thrown upon the teacher as the child on the parent, nor is bound to him as the pupil to the preceptor,— all the ties which attach him are voluntary and amiable. It is the voice of the Saviour in his disciples, Suffer the little children to come unto me! He lays his hands upon them, through the hands of his people. In no other instance can instruction wear this form. It is the disinterestedness which, properly speaking, no parent can evince. This is a tender adoption. It may be violated. But who does not feel that in such a scene, the harsh accent, the frowning brow, the threatened chastisement, are untrue? Do they not jar, like profane interruptions? Why may not the incomparable kindness of the system be prolonged, when its earlier and cruder stages are well nigh forgotten, and when its capabilities shall be developed in their perfect maturity?

And ere we yield to the outcry against the system, as though because it is not adequate to the wants and deserts of the people, it is therefore inefficient, we must be permitted to affirm and to argue that, without it, all other endeavours would be crippled. We have shown the impulse it has given them. Let it be withdrawn, and a main prop of our popular intelligence would be snapped asunder. That intelligence is not small when compared with former times. The qualification for municipal honours would not now be conceded to the skill of counting a few hob-nails. The capacity to read would scarcely now be deemed

a clerical distinction, worthy of a special benefit. The alteration of the solar style would not now be execrated as a pilfering of time from the people. The story of the apparition now finds but little chance of credit. Storms blow, and no one suspects that the poor bereft and stricken widow of the village has raised them. No other expedient than the Sabbath school would meet the case of the children of the needy. It is gratuitous. There is none other that ought to be. It begins with the formation of the mind. It disdains not even the earliest

hours which poverty can It wins confidence in cir

years. It selects those exclusively call its own. cumstances where it is rarely felt. It blends many intellects in a way very favourable to their excitement and invigoration. The rich and the poor meet together, and their mutual jealousies are allayed. There goes forth a constant influence which works in every channel of life. Prejudice and superstition lose hold after hold. The deep, broad, shadows, which ages had accumulated and condensed, break and flee away. Great questions enter at this humble postern into the recesses of the public mind. Comprehensive principles are evoked from the least of all seeds, which thus may fall into the infant heart; and these rise up for general knowledge, like the resistless spread of a forest. How many have recorded their obligations! How many have dignified their benefactors! The great, the noble, ones of excellence

and usefulness, have been born here! It was the drawing forth of the axle which became a chariot of triumph! It was the exercise of the stripling warrior, who has been destined to seize the garland of victory!

The Christian ministry would be maimed of its best instrument, of its right arm, were this specific co-operation abolished. To the poor is the gospel preached. To enter into the simplest statements of truth, some forethought, some preparation of ideas, is indispensable. The vacant mind, though the epithet might too well intimate the absence of religious conceptions, does not exist. It is full of error and misapprehension. It has yet to learn the first principles of the doctrine of Christ. In it is the mixture of infantile ignorance and masculine enmity. Happy is the facility which this system affords us in beginning with the child; his heart is tender and supple. What prepossessions are escaped! What dreams are unknown! The pastor may henceforth assume much of history, of doctrine, of principle. The child is wise unto salvation. The whole quality of instruction may be raised. The man of God is encouraged and impelled. He must feed his flock with knowledge. He cannot slight even the children before him,—excusing his carelessness by their ignorance, or his apathy by their unconcern. The Sabbath school generally supplies the sanctuary with its most intelligent hearers.

The Christian Church would no less suffer in the abstraction of this its happiest appendage. It has drawn forth into modest light some of the most active and holy spirits of the age. A peculiar adaptation has been elicited, a mastery of the intricacies which it is so difficult to unfold, a penetration into the motives which it is so common to overlook: the discovery of these sacred talents were worth all the labours and charges which have from the beginning been incurred. Here has the future pastor first felt the inspiring power moulding him to an unknown work. Here has the missionary, the future bearer of the keys which shall unlock the word of life to hundreds of millions and disimprison those hundreds of millions themselves, first received the mantle and the burden of his unessayed enterprise. Suppress the Sabbath school, and the energies of a people are benumbed: a principal scope for action and devotement is cut off the heart of the church beats languidly and heavily.

The present advantages of this order of schools are already great but hitherto they are chiefly redeeming. That is now done in them which should precede and qualify the entrance of every child: that now is required which should be done at home. We, however, anticipate an immense improvement on the system. That improvement shall be but its proper growth. The beginning was small: the latter end. shall greatly increase. Instead of the drudgery of

teaching and learning the barest inchoates of knowledge, the little community shall become the Bible class and be addicted to a Bible catechesis. The youth of our best families and of our pious members shall be in constant attendance. Whatever belongs to a scriptural education, may, at least, be grounded here; and a sufficiency of direction in regard to other reading may be easily supplied to those who enjoy the leisure of the week, so as to perfect it. The criticism of the sacred text, the history of codices, -the collation of manuscripts, the external, intrinsic, and experimental, evidences of Christianity,-exegesis, generalization,—the cavils and objections of infidelity, the serious, though easily surmountable, difficulties, together with the presumptive arguments arising out of those difficulties, in genealogy and chronology,—all may be laid open to a higher culture of the juvenile mind.

It is, therefore, another idea which the Sabbath school awakens among the churches in the northern part of our island, and of the Transatlantic shores. They would not abrogate this institution, but the model-thought, the archetype, is far more exalted than our own. Pastors, deacons, the most gifted, the most zealous, take their part. It is an intellectual labour which none think unworthy of them. The plan is not only interrogatory and suggestive. While it awakens a sense of mental power and activity, it puts in requisition both the knowledge of the