very fact that you reject it shows that to you it has not appeared true, has not appeared itself. The truth can never be even beheld but by the man who accepts it: the thing, therefore, which you reject, is not that which it seems to you, but a thing good, and altogether beautiful, altogether fit for your gladsome embrace,—a thing from which you would not turn away, did you see it as it is, but rush to it, as Dante says, like the wild beast to his den,- so eager for the refuge of home. No honest man holds a truth for the sake of that because of which another honest man rejects it how it may be with the dishonest, I have no confidence in my judgment, and hope I am not bound to understand.

Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions come between us and our God, between us and our neighbor, between us and our better selves. Let us be jealous that the human shall not obscure the divine. For we are not mere human : : we, too, are divine; and there is no such obliterator of the divine as the human that acts undivinely. The one security against our opinions is to walk according to the truth which they contain.

And if men seem to us unreasonable, opposers of that which to us is plainly true, let us remember that we are not here to convince men, but to let our light shine. Knowledge is not necessarily light; and it is light, not knowledge, that we have to diffuse. The best thing we can do, infinitely the best, indeed the only thing, that men may receive the truth, is to be ourselves true. Beyond all doing of good is the being good; for he that is good not only does good things, but all that he does is good. Above all, let us be humble before the God of truth, faithfully desiring of him that truth in the inward parts which alone can enable us to walk according to that which we have attained. May the God of peace give you his peace; may the love of Christ constrain you; may the gift of the Holy Spirit be yours. Amen.

EDITORS' NOTE-BOOK.

THE WORK OF THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL.

Those who are not connected with any Sunday-school organization can hardly be aware of the activity there is in this department of religious education. The vast number of periodicals, of lesson-papers, of occasional services, and of manuals, shows that not a little of the interest of religious teachers centres in this work; and it must be confessed that the utter spiritual poverty of the most of these, the absence of any high moral standard, of any deep religious insight, of any practical appreciation of the needs. of children, of any teaching which is abreast of the scholarship of the day in regard to the study of the Scriptures, the striving after something merely entertaining, exciting, or sensational, gives one a feeling of regret and sadness that so much activity shows such misdirection, and ends in such discouraging results. We suspect that the best work of the Sunday-school, the only work which still gives it a reason to exist, is done here and there in some quiet class under the guidance of some earnest, wise, spiritually-minded teacher, who can prescribe some really useful reading, or who can unfold the best religious lesson of the Bible, or lead a child from the glories of nature to an adoring sense of Deity; while the great mass of Sunday-school literature, the routine of some International Series, the excitement of concerts and declamations, of Easter and Christmas celebrations, without any religious significance, are, after all, only destroying the real efficacy of the Sunday-school. It has to be confessed that a great deal of secret misgiving, of anxious questioning, underlies the present methods and results of the whole work, that many of those who, a quarter of a century ago, looked to the Sundayschool with great hope, have not seen it bear the fruits of reverence and a religious interest they expected And, on the other hand, a thoughtful inquirer finds that the objections are only such as seem incident to all training in this day of restlessness, and to all the conditions of our social life under its new perplexities, theories, and liberties, and that an institution which has assuredly done so much useful work in the past cannot be suffered to decline. We believe that the discouragements which

attend the Sunday-school in so many minds are no greater and are of the same general nature which belong to all religious instruction at the present time.

Fifty years ago, it carried with it all the enthusiasm and hope of a new enterprise. The training of children in spiritual things had always its difficulties; and here, it was thought, was one step toward its better solution. Sunday was entirely devoted to sacred matters. The duties of the week were laid aside on Saturday evening, and preparation made for the sanctuary. The young people were glad of a service which was in contrast to the tedious services of the pulpit; for there, at least, they met a company of smiling faces, and the older people were all ready to take part in any meeting which helped to occupy with religious matters another hour of a day whose hours were for that purpose only. The very best minds and hearts in every parish were at once and earnestly devoted to this work. The same persons and the same influences which gave weight to the Church gave weight to the Sunday-school. Still more, it was very easy to mark out and pursue a course of study for the pupils, one, indeed, which now would be looked upon with little favor by either teachers or scholars. There was Watts's Historical Catechism for the older, and Watts's Small Catechism for the younger children, and committing to memory some of the best hymns and precepts from the Scriptures. There was a faithful literal study of the Bible, and an explanation of its hidden passages according to the best scholarship of that day and over all the services hung the same reverence for Sunday which pervaded the community. It has to be confessed that all this is greatly changed. Multitudes of those best fitted to do the work of training the young in religious things think their Sunday duties are abundantly fulfilled by going to church once on Sunday. The rest of the day they require for themselves, or for social recreations which are no longer condemned. Into our own little household of faith have come difficulties and discouragements, only a little earlier indeed than must come to all, but through which we have not yet seen our way. There is, perhaps, not a parish among us in which some of the most mature and consecrated persons do not decline this work, because of the serious responsibility it lays upon them. Into their minds have come doubts and questionings about the interpretations of Scripture as affected by the researches of science, or about the acceptance of doctrines which once were

received upon trust. They will not impose their doubts upon the young, or they feel that they have not themselves sufficiently considered these subjects to answer the questions which are sure to be asked; and so the best fitted abandon the work, and in poorer hands the discouragements only deepen. Take the subject of creation. From sermons and from books which are at all faithful to the highest truth we have learned, these persons see there is a great difference between the story as it is told in Genesis and in books of science. They are not satisfied with the flimsy attempt at harmony which in one place makes a day mean an æon, a period of indefinite length, and in another a period of twenty-four hours. They have not yet traced the various legends of creation as told by other nations than the Hebrew, nor drawn from the researches of the naturalists a grander idea still, which they can teach with a certainty no bondage to the letter can disturb. They meet with low and unworthy conceptions of Deity, with acts ascribed to God which one would not like to ascribe to an honorable and true man, to low moral customs and standards associated with sacred names in the Scriptures; and they fear to say that these things were low and immoral and mean, lest there be no heroes of holiness left for children to reverence, lest every lofty ideal be taken away from them. It is too difficult a task to show how the moral perceptions of man have been deepening and strengthening through the ages, and how much nobler it is to see that, one by one, he has been casting off degrading conceptions of Deity, and, rather than face the difficulty, they will abandon the whole work. Or, if the older children of a school will question or deny many of those miraculous or magical incidents which seem to have no possible connection with spiritual truths, if they cannot believe that iron was made to swim because the prophet passed a stick over the water, or that the sun and moon stood still at the command of Joshua, or if into their own minds has crept something of that disposition to question and deny the miraculous, which even President Bascom of the University of Wisconsin confesses "has penetrated our Christian faith in many ways and to many depths," rather than take the trouble of showing how one interpretation after another of Scripture has been changed and nothing of its substance lost, how one doctrine after another has been altered or eliminated, and "the foundation of God" made only the surer, how faith may be restored and strengthened and

made grander in the teaching of the divine order or the realm of "orderly mystery," they will give the work into less scrupulous and less inquiring hands, and the difficulties and discouragements will only increase; for they cannot be laid to rest, except by the attainment of the higher truth.

In the reaction from the old-time church service, which was wearisome to the young, there has been too great an effort to make the Sunday-school merely entertaining, so that, while strictly doctrinal or Scriptural teaching has been given up, the idea of reverence which children learned at the sanctuary has greatly departed. An earnest purpose in life is not learned, because the teaching is not done by those most possessed by such earnestness. It has been a most unfortunate thing to regard the Sunday-school as the children's church, and so let them grow up in the neglect of regular church attendance. Wherever that is done, it has wrought more harm than good; for it cannot take the place of the church. And, in the search after entertainment, the careful study of the Scriptures as the great storehouse of human experience in seeking after and attaining the deepest religious life has been only too much neglected. A prominent evangelical clergyman told us in regard to his Sundayschool, which was very large and called flourishing, that he feared the children hardly knew there was such a book as the Bible, so entirely were their time and thoughts given over to the preparation for monthly concerts, where dress and declamations and singing were the chief interests.

Of course, it is easier to mark the weak points in our Sundayschools than to remedy them, to forget that they are only the discouragements, there coming more plainly to the surface, which beset every question of church life or religious education, and to overlook the really useful work which is surely done in perhaps more than one class in every school. The secret lies in that one word work,- earnest, conscientious work, out of a strong sense of duty. It is done so frequently by those who never tell us how it is done, while most of those who do tell us so glibly of their plans have really nothing helpful to communicate. Yet, if not in public meetings, there must be many teachers who could in a quiet way impart something of the secret of their true success. We should like to know what books of a moral and religious nature they have their classes read, thus supplementing the inestimable work of the Ladies' Commission. We should like to