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stood temptations incomparably greater than those which overwhelmed Peter.

Let it be most distinctly impressed on the mind, that we never accomplish anything in religion in which the heart is not deeply engaged; and the heart is never engaged when the closet is neglected. A teacher never can enjoy teaching, or do good to his class, who is not habitually at the throne of grace at stated periods. The following is invariably the result of the labours of a prayerless teacher. A visitor was sent out to call upon the families represented in the school. In the course of his calls, the following conversation took place between him and a little girl.

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Do you attend sunday school?”

"Yes, sir."

"How are you pleased with the school?” "Not so well as I have been."

What is the matter?"

"I have a new teacher, and I do not like her so well as my old teacher."

"You will probably become better satisfied after you have become better acquainted with the method of your teacher's instructions."

"I do not believe I shall ever love my new teacher so well as I did my old one."

"Perhaps the fault is in you."

"Perhaps so; but I cannot love her so well as I did the old one."

"What can be the cause of this difference in your feelings?"

"My former teacher took a great deal of interest in me; and while hearing me recite, took great pains to explain every thing in my lesson, so that I could understand it; and after the lesson was ended, she spent the time in reading something to the class which was useful, or in telling us how we ought to live. But my present teacher just hears my lesson, appears distant, seems to have but little interest in the class, and as soon as the lesson is closed, she leaves the class for another part of the house."

Such cases as the above would occur but seldom, if our teachers were habituated to prayer from day to day, and always remembered their class in their prayers.

I return from the habits of the teacher, to consider briefly the remaining qualifications which do not come under the general head of habits.

3. Humility is a most desirable qualification in a teacher.

The teacher has to deal with the heart; and that is so universally and naturally proud, that it does not love to admit any advances but those of humility. The humble man can always have

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access to any man's heart; while the proud or vain man is uniformly shut out. In the business of teaching in the sabbath school, you will need not merely the appearance of humility, but the thing itself, if you would feel happy. Without this grace, you will be in danger of feeling that the superintendent or the teachers do not do right, they usurp authority, or they violate rights, or they misuse you; that you do not have your proper place; the class you have is one of the lowest-poorest in the school, perhaps the least interesting of all. Why should that class be given to you? Another teacher is more popular, more noticed, more thought of than you, and pride tells you that you are almost a martyr to injustice. If you are constantly thinking of yourself, wanting praise, unhappy without it, talking about yourself, giving hints of your own estimable qualities; if you use stratagems to obtain praise, such as inquiring about your faults in order to learn your excellences; if you find yourself constantly consoling yourself with the thought that you are of more consequence than others seem to think you are; if you are pained when others receive praise in your presence, and feel disposed to detract from their merits, perhaps by speaking disparagingly of them; if you find yourself comparing yourself with others greatly to your own advantage, if you feel ready to excuse every fault in yourself, to palliate and defend, you lack that humility which is essential to the comfort, the happiness, and the usefulness, of the sabbath school teacher. Let the sentiment so beautifully and quaintly expressed by Taylor be engraven on the memory:-"Give God thanks for every weakness, deformity, and imperfection, and accept it as a favour and grace of God, and an instrument to resist pride and nurse humility; ever remembering, that when God, by giving thee a crooked back, hath also made thy spirit stoop, or less vain, thou art more ready to enter the narrow gate of heaven, than by being straight, and standing upright, and thinking highly. Thus the Apostle rejoiced in infirmities, not moral, but natural and accidental, in their being beaten and whipped like slaves, in their nakedness and poverty."

4. Benevolence to the souls of men is an indispensable requisite to a good sabbath school teacher.

No one who has not made the trial can know how many little trials and vexations attend the faithful teacher. He meets with ignorance and stupidity, deplorable, and apparently incurable; with habits perverse and corrupt, which have been woven into all the education of the children; with dispositions which seem to have no right side; and yet he must love those children, or he can do them no good. He must love them all, for however unlovely and unamiable the child may be, he will never let the teacher do him any

WARM-HEARTEDNESS.

69

good, till he is sure that he loves him. You must not consider tha class as some do, a company but little better than apes, whose mischievous pranks are to be the source of constant misery and vexation. You must have the confidence and the affection of your class, or you can do them no good. In order to this, you must have an unquenchable love for the souls of men, a love like that of Christ, which many waters cannot quench, nor floods drown. This will lead you to overlook the many little vexations which beset you; just as a man who is bent on reducing and subduing his farm, for the sake of the gains hereafter to be received, learns to forget the stones, the roots, and the brush which have to be removed before he can effect the object at which he aims. This love to the souls of men will render you elastic, and yet firm in your labours, easy of access to your scholars, and ready to communicate information and hints to your fellow teachers, or to receive it from them. Every hint you will receive with gratitude; and every ray of light which you receive, you will reflect upon the path in which your class are walking, that thereby they may be led to heaven. Any man who is not warmly affected to the souls of men should not be a teacher. You should have so much of this interest that you are led to the duties of your station by the oent of your own inclinations. The zeal should be a true zeal to labour for Jesus Christ; the oil that feeds the flame should be of heavenly origin, and not the result of an ardent temperament, or a splendid imagination. Your piety should be constant as well as burning. You should know that you are capable of great self-denial, and can be regular in your habits. You need not possess "the razor's edge, but must have the blade of a well-tempered knife." Divest your character of all sloth, effeminacy, and indulgence.

We are too apt to feel that the object of life is to move in our own little circle, enjoy the full cup of mercies which God bestows, and to creep into heaven at last, a kind of selfishness which has no example and no parallel in the lives of Christ and his Apostles, and no countenance in the bible. We look forward to the millennial day, believing in the explicit language of prophecy, that "truth and mercy, the peace and righteousness of our Messiah's kingdom, whatever temporary checks they may suffer, shall, in the end, overcome all opposition; and though the river of God may, for a time, be discoloured and polluted by the pernicious soil over which it rolls its tide, yet it shall, at last, free itself from every foreign mixture, and send forth its ten thousand pure streams to gladden all the nations of the earth." Such is our belief; but so far from feeling that we have individually a part to bear in the great work, we lay our head on the pillow or down, and feel it hard that any one thould even knock at our door and ask for bread. We want our mis

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sionares to take their lives in their hands, and go and wear down and die among the heathen; we want our ministers to be in season and out of season, to labour in the study, and bring no oil into the sanctuary which has not been beaten, while we lay out work enough for them out of the pulpit to consume all their time and strength; but when we come to act for the souls of the young, and for the conversion of the world in the sabbath school, we are apt to feel that a frozen heart, a dead piety, narrow views, and stinted labour will do. It is not so. I know the field is comparatively a humble one, and that ambition would not go there, for the crown which she seeks is not there. You may not be able to train up an Apostle; but you may prevent one from becoming a Judas. Had Mahomet, when a child, been placed under the care of a faithful devoted sabbath school teacher, who can believe he would ever have been what he did become? The fact is, in the kingdom of Christ great learning is not demanded, great and striking and splendid talents are not necessary in order to be useful, to bring souls to Christ, and to win the crown life, but holy, devoted, disinterested piety is the great thing needed. This will bring wisdom from above; this will overcome difficulties, bear up under discouragements, enable us to see the fruit of our labours here, and to anticipate their reward hereafter.

Let me invite you, as we close this chapter, to unite with me in the beautiful prayer of a glowing heart:" And thou, Lord Jesus, afflicted Father of the Christian name, blessed martyr of humanity, blameless pattern, universal priest, unerring teacher, omnipotent king of truth, of righteousness, and of peace, deign from thy glorious throne to smile on this weak attempt, and to accept this poor offering. It is a tribute for the life thou hast given, for the blood thou hast shed, and for the joyous hopes thou hast inspired, to cheer and to direct our mortal pilgrimage. Meck spring of heavenly wisdom, boundless ocean of universal, ardent, unprovoked, and undiscouraged charity, pour thy Spirit into my breast, and into the breasts of all thy servants whom I hear address. Teach them to interest themselves in this blessed work as becomes men who are distinguished by thy venerable name, and honoured by the ministration of thy glorious gospel! Baptize us all with the fire of that love which is stronger than death! Delightfully oppress our gratitude with the everlasting mountains of thy benefits, until every entiment of frail mortality be suppressed, until faith give us the victory over the world, over life and death, until love compel us to exclaim, Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but dross that I may win Christ; and I am willing not only to suffer bonds, but to diefor the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ, by whom I am crucified into the world, and the world unto me."

MEANS OF DOING GOOD.

71

CHAPTER V.

Other means of doing good besides teaching.

It is no dim mark of the wisdom of God, that since he has planted in the human soul a love of variety and a desire of change, the present never satisfying the heart, he has made abundant provision in all the departments of life to meet these wants. The employments of life, so wearing upon the spirit, must be checked and broken up every day by sleep; the cares of life must be laid aside for food and to supply the wants of the body; the change of seasons must change the employments, and, in some measure, the dress of every family. From childhood to the grave, provision is made for us to pass through changes almost infinite. The farmer, whose employment is more necessary to the sustenance of the world than any other, would find it drudgery, and life itself a dreary, prolonged misery, were it not for the constant changes in his business. As it is, this constant change, the new objects continually coming up, render his employment one of the most delightful and bewitching possible; and I doubt not that Washington had more happiness and saw more charms in life whilst making his experiments, inventing his tools, and managing his farms, than while he occupied the chair of state, the admiration of his country and of the world. This variety, incidental and necessary to every kind of business, ought to be regarded as one of those decided marks of the wisdom and goodness of God, which he has devised to keep the mind from being too weary, and the habits of the soul from becoming monotonous, and itself torpid. Is it not an admitted fact, that when a man does but one thing, such, for example, as grinding the glasses for the lens of a telescope, from sun to sun, and from year to year, from childhood to old age, that such a man is not cheerful, intelligent, or in our sense of the word, happy? All elasticity of the soul is naturally destroyed by monotonous labour. The more labo rious and responsible the duties and station, so much greater is the need of variety to relieve the mind and feelings. A minister of the gospel would wear out shortly, were it not that God has connected variety with his office. Were he to write all the time, he would become exhausted and nervous. Were he to speak all the time, he would either destroy the mind by keeping it keyed up too high, or become insufferably dull. Were he to visit all the time, his mind would be too undisciplined to allow him to be even a tolerable preacher. It is from the fact that these various duties are cop

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