"INCREASED UNION IN SUNDAY SCHOOL WORK." 125 INCR

that their religious life shall not be shallow or transient, but real and deep and natural, always natural, to give them armour for every attack; ah! who, who, who is sufficient for these things?

This, then, is what we want, more union of feeling, more union in prayer, more union in conference about work, and more union in the work itself. Let churches, parents, and teachers be pervaded with a true sense of the character of the work to be done, and the need for doing it at once and in the best possible way, and then it will be seen that this is not a question of voting power, but of conviction; not of the appointment of officers, but one of intelligence, of interest, and of heart. Parchment unions will not suffice. Paper resolutions will not conquer the difficulty. The world cannot be saved by machines; it must have men—men filled with the life of the Son of God, and really alive to the urgent claims of the rising race upon their prayers, their sympathies, and their efforts.

United prayer would cheer and encourage all the workers, and bring them under the influence of the things unseen and eternal. It would stimulate zeal, purify desire, cleanse the vision, and secure the power of the Spirit of God. We know we have God with us. I no more think of contending for this than I do of arguing that the sun will shine on the freshly turned soil, and reach with its life-evoking powers the silent forces of the buried seed. I am more sure of God's Spirit for my child than I am of God's sunshine for my garden. "For if we being evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." But He who said, "He that believeth in Me shall do greater works than I do," also said, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will do it." Let at least one Sunday evening prayer meeting a month be set apart for special and united supplication by church members and parents and teachers for the salvation of their children.

We might also help one another greatly by the free and frank interchange of thought about our work, its difficulties and trials and successes. Fathers and mothers could supply many suggestions of large serviceableness to teachers, if we only gave them the opportunity. Let us afford them a chance of talking to us as well as hearing us. Free speech would greatly help co-operation; and if the atmosphere were genial and friendly and social, there would be no lack of topics; for what is there parents can talk so eloquently about as their children?

The modes of service in which all may so engage as to contribute to and co-operate in securing the desired results are numerous and manifold. Mainly, and in the first place, the church should strive to make its teaching and worship and spirit of life such that the children will as naturally graduate into its fellowship as they pass from class to class in the Sunday school. The church must be suited for the reception and nurture of child piety, and should so act as to encourage godly children to expect a place in the church family, and to pass into it by a transition as easy and as natural as that by which the fragile bud becomes the expanded flower, or the delicate and many-tinted blossom the ripe fruit. In this, as indeed in everything else, the privilege comes to the pastor, and the profit too, of leading the way, acting as a centre of cohesion, a fount of inspiration, and the living sap that holds together every graft

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on the parent stock. With his eye on everything and his loving heart in everything, known to all, known of all, and knowing all, he will be able as a father in a family to shape his preaching and pastoral work so as at least to give serious attention to these first things, and gather the lambs, as lambs, within that enclosure which of all others should be the most protective, helpful, and agreeable of any they know. Link on to this, parental work and influence, in speech, in catechising to gather the results of the teaching, in kindly interest, in leading the children to talk to God for themselves, and in holy living, and verily the beauty of the Lord will be upon us; He will graciously establish the work of our hands, and His work shall appear in manifest and palpable blessing to us, and His glory unto our children.

II. On the second and narrower branch of my subject I have little to say. (1.) In every successful Sunday school there will be the unity of a full, throbbing, and richly diversified life; teachers will be animated with a common spirit of love for their work, a warmer love for their children, and warmest of all for the Christ who gives them their call to and fitness for His service. Caste will be totally excluded. Divisions will not be known. Cliques will shrivel into nothingness. The atmosphere will be pervaded with unity; unity of faith in the possibility of immediate child-piety, unity of prayer and of purpose, and unity of teaching plan. The same lesson all around will be fuel for the common fire. Teachers will gain unconsciously, but still really (as we all do from thinking and talking on what other people are thinking and talking about), as their minds move towards the same goal and along the same road. They will experience a subtle companionship of thought and speech that will strengthen sympathy and perfect work. Let this brotherly love and brotherly work continue, yea! let it increase and abound. Foster it in every Sunday school by friendly talk on the common cause, the particular difficulties and the special encouragements of the work; by social meetings; by the use of the international lessons and the more regular and importunate approach in prayer to the God of all unity and of all life.

(2.) Economy suggests another direction in which this unity may be advantageously carried. All vigorous and well-trained churches will have more teaching power in them than they are able to utilize on their own premises, and will be able to send detachments to Ragged and Mission Schools; to form separate classes in private houses; to attend to week-evening services for the young, and so forth. Might not some of these, gathered from the different churches of different denominations in a district, unite together, and taking advantage, say, of the School Board or other premises, to carry on a school for the simple purpose of teaching the way of salvation? I know one church of over five hundred members which supplies the principal teaching force of three schools, besides the one in its own home, two of them being quite undenominational. If we are to overtake the needs of Britain, and fully use the power of the church, we must grow along this line.

The main needs, then, my brethren, in the School, in the Church, and in the Home, are a deepening sense of the value of child-life and of the possibilities of child-growth in the knowledge and grace of our Lord

A WELCOME TO SPRING.

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Jesus Christ, and a converging of impassioned enthusiasm, strong faith, and radiant hope on this one object of the salvation of the young. If the young are to be saved from the increasing perils to manhood and womanhood, we must do this; if they are to be fortified against the sceptical criticisms of our day, we must get them rooted and grounded in a living experience of the love and friendship of Christ: if we mean that the faith of the next generation of Christians should be vivid, and not numb, and religion should be the supreme, penetrating, controlling, and decisive part of human life, we must unite in this effort to bring them to Christ.

We cannot get men of Puritanic temper and force in any other way. Those princes of decision, courage, and spiritual power, Baxter, Howe, Owen, Henry, and their companions, started early in the work of religious culture, gave their youth to godliness, and so attained a manhood of invincible patience, incorruptible purity, and lasting usefulness. Let us have that trinity of blessed influences, the Home, the School, and the Church, all uniting together in intelligent, prayerful, sympathetic, and loving endeavour to save the young, and assuredly they will become partakers of the Divine nature, escape the corruptions which are in the world, be the joy of the church, and the strength and safety of the state.

A WELCOME TO SPRING.

COME, lovely Spring, and deck our sea-girt isle
With thy pure matchless robe of varied hue,
Making the meadows green, and valleys smile
With daisies, buttercups, and violets blue.
Adorn the budding hedgerow, scent the grove;
Once more thy joyous grateful offering bring,
Raising an anthem to the God of love,

Making the woodlands with sweet music ring.
Bid the young lamb bound with a pure delight;
The loving kine salute the sun's bright beam;
Reviving nature glory in his light,

And with new forms of life the glad earth teem.
Waft from the distant hills a zephyr sweet

To cheer the workroom and the busy mart,
To fan the crowds who throng the city street,
And make the gloomy winter storms depart.
Lead the imagination, fresh and free,

Up the steep mountain, by the flowery dell,
Where the young hare is skipping wild with glee,
And the wild goats in peace and safety dwell.
Lift from the weary one the load of grief;

Tell of a spring whose flowers for ever bloom,
Where the sad stricken soul may find relief,

Beyond the dreary winter of the tomb.
Tell of that Spirit which can give new life;
Rouse to fresh energy the dormant soul;
Subdue the storms of passion and of strife;
Bind up the broken heart and make it whole.
Tell of that day when all the sleeping dead,
With life renewed and bodies changed, arise;
Burst through their dark and dreary winter bed
To meet their Judge and Saviour in the skies.

MILLICENT STORER

A STORY FOR YOUNG DISCIPLES.

A BRIGHT and bonnie girl was Alice Williams. For many years, indeed almost from infancy, she and I had been true friends, close companions; and the friendship thus early formed had grown with our growth, and strengthened with our ripening years, until at length it almost seemed as if we two shared but one heart. And so it was, that when Allie, in response to the loving Saviour's gracious invitation, yielded herself to Him, and then, coming to me, told of the love and joy and peace with which He had filled her heart, I felt that I could not bear to be left behind; and thenceforth rested not until I, too, felt myself gathered in the arms and folded in the very bosom of "Israel's gentle Shepherd."

And now, indeed, the friendship that had been sweet before became as the very intercourse of heaven. Allie and I were never weary of talking together of the Saviour, and the great love wherewith He had loved us; and solemnly, as in His sight, we pledged ourselves to seek henceforth each other's highest welfare, so consecrating to His service, not only ourselves, but the very friendship which bound us together. By and bye we were permitted to share the privilege of His people, being baptized in His name; and on the same day our aged and venerable pastor gave to us the right hand of fellowship, and with words of tenderness and love welcomed us, his children in the faith, into the church of Christ.

Never shall I forget the feeling of joy and gratitude that thrilled through my whole being as, hand in hand, Allie and I that evening sought our homes; with hearts too full for utterance, we pursued our way in silence, until at length, seated in Allie's quiet chamber, she said, "Jenny, are you now perfectly happy, or is there anything you still wish for ?"

"I am happier," I replied, " than ever I supposed it possible to be in this world; there is but one thing I want now, and that is, some way of showing my gratitude to my precious Saviour."

"That," said Allie, "is the only thing that troubles me. But what can we do? We are both too young to teach in the Sunday school, and shall be for some years yet; you are but just fourteen, and I am two months younger. I do not know of anything that we can do; and yet I feel as if I cannot remain idle when Christ has done so much for me." "Allie," I said, "do you remember what Mr. D. said this afternoon, in his address to us, about taking all our perplexities and cares to God, and how we must never think anything too trifling for Him to notice; for He loves us so that nothing that affects our happiness is insignificant in His sight? Suppose, then, we tell Him about this, and ask Him to find us something to do for Him.”

"I think it is just what we ought to do," said Allie. But here we were interrupted by a gentle voice calling me away. I knew it was my dear, good mother coming after her child, and hastened to obey her call. Mr. Williams, however, insisted that we should stay and all have supper and prayers together, a thing we not unfrequently did, as we were near neighbours as well as dear friends.

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We read together the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel; but when it came my turn, and I read, "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father who is in heaven," I could scarcely believe the words had been there before; it seemed as if they must have come there just then for the especial benefit of Allie and myself, and so, before parting for the night, we resolved to take advantage of the promise, and ask constantly -until we were answered-that God would show us some way in which we might serve Him.

I believe it was the second day after this, when, as Allie and I were walking home from school-for we shared the same lessons both on week-days and Sundays, we met a young girl who for some months had attended our Sunday school, but who had proved so troublesome in one or two classes, that the superintendent had been on the point of expelling her, when our teacher, a lady with a truly marvellous stock of patience, had requested that she might come into our class for one more trial; the superintendent gladly consented, saying he was very sorry to have to take such extreme measures, but really she had been such an annoyance that he did not know what else he could do with her. And so for about six weeks she had been in our class; but during all that time she had never joined in the reading of the lessons; sometimes she would open her Bible, but more frequently she would sit with it closed in her lap, and take no notice of what was going on in the class; coaxing, entreaty, persuasion, had all in turn been tried to induce her to read, but to no purpose. And to this general sullenness of demeanour she added one habit which was particularly disagreeable, the unaccountably strange habit of spitting on the floor, or over the dresses of the girls who might at the time be nearest to her; this was the more surprising as her general appearance and her manner of speaking, when she could be induced to speak, indicated that she had had a respectable, even gentle, up-bringing. At first, when she came into our class, we had, of course, all spoken cheerfully to her, but she so seldom answered, that of late we had just left her alone; and so, meeting her this afternoon, we passed her with scarcely a look of recognition. By and bye, however, we began to talk about her. "It is strange," Allie said, "that she comes to school at all, as she seems to dislike it, and all about it, so thoroughly." Then we wondered if she had parents, where she lived, what kind of a home she had; and, in short, we wondered and wondered till we became decidedly interested in her, and determined to find out more than we yet knew about her; when suddenly Allie said, "Jenny, do you think this is the answer to our prayers?"

66 How?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "do you not think it possible that we have been led by God to thus speak of her, and that He may intend to make us a means of good to this girl? Perhaps we, being more her equals in age and the like, may have more influence over her than older persons, such as Miss Hill, our teacher, have had."

"So we might," I said; "at any rate, God can give us the influence, and you know the promise we read on Sunday night; so suppose we agree now to try what we can do, and especially to pray constantly for Olive, until God gives her a new heart."