DUTY OF THE CHURCH AND PASTOR TO THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. Certain errors in our churches.-First error: Instruction at home not needed.-Parents cannot delegate instruction.-Second error: Throwing all the responsibility upon teachers.-The church ought to know all about the school.-Third error: Inadequate views, &c. -Teachers must be trained up.-Fourth error: Inadequate views of the aids of the Sunday School. The influences of the Sunday School in forming character.-Duties of the church. First duty: Understand the system.-Responsibility in this respect.-Peculiar benefits of the Sunday School hardly appreciated.-Second duty: Speaking well of teachers. - Great care needed on this point.- Third duty Aiding the child to get the lesson.-Fourth duty: Give countenance.-Whole congregation to be brought in.-Objections to this course considered.-Conveniences needed for this plan.— Fifth duty: To pray for conversion of school.-Piety in the young, beautiful.-Sixth duty: Duties of the minister.-Reason for mi- nister to make it a part of pastoral duties.-Teachers need and wish the aid of ministers.-Can have time.-Ministers should meet Reflections at the close of the Sabbath.-Blessings of the Sabbath.- Sabbath the safeguard of the nation.-The Sabbath violated.- Increasingly violated.-Barriers giving way.—Sabbath protected in England.-Who must labour in this cause?-The Sabbath must be rescued. Measures needed. The pulpit.-Duties of ministers. -Begin with clean hands.-Ministers must set holy examples.- An advocate for the Sabbath needed.-Influence of a newspaper.- Difficulties of these means.-Churches should act.-Owning pro- perty which violates the Sabbath.-Religious papers on Sabbath.- Church must aid in getting people to worship.-The house of God to be made pleasant.-The church to be made pleasant.-Duty of Sunday-school teachers.-Violation of the Sabbath.-The rising generation to be instructed.-Solemn reflections on this subject 238 Formal question.-We must have an educated ministry.-The world A "passion" necessary. -Third qualification: A well-balanced mind.-Fourth qualification: Efficiency of character.-Brilliant men not demanded.-Fifth qualification: A mind which can be disciplined. A good constitution and good health.-A good English education.-A good disposition.-Good reputation before conver- sion.-Young men of piety to examine this.-Cautions in judging of character.-No apparent obstacles should prevent one from studying. The education should be thorough.-Evils of the con- trary course.-Ministers greatly needed.-Solemn duty of teachers Discouragements inseparable from attempts at usefulness.-Reasons for faithfulness.-First reason: Personal benefit to teachers.--Traits of character cultivated by teaching.-Second reason: Thanks of the scholars in after life.—Interesting case of a solitary teacher.- Third reason: Bestow mercy upon the needy.-Fourth reason: The system will benefit the world.-Examination of Sunday Schools in the Society Islands.-Fifth reason: Scholars will soon be fellow- labourers.-Sixth reason: Prepares pupils for blessedness.-Seventh reason: Will add to the eternal happiness of the teacher.- Future meetings with scholars.-The author's motives in writing.-Con- GREAT OBJECT OF THE SYSTEM. THE man who lives for himself, may be of some use to others as he passes through life; for God has so constituted things, that even selfishness cannot attain its highest aims without benefiting others. The man who lives for his country will do good on a wide scale, and have the evening of his days cheered by enviable recollections; but he who lives for man, for the whole world, is the highest benefactor to his race, the noblest specimen of man, and the brightest exhibition of the Christian. Whether men have received or denied the account of the entrance of sin into this world, as given by Moses, all have readily acknowledged that there has been a great collapse in the human character; that by some means or other, man is not what he was when he came from the hands of his Creator. And the great problem with the most enlightened of men has been, to devise some means by which the moral character of man may be raised-a lever so simple that it can be applied to any character, however low, and one which shall be unaffected by time or circumstances. For four thousand years the world was left to the guidance of unaided human reason; and while a very small portion of the human race was receiving a revelation from heaven, the great mass was left to work out this problem. The B 2 ANCIENT PROBLEM IN MORALS. result was, that the whole world degenerated; darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people. Every part of the world, and every class of men, were debased and sunken; and vices became great and common beyond our belief, were it not that darkness still covers the earth, and the dark places of the earth are still too full of the habitations of cruelty, to permit us to doubt the records of ancient crime. Thousands of years ago, Egypt was the cradle of arts, the mother of learning; she had her chariots of iron, her cities with their hundred gates of brass; she could rear her pyramids to stand for ages, the monuments of her physical power, and of her tyranny;—she could build her massy prisons, and forge her irons for the limbs of men, but she could do nothing to raise her population, or to cause her teeming thousands to taste of mercy. Other nations followed, some of them so refined, that we are tempted to look at their marble ruins, at the effects of their arts, science, and even literature, and to feel that here must have been the seat of Apollo, and the residence of all that ever adorned or ennobled the human character. These constituted the lever by which the mass of men was to be raised. And what were the effects? The answer is, that in their highest intelligence and glory, these people worshipped more than thirty thousand gods—all of whom were represented as the patrons and partakers of revenge, and lust, and every vile passion that ever nestled in the human heart. At the very time, when eloquence, poetry and philosophy, were crowning men with the wreath of immortal honour on earth, the great mass of population was in the open, public practice of vices which it would pollute my page even to name. Rome had an iron foot; and with it she crushed the nations of the earth; but her darkened blood-shot eye saw no means of salvation for her citizens. The highest GOD WISE IN GIVING LAW TO MIND. 3 and holiest precept which she knew how to give, was, "Live every day as if the eye of Cato were upon you!' !" What a feeble check to the unbridled and brutal passions of her millions! The melancholy history of all ancient nations which have risen up in their pride and glory, and again sunk away to the dust, teaches this great truth; that men, whether they act as individuals or as nations, can neither be long happy, nor prosperous, who act contrary to the commandments of God. He is wise in giving law to mind; and every nation has been prosperous in proportion as it has acknowledged the laws of the Almighty, and obeyed his will. Men who forget God, will soon hate their brother; and those who are ungrateful to Him, will soon show that they have no benevolence to men. A nation which has thrown off the authority of God, will soon become feverish, restless, and headstrong; for selfishness is for ever uneasy, panting for something unobtained, and regardless of the consequences of obtaining it. The rich try to oppress the poor, and the poor try to encroach on the rich; the high blame the low, and the low throw it back again on the high, till the heart becomes the furnace of passion. Hatred of man, revenge, riot, mobs, malice, and ambition, succeed, till man is arrayed against man, and cares but little upon whom he pours out the fury of his burning heart. Melancholy picture! The woes which have deluged the earth, and buried so many nations, have all come from the hand of man. God has withdrawn his restraints, and the fires of the pit have at once been kindled, till they consume men as tow. Neither in this world nor in any other, will vice ever be allowed to go unrebuked, nor sin go unpunished. This is the true secret of the ruin of all the nations which have perished. And the time can never arrive, under the government of a righteous God, when a |