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mitted, when every provincial town will not only possess its "Young Men's Christian Association," after the model of the Parent in Aldersgate Street, but also its "Training Class," after the pattern of those established by the Sunday School Union in various parts of the metropolis. I am afraid that "Brother John" may have added to his list of observations, some such as the following:-"I have known a teacher come to school unprepared with his lesson. These 'Training Classes' would do much, to lessen such a practice; and your correspondent would take the liberty of suggesting, that those who exert themselves to form such classes would be conferring a blessing on the teachers themselves, and a boon on the country at large. When these results have been attained, "I think this difficulty of "rewards," or "no rewards," will solve itself, the school alone being a sufficient inducement for the children to attend it. In the mean time, let us all, both by our prayers and personal exertions, do what lies in our power to hasten the millennial time. Borough Road.

A WORKING Teacher.

[From the German of DENZIL.]

For a general rule, the approbation of the teacher is a sufficient reward for all moral conduct. In no case should it be encouraged by a determined premium. No rewards are proper in the religious part of education; for they might lead to the opinion that mankind could merit the favor of God by their works.

LET YOUR AIM BE HIGH.

HAVE you carefully considered what are your responsibilities in the selfimposed duty you have undertaken? If the heart of a child is susceptible of religious impressions, and those impressions do form the germ of a religious character, then your work should have for its object nothing less than the salvation of the children under your care. You have undertaken a duty which never can be properly discharged, if you aim at any less result than bringing them to Christ. Have you considered how responsible such a position is, and how serious are its consequences, both to yourselves and to the children you instruct? Can anything less than persevering earnestness and labour on your part, for their salvation, free you from a responsibility, the burden of which is as heavy as the despair of a lost soul?

We will not affirm that God will hold teachers ultimately responsible for the salvation of their children; but, without doubt, He will hold them responsible for all the consequences of a neglect of their duty to them—and He may see that such neglect has resulted in their eternal destruction.

The only and true mission of a Sunday school teacher is to hold up Christ, as He is revealed in His Gospel, before them continually; to seek to impress them with the loveliness of His character, the power of His claims, the infinite nature of His love, and the exceeding and eternal value of His salvation. And it seems to me, that anything less than this falls below the true standard of duty, insomuch as it falls short of bringing them to Christ, where only salvation can be found.

A true labourer in this vineyard will never labour in vain such is the nature of the Gospel of Christ, and such is the promise of God to every honest worker, that it will become the wisdom and power of God to their salvation. In view of the nature of the Gospel and this promise of God, not only may the faithful teacher labour for, but may absolutely expect to see, his children coming to Christ as the legitimate result of his faithfulness.

And, on the other hand, that teacher has great reason to doubt either his fitness or his faithfulness when he sees no fruits of salvation as the result of his work.

It is not enough to teach your children the history or the geography of the Bible, the theories of commentators, or the abstract doctrines even of the Gospel itself—these are, or may be, all very well and important, too-but they will have time to learn these after they have received other and far greater truths; but seek out of every lesson to find Christ, and hold Him up to them as the great central truth and sun of the whole gospel system; seek to turn that vital light toward them, always letting it rest and settle upon their hearts, and if you are faithful, it will there penetrate and become a fountain of light to guide them safely through this world to heaven.

If every teacher of Sunday schools would so labour as if he considered the salvation of the children depended upon his faithfulness, there would be a directness in his effort, and a solemn earnestness, too, which on the impressible and susceptible mind and heart of a child would have an irresistible power for good. Let once a child feel that you have truths that you consider paramount, and that you are in earnest, and expect that he will yield to and embrace them, and although he may struggle against them, yet the innate power of depravity cannot always hold out against that persuasion to which his reason, his conscience, and his heart invite him to yield; and though you may never witness the surrender of that heart to the claims of God, yet you will there have implanted that leaven of truth, which, sooner or later, will work until the whole nature is renewed and the heart regenerated. If God has ordained the use of human instrumentalities as a means of salvation-as He most clearly and signally has-He has not done so without clothing its use with an almost infinite power; and that not as an exception, but as a result so certain as to be both the unfailing source of encouragement to the one, and the sure channel of blessing to the other.

But remember, teachers, that such glorious results can come from nothing but constant prayer for God's blessing on your labour, and constant faith that that blessing will descend as the reward of your faithfulness.

THE ART OF CONDUCTING A BIBLE LESSON.

IN conducting a Bible lesson, it is very important to remember throughout what is the point of the passage. This should be kept prominently in view. Towards this, the teacher should keep moving step by step; and although on his road to it, he may look sometimes to the right, and sometimes to the left, yet he must not turn off and follow any of the various other roads which branch off from the direct one. What this is, of course must be settled in the teacher's mind before he comes to school; if not,

he will be running off from it at every word, and omitting the main lesson of the passage, which perhaps he never saw. He will draw the same general truths from every text,

Keeping this in mind, the teacher goes to work. The passage is first read sentence by sentence, once or twice; and it will be necessary, with the younger children especially, then to go over it again, with questions and ellipses; inverting the sentences, and, as it were, telling the story, and making it the children's own.

Then comes the explanation of words and ideas. Every WORD. must be understood, as the whole gist of a sentence may turn upon one word. And every idea needs to be drawn out for many a truth, expressed in the simplest words, is nevertheless not grasped by a child's mind. For instance, almost every child if asked "For what purpose did Jesus come into the world?" would answer" to save sinners;" and yet, if you further questioned them, you would discover that many did not understand what Jesus did what "to save" means, or what SIN is.

The question occurs, How are these explanations to be given?

Every word represents either an object, or a combination of objects. If you had a picture of the object expressed by the word you wished to explain, your end would be gained at once. The thing to be aimed at, then, is to draw a picture before the mind's eye; and this may be done by illustration and analogy.

Suppose for instance, the passage before you was John xvi. 33. "In the world, ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Almost every word needs illustration-the world-tribulationbeing of good cheer-overcoming the world.

Let us take one.

"Tribulation-what is tribulation?" "Trial," perhaps, would be answered. True; but how does tribulation come to mean trial? Here is a picture for you to draw and illustrate. You must tell them, then, to begin with, that Tribulum means a winnowing machine, and tributlatio the passing through a winnowing machine. And then you may go on, What is the use of a winnowing machine? Suppose you get no answer; then (and this is a general principle) you must go further back, and start from something that is known. Did you ever gather an ear of corn? "Yes." How did you get the grains of wheat from it? "I rubbed them between my hands -so." What came off besides the wheat? "Husks." Called also?" Chaff.” Is the chaff good to eat? "No." How did you separate it from the wheat? "I blew it away How came the chaff to be blown away, and not the wheat? "Because it is lighter than the wheat." If you had a barn full of wheat and chaff, how could you separate them? If you were to throw them up in the air where the wind could catch them, what would it do? "It would blow away the chaff. And what would become of the wheat? It would fall down upon the floor." The wind, then, would separate them, or WINNOw them; and this (you may tell them) was the first (method. of winnowing corn. The use of a winnowing machine, then is to?" Separate the chaff from the corn." By exposing it to the "Wind?" And what is the chaff good for? Good for nothing." And what is the use of wheat? To make bread of" Then the winnowing machine tries the good, and sepa

rates it from the worthless. What is it which thus tries man? Is it harder to keep your temper when you are encouraged, or when you are provoked? "When I am provoked." When is it more difficult to be patient-when you are well, or when you are ill?" When 1 am ill." It is easy to profess to be a Christian when you are among Christians, is it not? "Yes, sir." But is it easy when you are in the shop? No, sir." Why not? "Because they laugh at me." But being provoked-being ill-being laughed at-are, what you call them? "TRIALS." And trials, you told me, are? "Tribu lation." If your religion, then, is like the chaff-light and good for nothing -this tribulation will blow it away.

Tribulation, then, means WINNOWING; and trials are so called, because they tend to separate the good from the evil. This might, then, be illustrated from the Scripture. Reference might be made to the people who shouted "Hosanna!" when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and "Crucify him!" a few days afterwards, when they found that to follow him must expose them to suffering; to the seed sown upon the stony ground; to the different effect of trials on Joseph, Peter, Demas; and so the truth be confirmed, that TRIALS purify a true faith, and scatter a false one to the winds; and that, for this reason, the early Christian writers called it by the name of “tribulatio," or winnowing.

Sometimes it may be well to draw the picture in its outline, before you begin to question. Children will attend to such teaching, if it be life-like, varied, minute, and real. Take the next idea in this passage-" being cheerful in tribulation." Let us suppose ourselves (one might say) inside a prison, eighteen hundred years ago. Prisons are bad enough now, but they were terrible then-cold, filthy dungeons, with no light or air but what came through a hole in the wall, and nothing to lie on but the ground. Let us look into one of the cells. There lies one victim in irons. His thoughts are of his home, his wife, his children. They are crying for him, but he shall never see them again. There is another going to be put to death to-morrow. He has no Bible, poor fellow! nothing to cheer him. He does not know what to think of. His only companion is a spider, which he is watching making its net across the air-hole of his cell. But, hark! there are two men singing in the next cell. Listen, they are singing praises! Can they be prisoners? Let us go and see. What! it is the worst cell in the prison; and look, their feet are made fast in the stocks; they are lying with their legs cramped; and see, there is blood upon their garments; they have been cruelly beaten, and yet they are singing praises to God! Who are they?" Paul and Silas" would be the ready answer. Where "One of great sufare they? "At Philippi." What is their condition? fering." They are in great? "Tribulation." And yet they are? Of good cheer." See, then, how Christ gives "joy in the Holy Ghost, even in much affliction."

NEVER TELL TOO MUCH.

Do not tell the learner too much about a subject, and puzzle him with many things, before he has understood the first principles; do not aim at being wonderfully profound in your first explanations, but reserve your profundity for subsequent stages. Even extreme accuracy may be dispensed with at first; it is not wise to puzzle the learner with little niceties and refinements, when he is convulsively grasping at anything like an approximate idea of the matter in hand. You will not mislead him by using or permitting an expression which is not quite technically accurate; the mistake will not fix itself upon his mind, for he is not giving his attention to that little point in which the inaccuracy lies: he is not yet able to appreciate nice distinctions and petty exceptions. The first thing is to give him a rough general idea of the subject; and when he has mastered that, you may proceed to enlarge, refine, and dive deep. There are some teachers who cannot hold their peace when occasion requires, but seem impelled by their nature to tell all they know upon every subject they touch upon; the consequence is, that the learner, being unable to discriminate between the essential and the non-essential, is overwhelmed with the mass of learning, and instead of having a clear idea of the main points, has an indistinct recollection of many things. Everett's Philosophy of Teaching.

THE BEST KIND OF KNOWLEDGE THE EASIEST
OF ATTAINMENT.

Every man ought to try to get as much knowledge as he can on all subjects; for knowledge is power, and it is not good for the soul to be without it. But how small a portion of knowledge can the most industrious acquire! We do not, however, say, with

"Athena's wisest son

All that we know is, nothing can be known."

That is not true. We can know something; but how little compared with what is known by beings who occupy a higher sphere! And how little of that which we call knowledge really deserves the name! Hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, constitute no inconsiderable portion of what we call philosophy. Even in religion some are found frequently to dogmatize when it would be better for them to doubt. It is well for us that we are not bound, as Chillingworth says, to know the meaning of a million points contained in Divine revelation. It is fortunate, indeed, that necessary knowledge comprehends but a few points, and those easily comprehended, and as easily attainable. We can be saved through the atonement of Christ, without being able to explain its philosophy. We may repent, and believe the Gospel, without being skilled in the schools of divinity. We may "know our Bible true," without the capacity of producing the evidences by which its Divine origin is demonstrated. The masses of mankind cannot find the time, they have not the capacity, they are not in the circumstances, to make the investigation of the scholar, or to master the

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