortified by Josephus, but destroyed by Vespasian. It ultimately became the residence of Jewish patriarchs and Rabbins, who founded an academy which continued until the fifth century. Indeed, though it has passed through many changes, it never seems to have been deserted by Jews even to the present day. Beautiful copies of the Pentateuch are to be seen in the synagogue. Upwards of fifteen hundred Hebrew books were counted by Jowett when he visited it. The town is now called Tobara. On three sides, it is inclosed by a wall, flanked by circular towers, and on the fourth it is open to the water. It is one of the cities declared by the Talmud to be sacred.

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extent of that blessed power which he will silently wield over human minds and hearts when he has ceased to be; the fruit of it all gathered to heaven will fill him with adoring wonder. And the sinner knows not how fearfully his influence will accumulate in after ages, nor how many souls will charge their sins upon him in the judgment.

'We are fearfully and wonderfully made.' Such are the elements of our own being, and such our relations to others, that we cannot die in this world or the next. How numberless are our actions and not one of them will ever find a grave, or live an idle life, or prove false to its parentage. They may be unwise, and regretted by us; the work of a moment's folly or passion; no matter, we have given them life and cannot take it away; and they will live on in their consequences when the occasion which called them into being, and the remembrance of the deeds them selves have perished; live still to fasten impressions on human character, and control the destiny of souls immortal.

The wicked Cain is alive still on the earth; his type of character is manifest, and his footprints are seen along the pathway of the living world. The man who hates goodness and sheds innocent blood, copies the example and acts out the spirit of the first murderer. Abel is not dead. He belongs to living piety, as well as to history. By his recorded example of obedience and faith, and by the memory of all that he was, he is present with the child of God in every land and age of the world, declaring the necessity of faith in Jesus, the mercy and favor shown to the penitent and believing, and the treatment which the good are to expect in this world of enmity and death. All the great and good of past ages are speaking to

us-with united voice crying to us to press on in the race and seize the immortal crown; their influence, in letters of light and purity, is recorded on every page of the world's history; it is embodied in a thousand forms of living truth, and freedom and piety. The Voltaires, and Paines, and Byrons of past days, are still leading actors in the great drama of life. Their monuments stand thick along the road we are travelling to immortality. They live to-day in all those sentiments and movements which are hostile Christianity, and operate through a corrupt literature, a false philosophy, and an infidel creed, along all the channels of human intellect, affection, and enterprise. On their mission of madness and death, they are travelling round the world. The missionary encounters them in the very heart of heathendom. They are breeding a moral pestilence amid the altars of Christianity. The press is wielding its giant power to give them a yet wider and deeper influence. What a harvest of ruin and damnation will such men reap! What a legacy to leave to posterity! What a curse to entail upon untold generations !

Not less certainly indeed does the life of every sinner reach into the future. His influence corrupts and destroys beyond his death-bed. It rolls onward from his grave with a cumulative sweep and strength. His example ruins his children; a whole community is infected by it; the poison courses through all the veins of living men, and flows down the ever-widening channels of human thought and life. And should not every good man, therefore, treasure up for posterity a holy influence to counteract the many examples of wickedness, and perpetuate goodness, and truth, and piety in the earth? Should it not be the strenuous and unceasing

aim of every living man to leave a good influence to come after him, since he must leave one of some kind, either a saving or a ruining one? We cannot gather up our influence when we come to die, and take it with us. We cannot bury our example with our bones in the grave, and so prevent its breeding a moral pestilence. We cannot take back our words, call in our sentiments, blot out our deeds, and so put an end to our moral being on earth. Many a dying man would give worlds if he could but do this. If he could drag with him into the darkness and oblivion of the grave, his infidelity, his wicked example, and all the evil influences which he has originated, that they might not live after him to curse his memory, and blast the hopes of his family and friends, and entail misery on the world, he might die in peace. But no ; the dying man cannot do it. He has no power over his influence; he cannot stay the waters which he has let out. He has sown the seed, and the harvest is sure to follow. The grave shall receive his body only, the living world will retain his character, example, and principles. Death cannot arrest our influence; it may but augment and diffuse it. It will live and yield its fruit when our names have perished from the earth. It may speak for us in praise or blasphemy, in life or death, while time endures. It may go on producing impressions on the living world which no man or angel can ever efface.

There is a thought here which the sabbath-school teacher may bring home to his heart with salutary and impressive force. There is a light of warning and a light of encouragement in it. Each of us may so live as that our very grave shall bloom till the resurrection morn. The good we do is not to be measured by the length

of our days, but by our stamp of character, the piety of our purposes, the grandeur of our aspirations and conceptions. Then up and be doing, ye children of light. Every prayer, every charity, every effort for Christ, every tear shed over sinners, will yield a revenue of reward and glory. The fountain will send forth the brook, and the brook will swell into a majestic river, sweeping on to the ocean of eternity, watering the deserts of earth in its course, and bearing souls, numberless and joyous, to the bosom of God.

A HINT. We shall find life in our teaching when there is teaching in our life.

THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT.— Call home our foreign missionaries and retain the funds that support them, and you stop the life-blood of our churches; but send forth hundreds and thousands more, and persuade the churches to support them, and the spirit of life will flow quick and strong in their members, and give new vigor and efficiency to their efforts for the salvation of our land from error, sin, and ruin.

THE SOUL A DIAMOND.-What if God should place in your hand a diamond, and tell you to inscribe on it a sentence which | should be read at the last day, and shown there as an idea of your thoughts and feelings? What care, what caution would you exercise in the selection! Now, this is what God has done. He has placed before you immortal minds, more imperishable than the diamond, on which you are about to inscribe, every day, and every hour, by your spirit, or by your example, something which will remain, and be exhibited, for or against you, at the judgment day.-Payson.

The Senior Class.

GEORGE WILSON. A FEW years since, as the Rev. Mr. Gallaudet was walking in the streets of Hartford, America, there came running to him a poor boy, of very ordinary first sight appearance, but whose intelligent eye fixed the gentleman's attention, as the boy inquired,

'Sir, can you tell me of a man who would like a boy to work for him, and to learn to read?'

'Whose boy are you, and where do you live?' 'I have no parents,' was the reply, and I have run away from the workhouse because they will not teach me to read.'

The reverend gentleman made arrangements with the authorities of the town, took the boy into his own family, and sent him to a Sunday school, he there learned to read. Nor was this all. He soon acquired the confidence of his new associates by his faithfulness and honesty. He was allowed the use of his friend's library, and made rapid progress in the acquisition of knowledge. It became necessary, after a while, that George should leave Mr. Gallaudet, and he became apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in the neighbourhood. There the same integrity won for him the favour of his new associates. To gratify his inclination for study, his master had a little room furnished for him in the upper part of the shop, where he devoted his leisure time to his favourite pursuits. Here he made large attainments in the mathematics, in the French language, and other branches. After being in this situation a few years, as he sat at tea with the family, he all at once remarked that he wanted to go to France.

Go to France,' said his master, surprised that the apparently contented and happy youth had thus suddenly become dissatisfied with his situation, for what?'

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Ask Mr. Gallaudet to tea to-morrow evening,' continued George, and I will explain.'

His reverend friend was invited accordingly, and at tea-time the apprentice presented himself with his manuscripts in English and French, and explained his singular intention to go to France.

In the time of Napoleon,' he said, 'a prize was offered by the French government for the simplest rule of measuring plain surfaces, of whatever outline. The prize has never been awarded, and that method I have discovered.'

He then demonstrated his problem to the surprise and gratification of his friends, who immediately furnished him with the means of defraying his expenses, and with letters of introduction to the honourable Lewis Cass, then our minister at the court of France. He was introduced to Louis Philippe, and in the presence of the king, nobles, and plenipotentiaries, the American youth demonstrated his problem, and received the plaudits of the court. He received the prize, which he had clearly won, besides valuable presents from the king. He then took letters of introduction, and proceeded to the court of St. James, where he took up a similar prize offered by the Royal Society, and returned to the United States. Here he was preparing to secure the benefit of his discovery by patent, when he received a letter from the emperor Nicholas himself, one of whose ministers had attended his demonstrations at St. James's, inviting him to make his residence at the Russian court, and furnishing him with ample means for his outfit. He complied with the invitation, repaired to St. Petersburg, and is now Professor of Mathematics in the Royal College, under the protection of the Autocrat of all the Russias !