16. For other reasons, teachers should by no means blink the existence of Evil. The fighting instinct is strong in the young; and one powerful means of enlisting them on the side of the Good is to enlist them against the Evil.

There is a great deal in the Christian Revelation that is not, cannot be, and perhaps ought not to be, readily intelligible to children-for example, the full meaning of forgiveness, and still more the appreciation of Love as dominant in the Universe. It is almost as impossible for children to believe that an element of human nature, so close to them as Love is, and so familiar, should be the most potent Power in the immaterial world, as it is to believe that the same electric fluid which makes the hair crackle beneath the comb produces the roar of the reverberating thunder.

All the more necessary is it that the teacher should appeal to that strong and wholesome instinct which leads the young to fight for one side against another, pointing out to them that they, in a certain sense, are soldiers in the army of Light contending against the powers of Darkness.

17. It may seem a hard saying, but it is said with the Author's deepest conviction of its truth, that few boys can be induced to love Christ; and if they say they do, they probably say so mainly because they have been taught to say so.

Yet many boys can be induced to feel a loyalty to Christ as their Leader in the battle against Evil; and it is therefore in this character of a Champion that the teacher should strive to present Him. There is no stronger antidote against all the evils that spring up for the young from that thoughtless selfishness which is almost inseparable from youth and inexperience, than Christ thus presented by the teacher and apprehended by the pupil.

18. Whatever may be the differences of opinion among teachers as to the exact historical accuracy of certain parts of the various books that make up the Bible, most will probably agree that the Bible was made for man and not man for the Bible. In other words, it is better to be a sincere worshiper of God, while doubting the genuineness or authenticity of certain passages in the Scriptures, than to accept the Scriptures in their entirety, yet neither to love, nor trust, nor reverence their divine Giver.

19. To lead the young therefore to the worship of God, through the study of the Scriptures, should be the object of the teacher; not to produce a belief in the letter of the Scriptures by habituating children to worship the Book itself.

This being the case, even those who may believe that there are no interpolations and no inaccuracies in our versions of the Old and New Testament must be anxious that the young shall so study the Scriptures as to be led thereby to worship God, i. e., to love Him, trust Him, and reverence him with all the strength of human faculty.

For this purpose the teacher will do well to take as the basis of his teaching that famous vision of the prophet Elijah which taught that the Revelation of the Supreme is not contained in the Fire, nor in the Whirlwind, but in the still small Voice.

The minds of children, naturally alive to the marvelous, are so impressed by the stupendous miracles recorded in the Old Testament that they are often disposed to connect the Revelation of God in those pages solely with these wonders; and then, in after days, when they hear the historical accuracy of some of these events doubted by some whose judgment they respect, they lose at once their belief not only in the historical accuracy of these particular incidents, but also in the whole Revelation which they were supposed to convey.

This danger may be met by laying more stress upon the spiritual revelation conveyed to Israel in the Law and the Prophets; and by showing how, by national calamities and individual troubles, the different spokesmen of God who wrote the books of the Bible gradually built up a structure of religious thought and expression such as cannot be found even in the literature of Greece, or Rome, or India, or any other civilized or uncivilized race.

Teachers will of course remember, in dealing with this subject, that, if they are not teaching their own children, they are bound to consider the parents, who may not unnaturally object to negative teaching on religious subjects. But to parents who themselves undertake the religious teaching of their children, or to teachers who have full authority to give such instruction on this subject as may seem best to them, the words of Preceptor may not be without use.

"When I came," he says, "to the account of the battle of Bethhoron and of the sun's standing still, I endeavored, first of all, before telling the story of the battle, to make my children realize the place, time, circumstances, and historical importance of the struggle, that they might have a vivid picture of it before their eyes, and might also know that this battle was one of the great battles of the world; which, if it had turned out differently, might have changed the whole course of history and of religion. Then I began the story of the march and the fighting, and at a certain point I said: 'Here the story goes on to say that Joshua, the general, stretched out his hand to the sun and to the moon, and bade them stand still, so that the people of Israel might continue the pursuit of their enemies; and that the sun and moon stood still, so that there was no day so long as this before or after, in the history of the world. But it is generally agreed by the wisest people that this part of the story must have arisen from some misunderstanding, because we know from astronomy that this could not have happened without causing a great crash and destruction of all the Universe; and different people give different explanations. But one thing is certain and that is enough for you and me--that on this day the Lord fought for Israel; and that if this battle had been won by the Canaan

ites, and not by Israel, then the Chosen People would never have, entered into the Promised Land; and the children of Israel might have remained wanderers for ever, and there would perhaps have been no King David, and no Psalms, and no Prophets; and being left without the light of true religion, all the world might still be lying in darkness, and so at this moment you and I might not be worshipers of Christ, and perhaps we should be heathens, bowing down before blocks of wood and stone.'"

It is the Author's experience that, without negative teaching, and without entering into polemics, it is possible to lay much more stress than is usually laid upon the essence of Revelation, as distinct from the medium through which the Revelation is conveyed.

20. If, as will probably be admitted by all, it is impossible to be a sincere worshiper of God and yet remain deliberately immoral, it would seem also evident that an apparent sanction of immorality in the pages of the Bible is likely to defeat the purpose for which the Bible is read. Let the pupil therefore be very early confronted with that notable saying of our Lord, that certain things were allowed by Moses in the Law "for the hardness of men's hearts;" and let him be told that this saying applies to the whole of the Old Testament; so that he is not to suppose that, because Jael, or Jephtha, or Samson, or David, did certain things which are not expressly blamed by the historian, therefore those things are necessarily good and right for us in our days, or were even right in those days. And, if we believe that the last and greatest of the Prophets, John the Baptist, is inferior to "the least in the Kingdom of God" in the knowledge of the divine nature, it must seem an obvious inference that even the conceptions and judgments expressed by the writers themselves of the books of the Old Testament must not be expected to stand on the level of the morality of the New Testament. As to the future life, one caution at least may be of use. Servants (unless in very exceptional cases) ought not to be allowed to speak to children about this subject. A child's nature may be warped, or an irremediable taint of servility and superstition communicated, by a frequent and voluble mention of "hell-fire."

Almost as unwise, though not so harmful, is the attempt to ignore altogether the existence of a retribution after death, in teaching children. Much better is it to recognize with very rare mention—but very clearly, when mentioned-that there is a future Life, and a future Judgment, of which we know little more than this, that it will be in the hands of One who is perfect Justice as well as perfect Mercy; and that the future Life and future Judgment will differ from the present Life and the present Judgment not in being more lax and indulgent, or more severe and stern, but in being more manifestly and perfectly just and merciful, because hereafter there will be no vestiges of Evil striving to obscure and hinder the Good,

22. On one point more especially the child may be allowed and

encouraged to think definitely of Heaven, viz., as a place where there will be a meeting of those who have loved one another on earth.

Of all the encouragements and helps to a good and pure life, next to the loyal worship of Christ, there is perhaps none so powerful as the mention made in daily prayers of the names of those who have gone before us to the unseen world, with whom we trust and pray that we may be hereafter reunited. Let those who care more about words than about meaning tell us, if they please, that Heaven is not a place. Admitted. We will go further and admit that nothing will be, and perhaps that nothing even now is, precisely or even approximately what we suppose it to be. Yet if we believe that our best and noblest aspirations come from One who is able and willing to satisfy them, we must needs think that corresponding to every pure wish that we entertain on earth-and what wish can be purer or more natural than this?— there will be some spiritual satisfaction in Heaven, not indeed the same as we suppose, but differing in being infinitely better. And so, as regards the meeting of friends in the second life, while admitting that there will be no 66 place" and "no meeting," we may still retain the belief that there will be something corresponding to "meeting" in something corresponding to "place."

58. HOME INFLUENCE ON THE CHILD AT SCHOOL.

1. As to boarding-schools, the writer knows little that is not known to the ordinary run of parents; and therefore the following remarks are intended for those whose children are attending day-schools.

2. But the following rule applies still more to boarding-schools than to day-schools; viz., that the father should warn the boy against some of the temptations to which he will be exposed. Cheating in various shapes, and indecency, or impurity more or less grave, are sure to be found in any large school; and sometimes in small schools these evils are still more prevalent than in large ones. This being the case, it is only fair to warn a boy what he will have to meet. Let him be told that he is to keep out of these things; and, without making himself a "prig," he is to use the earliest opportunity that may be presented to him, when he rises in the school, for setting his face against faults such as these and for helping his school-fellows to check them.

Against evils of the latter and graver kind, the father ought to warn a boy with somewhat more distinctness. Many a boy, even in childhood, goes wrong simply through ignorance and for want of warning.

3. If the parents are selecting a private school, they ought to take great pains to ascertain the qualifications of the teacher.

The expensive preparatory schools intended to prepare boys for the principal Public Schools are many of them of well-known excellence; but the average private school for the middle and lower classes is at present (1882) very bad indeed, and perhaps now hardly equal (in intellectual training) to the average standard of Public Elementary Schools. 4. A day-school presupposes a good home.

What the house-master (who stands in loco parentis to the boys in his house) does at a boarding-school for his pupils, that the parents must do for their children at a day-school, if the boy at the day-school is to make the same moral and intellectual progress as at a boarding-school. At a good school boys ought not to need assistance in their studies at home in order to keep up with the class; but they will often make more rapid progress if they have some occasional help at home. Few parents are likely to be able to give this assistance so efficiently as a house-master; but the deficiency is often more than compensated by the general influence of home life and the stimulus of the boy's desire to obtain the approval of his parents.

5. The boy should be encouraged, if possible, to walk to and from school; or at all events part of the way. Walking, especially with an object is good mentally and morally, as well as physically; enabling a boy to be for a time by himself, and to think over matters that have perplexed him in the day.

It is one of the great drawbacks to the great advantages of the boarding-school system that a boy is not enough by himself. Every hour, almost every minute, is filled up either with work or with play; and some boys are in danger of living on from the beginning of term to the end without having half an hour to think. "Calling over," every hour or two, compulsory football or cricket, and abundant Scripture lessons on Sundays, are excellent devices for preventing boys from thinking about mischief; but, if carried to excess, they may sometimes have the effect of preventing a boy from thinking at all.

6. The parents should cooperate with the school by giving their son fit time and place to prepare his-home-work, and by seeing that he gets his meals in such time that he may be punctual in attendance.

On first going to school a boy should receive a hint or two from his parents as to the means for ensuring punctuality; e. g., he is to get his papers and books ready overnight, and always to put them in one place where he is sure not to miss them when he starts in the morning.

7. Parents should show their interest in the boy's progress by inspecting his register of marks or places, say once a week, and by asking him questions about his work, his sports, his school-fellows, etc., striving as far as possible still to "keep touch" with the boy, although he has now passed out of the sphere of home-teaching.

8. Yet though the parents should take an interest in "marks," and a "high place" should be held up as a natural object for the boy's honorable ambition, they should never fail to remind him that a "high character" is much more important.

There is now in our English schools perhaps too much, certainly not too little, of emulation, competition, prize-winning, and marking; and for the majority of boys the parental influence will be well exerted in counteracting this competitive tendency. For a quick, ambitious boy the counteraction is useful in preventing his ambition from running to excess; and for a dull and backward boy it is no less useful in