Another seemed ready to obey the call of the Master,-" Follow me;" but sought to delay till he had buried his father: and a third, until he had bade farewell to his friends at home. Each of these exhibited a tendency to "look back," and appeared to think that he could combine a large degree of interest in his past career, with the profession of serving Christ. Hence the warning words of our Lord, as recorded in Luke ix. 62. We are thus taught that if "the kingdom of heaven" is to be our portion, it is to be the one great purpose of our life to attain it; it must be "the pearl of great price" for which all other minor treasures must be relinquished; and that it is as dangerous for the Christian "to cast a lingering look behind" upon the world, and its pleasures and pursuits, after he has set his face heavenward, as it was for Lot's wife to look back upon the doomed city, from which she had so hastily fled in order to escape destruction.

But although this is, doubtless, its primary application, I have always felt that it is especially suitable for the Sunday school teacher. The man who puts his hand to the plough, must keep his eye upon the work upon which he is engaged, or he will make unequal and uneven furrows, and thus hinder the seed from being sown success fully upon the land under his care. He will lessen the pressure of his onward movement if he lingers to see the work he has done, or to look after others who may be differently employed; and probably the evil consequences of such want of steady application would be greater with the ruder and simpler ploughs in use in the East, in our Lord's time, than it would be with the more perfect implements in use among ourselves. Or, if we like, we can drop the metaphor altogether, and simply regard it as a proverbial expression, signifying the necessity for sustained and continued effort, for perseverance and determination of will to go forward, and never so much as to think of that which we have engaged to forsake and leave behind.

And surely our experience shows us that there is much need of this spirit in the Sunday school teacher. His business is in the world; his pursuits on six days of the week may be perhaps very wearisome to the body, or very engrossing to the mind. How he is tempted on Sabbath days to seek the physical rest so comforting to the weary frame, or to indulge in that absence of mental effort so soothing to the brain already over-wrought with application to its appointed cares. But if once the hand has been put to the Gospel plough, and the office of the Sunday school teacher has been accepted, to relinquish the work of winning souls for Christ from any such considerations, would seem to contradict the very teaching of our Master in these words.

Much less should any minor influences operate upon us.

We all

know how many temptations there are presented to us, from time to time, to absent ourselves from our post of voluntary duty. At one time the feeling of ill-success in teaching may suggest the thought of abandoning the task; or ill-health and bodily weakness may incline us to believe that we are unequal to the work in which we have engaged. At another time, we may fancy ourselves aggrieved by changes in the government or arrangement of the school, or by interference with our classes; we may be annoyed at some apparently ungracious conduct on the part of the clergy, or superintendent, or teachers in the school towards us; or by the vexation the unruly conduct of our scholars may inflict upon us. O! there may be attractions in our home circle, or at distant churches, or in the country, which may render it very trying to be obliged to forego the pleasant converse of friends whom we rarely meet, or the listening to the discourse of some favourite preacher, or the visit from Saturday to Monday (now becoming so frequent) to the sea-side, to invigorate the town-pent frame; and all these simply because we have engaged to teach a class of girls or boys in the Sunday school. But, nevertheless, our course of duty as servants of God is obvious; once having put our hand to the plough, we must not even "look" back, for it is the first movement towards turning back, and giving up that service of God" which is perfect freedom." But alas! do not the frequent changes among the teachers in our Sunday schools, show us how little of this spirit of perseverance is generally to be found!

Let us persevere then, knowing our responsibility and our safety. We have engaged to renounce the world; let us not yearn after its pursuits or pleasures. We have set our faces towards heaven; let us steadfastly look forward to the prize of our high calling, forgetting those things which are behind, and pressing onwards towards the attainment of the kingdom. Let us plough on steadily, that we may be able to sow the good seed of the word of God effectually in the hearts of the young ones whom God has given us to nurse for Him, -so shall we in due time reap with joy "if we faint not.”

W. S.

ON Christmas day last, the teacher of a junior class in a London Sunday school, while bidding farewell to his scholars (being about to leave town on the morrow), was thus affectionately addressed by one of them:-"Teacher, I wish the world was only a mile big, then I could come and see you sometimes."

BEFORE GOING TO THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.

I COME before thy throne of grace
Early, my God, to seek thy face,
On this thy holy day:

Oh, bring me very near to Thee,

That I thy power and love may see;
And hear me as I pray.

Lord, I am privileged to be

A leader of the young to Thee,

I

pray

That Thou their souls may'st bless :
Thee to be pleased to own

The seed that I have feebly sown,
And grant a rich increase.

Oh, give me wisdom from above
To speak to them of Jesus' love,
By it their souls to win :

And may the Holy Spirit come,
To melt their hearts, and bring them down,
Convincing them of sin.

O gracious Lord, I ask of Thee

That Thou wilt never let me be

Unfaithful to my trust:

Thou knows't my weakness; but I fly
To Jesus' cross, and there would lie,
Before Thee in the dust.

O Lord I pray I may receive

The life which Thou alone canst give
Through thine eternal word:

Open mine eyes, that I may see

The blessings freely given me
In Jesus Christ my Lord.

Oh, do Thou tear the veil away,
And let a beam of heavenly day
Reveal my sins to me:

"Show me myself,"-and then reveal
The Saviour's power to cleanse and heal,
Lest I despairing be.

I know, O Lord, I may have sought
Things that would only be my hurt,
If Thou didst grant them me:
So, Lord, I bend before thy throne,
Do as Thou pleasest with thine own;
But bring me nearer Thee.

E. E.

STRENGTHEN THE CHAINS.

THAT which is not strong cannot last long. The chains which bind our Sunday scholars to their schools and their teachers, generally snap far too soon. Strengthen them! Unsubstantial, the golden cords gradually loosen. Strengthen them! The iron of which the chain is composed is seldom found to be of that solid material that, though floods of temptation and blasts of adversity gather round, the ship remains firmly fastened to themoorings. Strengthen the chains, tighten the cords, remedy the evil. Many of the wretched criminals in our jails were, in their youthful days, in their life's morning, Sunday scholars. They can remember the sunny hours when innocence planted her wreath over their brows, ere guilt steeled their consciences, when their teachers patted them on their heads, stroked their goodly curls, and bade them "love and be loved." They remember the humble and sanctified mien of the few holy boys, mixed with the unsanctified laugh, and unprincipled, Satanical jest of their unholy companions. They can picture in their minds the movements of their beloved superintendents, so kind yet so firm. Oh, where, where were the flaws that weakened the chains, and caused them to snap; what, what were the worms that destroyed the roots and eat up the sap of the promising germs; where, where are the breakers on which the barks have struck and foundered ?

In my daily and ordinary peregrinations I often walk through hospitals, and as I pass from ward to ward, deploring concentrated misery, the consequence of the primeval curse, sin, I notice how few of the countenances of the suffering inmates, depict or evidence that the seed of the word of God, sown long ago in the Sunday class, remains embedded in their rocky hearts; I notice dread DESPAIR stamped, with a pen of iron as it were, on the emaciated foreheads of the dying; and careful, stoical, braggadocio indifference, exemplified in the laugh (stifled only in obedience to hospital laws), of the wounded. These, even THESE, were once for the most part, part and parcel of the Sunday schools established by our forefathers :-the chain broke too soon, ere their hearts were brought under the subduing and sanctifying influences of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; snapping, ere the rudders were firmly fixed, the barks have sunk in the yawning waves of the restless ocean; the ripples which sprung up from the sunken ships counselling us to "Strengthen the chains." The working classes do not attend our churches, or any other place of worship, in anything like the numbers they ought to do. As a body they are steeped in infidelity and indifferentism to the sacred truths of Scripture, yet very many of them were once Sunday scholars. To see a working man in the house of God, drinking in the waters of

spiritual life as they flow from the lips of the officiating clergyman (a rare sight), does me more good than I can derive in listening to the loftiest eloquence, or the most accomplished learning of a preacher, or in conning through works the most spiritual, written by men the most holy. The truth we learn from these sad facts seems to be this, that the Sunday schools established by our forefathers were not equal to the purpose for which they were intended. And yet we must be careful in taking such a lesson as that. God knows that there are thousands singing their glad hallelujahs in the courts of heaven, who owe their saving knowledge of "the truth as it is in Jesus to the instruction given by our forefathers in the Sunday school. With this limit we must notice that the machinery as used by them, like all other human agency, was insufficient to meet the evil it sought to remedy.

Many thousands of children meet every Sunday, gathered within the walls of Sunday schools. The glad tidings of salvation are proclaimed to the inmates, and as I take my stand on the watch tower of a Sunday school, hope throbs within my breast, that the rising generations will be not only goodly in their persons, but godly in their hearts. Better any day be sanguine than sceptical. Alas, a gloom is thrown over my expectations; hope expires at the startling fact that even now many of the lads in our Sunday schools regard its walls as the sides of a prison house; at the first excuse they leave them. The weather is too cold, or the fire too cosy, a chilblain wants scratching, or a scratch from a cat's paw wants attending to, a new post, a country cousin, a marriage, a death, a funeral,-all serve as excuses and help to weaken the chains that bind the scholars to the school. I see the planting of the germ of infidelity and indifference in all this, which will ere long take root, grow up, and flourish to a great tree. God help them and stop them in the starting of the career which will probably end in hell; and God help human instru. mentality, in itself, frail, helpless, purge it, strengthen it, and enable it to carry out its purposes. Shall it be said that children with tender hearts leave our schools by scores, unsaved, unsanctified, with the wrath of God, with the curse, anathama-maranatha, hanging over their heads? The least things in this world destroy life; the slightest accident which destroys the lives of these boys would consign them, where? Evade not the question, I ask you for your boys' souls sake. I ask you for Christ's sake, that his cross may be no longer despised,-where ? REALIZE, dear reader, the answer. The evil we point out is a sore evil, not only under the sun, but under the roof of our Sunday schools; the shewing what are the immediate and unmistakeable causes of the evil may suggest a remedy, and God grant that it may.