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"I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice."-TIM. i, 5.

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TIMOTHY was the child of many prayers and much instruction. The success of this devotional labor is seen in the high estimation which St. Paul placed upon his acquirements, and in the dignity and efficiency with which he discharged the duties of an evangelist while but a youth. He was early called to the work of the ministry, being probably but twenty years of age when the hands of ordination were laid upon him; he was also a companion at that time of the Apostle, as he journeyed from Lesser Asia to Europe. Holy men had gazed upon him while but a child, and uttered bright prophecies concerning the future that was opening before him. They had seen, in others, how early and welldisciplined and biblical piety, had become eminent, consist ent, strong and enduring, because independent of times and seasons, flowing on like those streams which never know of frost, and are ever full and deep. It was a great joy to Lois and Eunice, if not to his Grecian father, to hear these prophecies. They increased the zeal of those parents' hearts, and he became a plant of the household grown up in its youth. And when the Apostle would deepen in Timothy a realization of his obligations and responsibilities, he refers

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to the hallowed memories of the past, bidding him remember of whom he learned holy things, and that from a child he had known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus,—such knowledge being profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

This appeal to Timothy goes upon the ground that the greater the means and opportunities for the attainment of excellence, the greater may be reasonable expectations of progress, and the deeper are the impulses of conscience to make honorable advances. He is exhorted to remember that not only from a child has he been made acquainted with the Scriptures, but that that acquaintance has been companioned by parental love,-the faith taught him out of the holy book, dwelt also in the heart of his teachers. It was these unfeignedly; its power was felt with such energy that impulses to communicate it were obeyed, and the parent, like a fixed star receiving light from the sun, and imparting that light to its satellites, poured freely and diligently forth the truth received from the Primal Source. Timothy was reminded that he had had all the training he could have desired to receive. Nothing had been left undone. His mother and grandmother had bent over him with such success in teaching as to make holy men prophecy that such a child should be one of the best of men. Wisdom blended with Love in their teaching. They paused over the sacred page and told the story of Experience. They confirmed the promises of the Word by appeals to the realities of life. They united the reciprocal teachings of divine and human history, and showed how what was offered as the means of goodness, as the essentials to a right formation of character, had been demonstrated by the heroes of sacred annals. Thus Christian virtue was not merely taught, but it was made to be felt by the young heart, for most truly has it been said, "An ordinary preceptor counsels and moralizes ; that which he offers to our memory, a mother engrafts in our hearts: she makes us love that which he can at most but make us believe, and it is by love that she leads us to virtue."

Now this is what we want to effect in all children, and to effect it the Sabbath School offers its aid. The Sabbath School alone cannot effect it, for it is all vanity to suppose that anything can be devised to take away the duty which the individual parent

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owes to the individual child. It is with the Sabbath as with Day Schools; they are successful in imparting intelligence, -in imparting the fundamental elements of all knowledge, according as parents and teachers realize and act upon the harmony of interests between them. A child has less of true and noble ambition who is seldom or never questioned in reference to his progress at school; who is not conscious of having at home such eyes overlooking and ready to smile upon his advances, as the eyes of Lois and Eunice watching young Timothy. Let him have a consciousness that love expects much from him; that every pulse that throbs with joy in his own heart, as he moves on in the essential acquirements of knowledge, is responded to by a pulse in the parent's heart, and it is not in human nature to be entirely indifferent to it. If any doubt this, let them look into the biographies of the great and good; let them read such astonishing facts as that "out of sixty-nine monarchs who have worn the crown of France, only three have loved the people, and all those three were brought up by their mothers." "The future destiny of a child," said Napoleon, to be taken as all his sayings should be, with caution," is always the work of its mother;" and to his mother he attributed the elevation he had given to himself. Cuvier, the celebrated naturalist, who has opened the wonders of earth's various stores to admiring minds, and given a museum of knowledge to every lover of nature,-Cuvier said of his mother, "I used to draw under her superintendence, and I read aloud books of history and general literature. It is thus that she developed in me that love of reading, and that curiosity for all things, which were the spring of my life.” To her he attributed all the splendor of those achievements in discovery, to which he had been led by the curiosity which that mother had fostered in his mind. And are parents aware how much they are daily doing to train this powerful principle of our nature in their children? We can make them curious after knowledge, or after mere pleasure. They will be curious to know the reality of that upon which their parents talk with delight and constant excitement,-be it the routine of fashionable pleasures, the vanities of dress, the intoxication of highwrought fictions, or the holier delights and purer tastes of virtuous enjoyment and religious advancement. They keenly separate mere momentary exhortations to a better course, from the real passions of the parent; and are apt to think that they are cautioned against too great indulgence in

pleasures of the intoxicating cast, only because the parent has outgrown a relish for them.

First, then, of all, in reference to the success of the Sabbath School, we want to call to remembrance unfeigned faith in the parents and guardians, in the elder portion of our community. We ask for Loises and Eunices. We want heart-labor, rather than lip-praise. We want to be able to appeal to the children by the memory of parental interest in them. We want to know that such appeals will be truthful. We want to be assured that we shall speak to the consciences of the pupils, when we do thus speak. We want faith in the power of such speech to awaken tenderness, to make their heart beat quicker, to animate zeal and diligence of effort, to fortify a good resolution of improving the advantages of the school. If we take it for granted that the parents have the interest in the efficiency of the school which they should have, and yet it be true that they have it not, then our appeals are all vain, because the children have not the conscience to which we present our appeal. They will listen from a sense of propriety; some story, or anecdote, or illustration, may please them; but after all, we have not made the impression we desired,-we have written nothing on the heart, we have not woven a new thread of golden beauty and conservative strength amid the texture of the affections. We could not do this, because we could not make our appeal to the conscience that can only be formed in the home. We could not address them as Paul addressed Timothy. Our words did not find an echo in the heart, as did his. The children know that their parents do not take the interest in religious truth which we ascribe to them.

But how different is the case where we have the conscience we have desire to address,—where we know that at the home of the scholars there is an Eunice, and it may be a Lois! It is then that we can speak right out without reserve. We can stimulate to activity as Timothy was stimulated. We can bring the sacred affections of home into the school, and deepen our appeal for diligence and propriety by the known interest of the parents or guardians of our charge. We can use the beautiful metaphor of the apostle, when he bade Timothy "stir up the gift" that was in him,—a metaphor taken from the act of the priest in the temple who stirred the fire on the altar, heaven-lit, adding fuel that the flame might burn beautifully and heavenward. We want to do this; we ought to be able to do it; and our

earnest question is, Shall we be able to do it? With you, fathers and mothers! rests the answer.

Let us but have an affirmative answer, given by a just appreciation of what is necessary for the full enjoyment and improvement of the Sabbath School, and our hearts will burn with new zeal, and our prayers shall go to heaven with less wavering of the breath. The Sabbath School will be a delightful sphere. We shall be conscious that the music there will harmonize with the melodies of home. We shall feel assured that the school is not resorted to as a convenient place to keep children from mischief, to relieve the home of their noise, to obtain reading to cheer dull hours, or to ease the conscience that will not be faithful to parental duty in religious instruction; but we shall feel that far higher views are taken of it, and that the parent wishes to have the child experience the full force of the blessings which can there be communicated. With such appreciation on the part of parents and guardians, and the school will certainly become a great instrument to effect permanent good,-religious good, in the developement of Christian character in the young.

This is what above all things we desire. We want to see more religious fruits borne by the Sabbath School. We want to see the character moulded to a divine symmetry and perfection. We want to be confident that they who go forth from our school, will go with fixed and high purposes of life, and that wherever the providence of God may scatter them, they will be found faithful missionaries of the Cross and true apostles of Christianity in all genuineness and power. We want to be able to write to them, confident of success, to be, as Timothy was exhorted to be, an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity."

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briefly look at some of the zeal for which we ask.

And that this may be, let us reasons for the exercise of the the furtherance of this duty, we remark,

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First. The Sabbath School is a great instrument of culture which God has abundantly blessed. It stands as an exponent of the truth that children should be religiously educated,―that the Bible should have given to it its pre-eminent place among all books,-that the moral element must be mingled in with all intellectual advancement, before that advancement can be the elevation of true wisdom. The Sabbath School is a great instrument to promote this desirable result, inasmuch as by the connexion of social pleasure with

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