Every ardent zealous sectarian must acutely feel the want of a centre of unity. He is cut off by his principles and practice from a visible Church, i. e. a recognised paramount body with peculiar gifts; this delightful image is forbidden to him. His own communion is, even to himself, only one of several bodies, of exactly equal authority and religious privileges, and he feels it has been almost a chance with him in which denomination he enrolled himself: therefore, whatever latent Church feeling he may possess as a social being finds no vent there. But still it is a craving of his nature which very generally must have some relief; he must picture to himself some universal brotherhood where all band themselves together under one name, where all are united in one common society that offers salvation to its members. With many the Bible Society is their Church; with others, the Temperance cause. Mr. Todd's Church is the 'Sabbath School,' and a very complete Church he makes of it, answering in all its gifts, and members, and offices, to the most rigid definition of the fold of Christ. It is represented by him, and by the writers who follow in his steps,-amongst whom we would particularise the author of a Prize Essay entitled 'The Sunday School,' issued and warmly sanctioned by the London Sunday School Union,-as an institution of Divine origin, with rites of sacramental power, served by a priesthood set apart for the work of prayer and preaching, to all whose efforts is attached a supernatural efficacy, who are also empowered to probe the heart and conscience of their flock by private individual close question and scrutiny, for which purpose they are enjoined to make themselves acquainted with each member's domestic ties and private life; and who are, lastly, pastors and flock, blessed with periodical visitations of the Holy Spirit in their corporate capacity, as being all members of the privileged body. All these points are more or less elaborated, but the question of the conversion of the scholar, with the more obvious means to this end, are necessarily the most prominent.

We are not aware of having encountered the word Baptism, or anything that can be interpreted into an allusion to that sacrament, in any of the volumes before us. The rite is absolutely ignored, but, with some points of difference, admission into the Sunday School unquestionably takes the place of that ordinance in the minds of all these writers; the main difference only being that, whereas unworthy ministers may duly administer the Sacraments of the Church, the minister of the Sabbath School, i.e. the teacher, works not so much as a channel as by his own conscious instrumentality. Most of our authorities are Dissenters. It may, not improbably, be the case in America, that few of the children under discussion have been received into

Christ's Church, and we know that this is also the case with large bodies in England. But even in Mr. Collins' work (dedicated to Canon Dale), which is sensible and practical whenever he writes from his own experience, the same tone is thought necessary, and Mr. Todd's formula quoted. In the Church of England Sunday School Magazine we find the same phraseology. Every child admitted into the School is, in their sight, a heathen: we never meet with another contingency as far as the child is concerned, though we do find Mr. Todd guarding against the natural inference from this fact with regard to the parents, by saying: The teacher should not ' accustom himself to suppose that the teaching and example at home must of course be wrong.' But this implies what is the practice; while parents who keep back their children from very early attendance at the Sabbath School are regarded in a darker light than that in which we view those indifferent people who withhold their children from Baptism. Take the opinion of the Sunday School Union, as put forth by Mrs. Davids, on this point:

In considering these exclusively parental duties, we assume the position which is, unhappily for England's youth, far from realized in practice, that all the children of the church, all the young people in the congregation, irrespective of age or station, ought to be found connected with the Sabbath school as scholars. The late excellent Dr. Leland, after an experience of many years, said, "I have no hesitation in declaring it to be my settled conviction, that Sunday school instruction is to children what the preaching of the word of God is to adults." If this be true, and we believe it is true, what right has any parent to deprive his offspring of a mean of grace so suited to their tender minds, and so likely, under the Divine blessing, to save them from eternal ruin?'-The Sunday School, p. 67.

And again, the argument of parents teaching their own children is thus set down; a parent is supposed to say:

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“I assemble my children on the Sabbath day, and instruct them myself.”—Be it so; it is well. There are, however, but very few, even of Christian parents, that have the inclination or ability requisite for regular and efficient Sabbath school tuition at home. We would respectfully ask, Can a child of four, and one of fourteen, be advantageously trained together? Must not the instruction be too advanced for the one, or too puerile for the other? Do not all merely home-taught children lose every advantage derived from the power of numbers, and the contact of mind with mind?' —Ibid. pp. 68, 69.

Again:

"The parent will compel his child to attend a place of public worship, but only wishes him to attend the school; practically showing that he does not consider the Sunday school so likely as the sanctuary, savingly to impress his mind with the truths of the Gospel.'-Ibid. p. 72.

We cannot wonder at the earnestness of these invitations to

this ark of safety, this heaven-born system' (as the Essay expresses it), the glory of our age, the bulwark of our faith,' when we see the promises attached to it, and the wonders wrought there.

'Let the teacher ever remember that he has the wisest system of instruction put into his hands which has ever been invented. Other systems classify as well as they can: but the grand characteristic of this system is, that it gives him power of reaching every mind, catering for every mind, studying each one, adapting instruction to each one, and making deep, permanent impressions on each one. The teacher has a power to reach, mould, and shape the immortal mind of each pupil, perhaps far beyond that of any other human being. The parents may love the child more, may know his disposition better; but perhaps they do not understand or love religion, perhaps are ignorant, perhaps have so many imperfections themselves, that their instructions are unheeded; but the Sabbath School teacher is above all this, and he may have a control over the destiny of each child far beyond that of anybody besides. For what has God thus placed each of these children in your hands? That you may lead them into the fold of Christ; that you may labour and pray for the conversion of every child committed to you, and not feel that your duty, anxious duty, is performed, so long as a single child remains unconverted.'-Todd's Sunday School Teacher, p. 26.

'The soul of the child is empty, and you may fill it with the treasures of life.'-Ibid. p. 45.

'Each teacher has some six or eight children committed to him, and he can teach them and form their characters as no other human being can.'— Ibid. p. 244.

'Here we leave her, from Sabbath to Sabbath, to pursue her interesting task, and train these infants for glory. Some of these will be under her care for four or five years, and all of religion they possess they will owe to her.'-The Sunday School, p. 152.

It is not to be a long time before the taste, the literature, and the genius of the earth, will be, to a great degree, nurtured in the Sabbath School.'-The Sunday School Teacher, p. 119.

When we next quote statements of actual conversions, and the means used for this end, we would wish to guard ourselves most carefully from any suspicion of want of faith in the efficacy of prayer in the lowliest servant of God, or in the grace of the Holy Spirit to apply those prayers to the salvation of the object prayed for. It is unquestionably the duty of all engaged in the service of others, to pray for them with hope and fervour, and to apply all the powers of their mind and soul to furthering their highest interests. But what we object to in the following extracts is, the sacramental efficacy of prayer as applied to one exclusive peculiar field of labour. There is no Scripture sanction for the following tone of promise. It is placing teachers a young, inexperienced, frequently ignorant class, in a false position, to buoy them up with these unfounded expectations; it is turning them off from their legitimate employment, which is to teach the children put under their

care, not to pry into their minds and curiously probe their consciences. If this inquisitorial investigation is thought unsafe in the hands of experienced ministers of God, what must it be when the questioners are boys and girls who can know nothing of character or human nature, who are urged upon a task for which it is impossible they should have any aptitude, who, raw and untried as they are, are expected to interpret expression, to read hearts, to follow all the inner conflicts of feeling? What mischief to the scholars if these examples ever prompt to imitation; what far greater mischief to the teachers. For after all, we have confidence in the stolidity and impenetrability of English childhood, whatever American children may be. It is not so easy to work on an ordinary Sunday-school child either for good or harm. But youth is a more excitable age, and those young persons who undertake the gratuitous office of instructor, are likely to have minds open to impressions, and eager for stimulants to keep them up in a difficult and perhaps irksome duty. What effect must it have upon many of these to be told that on them devolves, instead of on fathers and mothers, the task of instilling into the infant mind the first thought of religion-on them devolves, instead of the pastors of the church, the ministry of reconciliation; to hear themselves addressed over and over again as ambassadors of Christ; to be told that they are the mediums of conversion; that they must receive every scholar as a child of wrath, that they are to make it a child of grace. We do not profess to have much experience of the working of schools where this strain is enforced, but it hardly needs experience to know what must be its fruits, so far as it bears fruit at all, so long as it is not mere unintelligible talk read by young people without thought, comprehension, or intellectual acceptance of any kind. So far as this perversion of natural order works at all, its effects must be injurious. To ordinary minds you can hardly do a worse service than indoctrinate them with an undue sense of their importance. You cannot turn a girl of sixteen into a minister of the gospel, as these books try to do; but you can make her a very insufferable girl. You cannot by high sounding exhortations change a young apprentice into a steward having in his treasure things new and old; but you can, perhaps, impregnate his fancy with the notion that he is one, and so upset heart and brain, unhinge and spoil his whole nature. And if clergymen find a spirit of insubordination rife in their schools, as we know is the case sometimes, this is a literature which may well produce such results, though very far, we believe, from the writers' design, who, on the contrary, have to labour to give the pastor his right place in this anomalous system, which, in fact, puts him on one side altogether, and,

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according to their view of the subject, secures the eternal salvation of each child, before his work and influence can be once brought to bear upon it.

But we must give our readers examples of the tone of exhortation common to all these publications, even the most practical; the universal inculcation of the principle, that the teacher is to accomplish a certain work, the greatest change that can befall an immortal soul, without reference to any other instrumentality or teaching whatever.

'Very many times, I doubt not, the teacher loses the past labours perhaps of a whole year, in consequence of not having the immediate conversion of every child constantly before his mind.'-The Sunday School Teacher, p. 25.

The teacher should have an unconquerable desire after the immediate conversion of every scholar.'-The Teacher's Companion, p. 190.

'It is a very solemn consideration, that the most inexperienced teachers must be set at once to the very highest work-To save souls.'-The Sabbath School and Bible Teaching, p. 137.

'The conversion of the children must be constantly present to the teacher's mind. Let us remember that every child who is not converted is in danger of eternal ruin, and that these our scholars, gentle and winning though some of them may be, and however closely they have twined themselves round our hearts, are, if not believers, every one on the way to death. To these very children let us offer the pardon of their sins, the renewing of their hearts, and the salvation of their souls. Let us give ourselves and them no rest till Christ be formed in them the hope of glory.' Ibid. pp. 46, 47.

'We would, nay, we must, pursue a widely different course, if Sunday schools are ever to fulfil their mission, regenerate the human race.'-The Sunday School, p. 242.

The object of a Sabbath school is not to teach the children to read, not to implant good habits, not to instruct them in the truths of Christianity, in hopes that they may be converted in after life. The Sabbath school does effect all these, and much more; but useful as is the art of reading, valuable the formation of right habits, all-important the boon of a Christian education, neither is the object we would aim to attain. They are necessary adjuncts, the means to the end, and not the end itself, which is only arrived at by the conversion of the children's precious and immortal souls.' Ibid. p. 16.

Do, on each Sabbath, whatever can be done on that day to secure the salvation of each pupil.'-The Sunday School Teacher's Hand-book, p. 44.

Prayer is put forward as one main means by which these mighty results are to be obtained; prayer in a sacerdotal capacity, stimulated by a promise of success, peculiar to this sphere of labour, which one and all of these writers guarantee, on we know not what warrant; certainly not by the example of Apostles.

'It needeth but that Sabbath school teachers ask for the salvation of their children, and God is willing to grant it.'-The Sunday School, p. 297. 'We ask, in all sober earnestness, Have you ever wept because your children were unconverted? Has the fact of their being enemies to God, and on the road to destruction, caused you more heartfelt grief than their