awakened, I mean fruitfulness. Ah! how different the look of the gardener or farmer on the barren unproductive garden or farm from that animated regard with which he feasts on the view of beauteous flowers, luscious fruits, and waving harvests! If you would draw the eyes of all who love Christ and His kingdom on the school in delighted admiration, oh! labour and pray that your classes may be as gardens watered by the Lord, and as vineyards laden with heavy clusters of ripe grapes. Oh! seek more earnestly the conversion of all the teachers and scholars. When the Sunday school shall be a place of such spiritual power and blessing, that few can be long in it, and scarcely any leave it, without becoming permanently transformed into serious and joyful Christians, then at last shall it arrest the enthusiasm of the church and the astonishment of the world. But while many teachers remain themselves unconvertedwhile the masses of our people have passed through the classes, and turned out rather gospel-hardened than vice-cured-and while instances of addition to the church are too rare to form a very marked feature in the church-business, and the great bulk of scholars in the school bid fair, alas! to follow those who have already left us in their reckless disregard to all they have been taught the Sunday school must labour under serious disadvantage. Its friends must assume a tone of disappointment, and its enemies may deride and disparage. It is time for all engaged in the Sunday school to lay to heart these matters, and to seek with more firm expectation decided spiritual success. We need to be convinced not only that children are capable of becoming early pious, but even that there should be far more hope of their conversion in youth, than there will be when they become adults.

How is it that we have wilfully persisted in choosing the most unfavourable part of man's life for our religious efforts. In adult life, man becomes engrossed in the affairs of the present world. Tie after tie binds him down. Wealth, honour, pleasure, friendship, learning, or the opposites of these, encompass all avenues to his heart. The eyes, ears, hands, and minds of men soon get overfilled. Religion wanders over the earth desolate and sad, her heart full of love, and her lips dropping persuasion; but rejected and despised, she rends her garments, and tears her hair, and cries "Oh! that my head were waters," &c. "Woe is me, they go down to death and hell, and will not believe my report. All with one consent make excuse." Ah! when reflecting on the aversion of mankind for the gospel, who has not inwardly exclaimed, "Oh! that there were a time in human life, during which each being was free from these trifling concerns which possess his whole thought, when the rich

knew not the value of wealth, nor the mighty the influence of power, nor the learned the pride of knowledge, when the tyrant was not hardened and imbruted by the lessons of cruelty, nor the libertine by the practice of licentiousness; but all minds and hearts were clear of worldly prepossessions, which like weeds soon choke and ruin the soil. Then at that happy moment would I run and whisper in their disengaged ear the true warnings and sweet promises of the gospel, and seek to pre-occupy them with the things spiritual and eternal. Ah! surely then the seeds of the kingdom would take root and grow, when the noise of commerce, the shouts of war, the hurry of pleasure, and the bustle of the world were for a season hushed.".

Each

Nor is this entirely a fancy, for God has so arranged our life that a long portion of it is given before his creature becomes wrapped up in the concerns of an inferior world. That period is childhood. To the child riches are but empty show, honours but playthings, the seductive pleasures of sensuality are not yet charming, the stock of knowledge is small, the mind is observing and forming opinions, depending much for its impressions on those of older age. generation thus is moulded by the past. If this power be wielded to attract the young to the superior delights of religion, and if God bless the instruction, then the rising generation may be reared to fear and serve God; but if this opportunity be neglected, earthly objects will gradually lay so firm a hold on naturally corrupt hearts, that it will be very hard to tear them asunder afterward. At present the parents of a large proportion of children place them under our influence, but when they grow up their habits will be fixed, most of them will not of their own accord come in contact again with the church, it will be no easy matter to search them out, and in all probability they will be lost to religion and to heaven. Some will suppose they have been religiously trained, and will grow up self-righteous formalists, and others will be probably hardened into prejudiced unbelievers. Oh! sad alternative. How long shall the nursery of the church be neglected, and its tender buds and young saplings be exposed to the rude blast, the nipping frost, the destructive blight, or the trampling beast of the field! How long shall the young lambs of the flock be left to stray in ignorance across the horrid path of the devouring lion! Oh! to begin at the fountain head, to leave a legacy of righteousness to our posterity, to overturn the evil of the coming world, while as yet. unsuspicious of our influence, and unaware of its power. Here are the future agitators and troublers of society, the daring infidels, the hardy libertines, the vicious criminals that are to be, now all in our

power, with hearts soft and ductile, and convertible under the power of the gospel and the blessing of God. Our national curses may thus be turned to blessings, and those who, if abandoned now, may grow up morally worse than the savage of the desert, may here become noble, generous, benevolent philanthropists and Christians.

This is a work for which Sunday school teachers have the first and almost the exclusive opportunity. The materials of society come into their hands in a plastic state, before the church or the pastor comes in contact with them. Only let them faithfully discharge their duty in love to the souls of their scholars, and in zealous care to please the Chief Shepherd of the sheep, and the grace of the Holy Spirit will be richly outpoured-one believing child after another, class after class, will be transplanted into the church, the elder members will not only rejoice but be quickened, the pastor be cheered to redoubled exertion, the young converts will be full of intelligent zeal, the scholars' parents will wonder at the change they cannot but observe at home, and come to the sanctuary to share the blessed salvation; infidels, sensualists, and heretics, will no longer triumph over a church which sees her children depart from her side almost so soon as they are of age to choose for themselves, and the whole world will be moved by the spiritual power of a religious education which, beginning with the tenderest youth, can thus happily and peacefully revolutionize human society.

Ah! if you would effectually interest and benefit the Christian church, pass by inferior aims which seek only better forms, in order to make higher life your exalted mark; let every teacher become himself a true disciple of Christ, and an eminently, earnest, consistent, prayerful, and useful one; in each class let the prime object be to seek more ardently the conversion of every one of your scholars, try to let none leave your classes but as pledged communicants with the church and members of the True Vine. Then with what an eye of maternal fondness will the church regard the growing accessions to Christ's kingdom of well-trained and redeemed youths, exclaiming as they flock like doves to their windows, "I was a mournful widow, desolate and barren; but lo! who hath begotten me these?" Churches never can neglect Sunday schools in which numbers of young men and maidens are continually being turned to the Lord and proving by their virtuous, happy, and fruitful lives, that the Lord is with you of a truth.

INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION.

To seek for an illustration of the extent and depth of educational influence beside the noise and smoke of a furnace, or the clangour of a workshop, may be considered unnecessary, and lay such illustration open to the charge of "far-fetched.". Nevertheless, if the reader will, we will enter its bustling threshold, and see what it can teach us of the influence of our educational life in its most expanded sense, and of the relation of these influences to each other.

The village of Redditch, in Worcestershire, is considered the chief depôt for the manufacture of that most useful little instrument of female industry and domestic comfort-the needle. Gaining permission to see over one of the manufactories, we first enter a room whose walls are heavily laden with huge coils of wire of every size and quality. A "stalwart vulcan" presides over a roaring furnace. We are not long kept in suspense as to the relationship of the wire and the furnace. A workman reaches down a coil of the desired thickness, and with a pair of shears cuts them into segments, three inches in length, with the greatest ease, though a coil of wire may contain fifty or sixty circles. These segments have now to be straightened. This is done by a process of "mutual attrition," while the pieces of wire are being heated in the furnace. Before we can witness the next process, we have to take a few minutes' walk into the country, for the water-mill is now called into requisition. Crossing two or three fields, we soon near as pretty a little cottage as village need boast. Following our guide down the gravel-walk of its well-kept garden, with its wooden palings, we enter at the door, and, to our unutterable surprise, we find it a hive of busy workmen. The three-inch pieces of straightened wire look very uncouth and ungainly as they leave the first workshop; but no sooner are they within the sound of the water-mill, than they take rapid strides in their educational course. They are at first roughly sharpened at both ends by means of the water-turned grindstone. They are now taken to the stamping-room, where they are stamped exactly in the centre with the impression of two eyes and gutters; and thence to the punching-room, where the eyes indicated by the stamping process are punched out. They now present the appearance of twin-needles. We follow them into another room, where a batch of urchins seize them, and adroitly and swiftly break them into two. The process of filing is next resorted to, in order to remove the burr, when the crude form of the needle may be said to be complete, and the first stage of its progressive existence to be passed.

Like young people who have finished school, it remains to be seen what they will severally turn out to be. The ordeal is at hand. They may yield to the touch of the master spirit, and give promise of a long and useful career in social life: perchance they may turn out ill, so that the searching eye, by which all of them must pass, may discern some flaw or other imperfection that shall condemn them to pass their days in everlasting ignominy, as part of that huge heap of waste and useless needles that we see pushed in the out-of-the-way places, a veritable eyesore and encumbrance.

We now pass into another room, where the needles enter upon their second course. Here they are heated to a dull red, and then quenched with oil. The next object is to give them the proper temper. This is done by placing them on a heated plate, and turning them about with a little hatchet till the true temper is acquired, when the heat is withdrawn, We are now taken to witness the final, but not least important, process of the manufacture, which purposes to give them the smooth and bright appearance which is their characteristic. This is done by folding about fourteen pounds' weight of them, with a due admixture of soap, oil, and emery powder, in a thick cloth, in the shape of a roller. When several of these are prepared, they are placed under a huge machine very much resembling the body of a mangle. The rolls of needles act as the rollers, and the machine is worked by water-power. We inquired how long this terrible grinding will last, and we find that for eight weary hours of eight long days the machine will unfeelingly go to and fro; and, in spite of the groaning and writhing underneath, we are persuaded that it is all for the ultimate good of the slim little wires packed up into rollers. At the end of this time they are released, all the smoother and more serviceable for the ordeal they have undergone. It only remains now for them to be cleaned and dried, and "ragged," sorted, and packed, to make them fit for the market.

The progressive stages that bring the child into youth, and the youth into manhood, are not very dissimilar from those that mould the shapeless wire into the rough form of the needle, and from thence. into the highly polished little article of domestic industry. Just as we have divided the manufacture of the needle into two parts, so we will divide the formation of character in the young;-the first ending with its school-days, when the basis of its future virtues or vices may be said to be laid; and the second, from thence to the conflicting influences of the world, that shall bring it to maturity, and decide its future position. When we speak of maturity, we mean that state of mind which has arrived at some settled principle