cipline-being drilled and sharpened by such action. Each of these associations of teachers is itself a school, and these schools, being some 20,000 in number, contribute largely to our true national education, quite independently of the ostensible end for which they have existence. In Church of England Sunday-schools, there may not be all the freedom of opinion and expression in the meetings of the teachers which our statements indicate; but our description will apply generally to the schools conducted by Dissenters, and may be extended considerably beyond those limits.

In the train of the habits of free thought and expression in the forming of rules, follows the habit of obedience to them when adopted. Much of the wisdom of life consists in the due apportionment of self-reliance and submission-of independent thought, and of deference to the thoughts of other men. In the case of multitudes of young persons, the service of the Sunday-school is the first connection in which they endeavour to act on this law of apportionment. From the parental roof, where submission has been law, they pass into the Sunday-school, where to think and act in some measure for themselves is for the first time expected from them. With this effort to do good, commences their first real feeling of responsibility. But this feeling needs education. It requires to be attempered. The law of nature enjoins that the younger should be in a degree of subjection to the older; that the lesser in matters of social arrangement should be subordinated to the greater; and that to a large extent it must be the duty of the lesser number to submit to the will of the greater. To bring young minds into a clear understanding of these maxims, and to fit them for acting upon them with grace and good feeling, is to educate such minds in the most difficult and precious departments of education. Nor would it be possible to realize this end by school tuition, or by means of books of any kind, as it is realized by such experience and actual intercourse. Thus, that Sundayschool teachers should be themselves educated is made to be the condition at every step of their becoming efficient as educators. They are thus required to become patterns of the conscientiousness, the modesty, and the love of order of which they are to be the teachers. Thus the fraternity of the Sunday-school is to the teacher as a little commonwealth, in which all those principles and feelings are to be first brought into play which are to fit him for the discharge of his duty in the greater commonwealth of the church or the world.

Another wholesome influence of Sundayschool occupation on the character of the teacher, is in the necessity it imposes of attention to method. The teacher devoid of method will never be efficient, and his services will be readily dispensed with in any well-regulated school. We use the term method, not merely nor mainly in respect to punctual attendance, or to some lesser matters of routine, but in relation to the manner in which the general duties of the Sunday-school teacher should be discharged. These duties are various. If all are to be attended to there must be method; and if each is to be attended to in the best manner there must be a method adapted to each. Publications relating to Sunday-schools are constantly issuing from the press, abounding with

judicious counsels on this subject; these counsels come under the notice of the myriads of teachers in every part of the country, by means of the Sunday-school library or otherwise, and contribute very largely, for the sake of the taught, to the progress of the science of method in the mind of the teacher.

Not less observable is the necessity laid on the teacher to become observant of character. His class often changes considerably in the course of a few years, and the varieties of aptitude, temper, and habit among children are constantly before him to exercise his discrimination, and to require the wise use of the word of admonition or commendation. His class is a lesser pastorate, and to adapt the various modes of instruction or discipline to the varieties of mind with which he has to occupy himself, often requires his utmost care and judgment. We have frequently had occasion to observe the penetration and skill evinced, almost unconsciously, by teachers in this connection. We have often found the teachers who have been for some time in their vocation, capable of distinguishing, not only the stronger marks, but even the finer shades of character in children and young persons, and well qualified to adjust themselves to such diversities. By scarcely any other means could these persons have been brought to be so closely observant of such differences. It is true, in children, character cannot be said to be formed, but all the rudiments that will contribute to its formation are there, and as objects of study they are only the more interesting from their being so immature as to be susceptible of much salutary influence. That the boy is commonly "father to the man," is a truth rarely absent from the mind of a thoughtful Sunday-school teacher.

The influence of the office of the Sundayschool teacher, on his self-cultivation in general, is too obvious to be overlooked. The man who would teach must learn. Knowledge must be acquired before it can be communicated. This is not less true of the teacher in the sabbathschool than of the teacher elsewhere. Great improvements have been made of late years in the system of instruction in such schools. In cheap publications, which appear from month to month, facilities are presented for rendering the instructions given by the Sunday-school teacher hardly less a matter of order and completeness, than those of the Christian minister. It is a great mistake to suppose that this class of instructors are content with iterating the most common-place thoughts to their pupils. Some may be thus restricted by necessity; but the aim of the greater number is not simply to impress on the mind of the young the elementary truth which all know and admit, but to lead such minds into new truth. That the teachers may be thus qualified, the Sundayschool has its library, consisting generally of a collection of books well suited to their purpose, being often chosen under the direction of the pastor. Then in most instances, teachers have their periodical meetings for mutual instruction; when all come prepared to contribute, each according to his ability, to their little commonwealth of intelligence-the subject for conference at such meetings being always fixed at a previous meeting. We have no doubt that, could the estimate be made, it would appear that the knowledge which Sunday-school teachers

communicate is little compared with that which they would have failed to acquire, if they had not become teachers. Their good work has been returned in this shape manifold into their bosoms.

But there is still another way in which the effort to communicate brings with it self-culture. With not a few minds there is nothing like beginning to teach in order to learn. Men often flatter themselves that they understand a subject until they begin to commit their thoughts concerning it to writing-and what is often true of the attempt to write, is perhaps not less frequently true of attempting to teach. The great requisite in teaching the young is the power to make the difficult plain. But that which we would make clear to others, we must ourselves see clearly. The simplification of knowledge is the last attainment of wisdom. What is needed in the good teacher in the Sunday-school, is precisely that which is needed in the good teacher everywhere.

Beyond these results are the moral and religious influences inseparable from the association and pursuits of the persons engaged in the tuition of Sunday-schools. To a large extent they are persons of accredited piety. In many schools such only are admitted; in all cases it is required that the moral character of the teacher shall be above suspicion. The fact that young persons committed to such service stand pledged to such a course of conduct, must operate as no mean safeguard. Exclusion from such a fellowship on the ground of moral or religious inconsistency would be felt as a disgrace that could hardly be exceeded. The companionships thus brought about tend to the same resultthe strengthening of pure and devout purposes. The teacher, moreover, has often much to do with the parents whose children are intrusted to him. In many cases no visitor is more welcome to their humble abode. In times of distress, the relief which flows through this channel to the necessitous is not inconsiderable. But very generally, it is when the hand of sickness is laid on the child that the presence of the teacher is especially coveted. We have known many, very many instances, in which the heart of the child has clung at such seasons to its instructor in the sabbath-school, as it has clung to no other. It is a kind of pastoral relation which is then seen and felt as subsisting between the teacher and the scholar; and this applies to the female portion of the teachers, even more powerfully than to the other sex. The favourable influence of all these circumstances, as bespeaking the sense of responsibility, and the intelligent piety which should belong to the character of the Sundayschool teacher, must be at once obvious.

Such, then, is this great educational class of the community. It consists of young persons, who, in this manner, are made to be familiar with the more useful forms of public business; with the principles of order necessary to every self-governed body; and with the method by which many things may be done, and each at its best time and in its best manner. Those persons are disposed, moreover, by their occupations, to become much closer observers of character, than they would otherwise have been; to become more earnest in their efforts to acquire and to simplify knowledge; and more considerate in relation to all the great duties of piety and humanity. In this GREAT SCHOOL

there is always at least a QUARTER OF A MILLION of our youth passing through these processes of SELF-EDUCATION. Truly we should have a sorry opinion of the educationist or statesman who should even seem to account this fact as other than deeply interesting and momentous. It is a section of our national life which, considered in the amount of sound vitality inseparable from it, can hardly be said to have its equal in any other department of our social system. No other nation has ever seen the same extent of self-sustained, self-organized, and self-regulated intelligence and piety, in the same class of persons.

II. The class whose benefit is ostensibly sought in these institutions consists of the children.

With regard to the value of Sunday-school instruction to children, nothing could be more easy than to get up such descriptions as may seem to show that it is a mockery-instruction only in name. This might be done by fixing on localities where infant labour is in great demand, where the labour, as in some of our mining districts, is of a degrading tendency, and where, from the general cast of the population, competent teachers are not to be obtained. But to exhibit such schools as specimens of the Sunday-school system throughout the land would be most unjust. From such instances nothing can be inferred in respect to the character of Sunday-school instruction in our cities and towns, in populous districts where there is a considerable middle class from whom to obtain funds and a supply of teachers; or even in rural districts, where the Sunday-school is often well conducted, sometimes mainly by the family of the clergyman, and frequently with the assistance of the junior members of the few educated families that may be about him.

Even in the best schools, moreover, it is easy to find a large number of children who have the very elements of knowledge to acquire. But it must be remembered that the children in Sunday-schools are of all ages; very many of them so young that their being thus wanting in knowledge is natural and inevitable. Our knowledge, accordingly, of the comparative numbers of children in a Sunday-school who cannot read, or who may happen to return foolish answers to wise questions, can warrant no judgment on this point, except as we know the comparative ages of the children examined. Great numbers of these children are learning to read in infantschools, dame-schools, and day-schools, and they are sent to the Sunday-school mainly for the sake of the moral and religious instruction which may be there obtained. To judge correctly about the value of Sunday-school teaching, we must endeavour to compare the state of ignorance in which the children commonly enter such schools, with the instructed state in which they commonly leave them.

One obvious benefit of the Sunday-school to a large portion of its scholars consists in its tendency, not only to perpetuate the elementary knowledge acquired in the day-school, but to dispose the young mind to further improvement. With the children of the operative and labouring classes attendance at day-schools ceases early, very many of them being sent to some kind of employment before they are twelve years of age. It is when attendance at the dayschool ceases that the Sunday-school instruction becomes especially valuable. Great numbers

who would otherwise have forgotten the little they had learned, are thus retained in some habit of reading, and are thus encouraged in the effort to add to their little stock of knowledge. The Sunday-school library is perhaps open to them. Other books at the disposal of the teacher are often placed in their hands. Information of a more varied and interesting description than the course of day-school instruction would include is obtained-such as a better acquaintance with sacred geography and Scripture history, and with good elementary books on general history, biography, and on some of the sciences. By such training, not a few Sunday-scholars become qualified to take upon them the office of teachers. In day-schools each child is more or less lost in the crowd of children, and can receive but little immediate attention from the master or mistress. But it is otherwise in the Sunday-school. The class of each teacher is small, the instruction is immediate, the character of the child is closely inspected and known; and, as the consequence, a more marked development of the youthful mind becomes manifest.

We

But it is in the moral and religious character of the instruction given in the Sunday-school, that its chief distinction and value consist. have before said, and we repeat, we have no great opinion of the religious knowledge which is communicated, or which can be communicated, in a common day-school. We never knew an instance of a youth tracing religious impressions to such teaching. We do not say that the mind may not have added something to its ideas about religion while under such tuition; but we have never known the awakening or the fostering of a religious spirit attributed to that agency. But, on the contrary, few things are more common than to see a marked improvement in the moral feeling of children as the result of the pains taken with them in a Sunday-school, or than to see the children of a pious teacher become pious. In endeavouring to account for this difference, it must not be assumed that the masters and mistresses of our common day-schools are never pious; they are often eminently so, and not unfrequently make earnest effort to convey religious impressions, as well as religious ideas, to the mind of the children. But there seems to be something in the necessary working of a dayschool unfavourable to the success of such effort. The real cause of this difference will be found in the more directly religious character of the instruction, and in the greater quietude and immediateness of the contact which takes place between the mind of the teacher and the taught. If the Sunday-school does not intervene to connect the children of the common day-school with a religious influence, they commonly drift off into the world, and become wholly lost to such influence. So important is the mission of Sunday-schools in respect to that large portion of the community, the children of our operative and labouring classes-those who are to become fathers and mothers to three-fourths of the next generation!

But there are two great defects in this otherwise valuable system of appliances. It does not retain its hold long enough on the older scholars; and it does not expand and adapt itself so as to take in classes of children who are not sufficiently clean, or accustomed to mix with

VOL. IV.

children of a somewhat better class than themselves, to be in place in our ordinary Sundayschool.

With regard to the first defect, some spirited attempts have been made to remove it by the formation of Bible-classes. These embrace a higher sort of instruction than is found in the Sunday-school, and are conducted, sometimes by the pastor, and sometimes by other competent persons. They cannot be too highly praised; but this network, if we may so describe it, is not of sufficient breadth and texture to accomplish all that is required. The slippery fishes which elude it or escape from it, are, we fear, much more numerous than those which are retained by it. The great want is, that fully as much systematic effort should be made to retain a hold on youth between fourteen and twenty, as to influence the mind of children between seven and fourteen.

While this improvement is needed at the one end of the system, there is another no less needed at the other end. Those children of the lowest class, of which we have spoken-those ragged outcasts from all culture and decency-if they are ever to be reached, it must be, we conceive, by an extension of the branch Sunday-school plan for the purpose, upon a scale embracing more system, and of much greater extent, than is at present existing. Why should not every great city, and every considerable town, possess its branch school association, consisting of benevolent and pious persons of all religious connections, who should direct their labours to the lowest sections of the population, in the spirit of men feeling it to be their hallowed vocation to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken ?" We are aware that something considerable in this way has been done in a few localities, but only just enough to show how much more needs to be done, and might be done, with the aid of more system and of a more ample agency. We are too much disposed to be content if the regular school-house has its expected complement of children, without sufficiently asking ourselves what has become of those who have left, or whether the present number of scholars embraces anything like the proportion from the entire district that should be brought under instruction. If it be a virtue not to despise the day of small things, there is a sense in which, as regards such enterprises, it is by no means a virtue to be content with moderate things.

III. The effect of Sunday-schools in relation to the community it is not easy to estimate. We know enough to be assured that it must be manifold and vast; but the real extent of this influence can only be matter of conjecture. It is a fact, that at least some two millions of families, from the humbler classes in this country, are entrusting their children every Sunday to the affectionate and pious oversight of this quarter of a million of young persons; that these families are so doing, in the most perfect confidence that whatever may be the case with other schools, in the Sunday-school their children can take no harm, and will be greatly at fault if they do not obtain good. To our mind this fact is deeply interesting. This bond of pure moral confidence which unites these millions of parents with these myriads of teachers, for the benefit of this large proportion of our rising population, is in itself highly beautiful,

S

and as regards its influence on our social state, it must be momentous. It does not a little to diffuse through the land the wholesome conviction that religion, after all, is not a thing of mere convention, or only another form of human selfishness, but a generous reality. Anything that should tend to disturb this course of unpaid, unbidden, self-denying effort, on the one hand, or to take away occasion for this moral response, so strong and natural, on the other, would not only be a national calamity, but one, the extent of which no man could limit!

Judging from the accounts of Sunday-schools which some men have published, and from the talk respecting them, in which some elegant West-end divines have been pleased to indulge of late, we should not rate these institutions at any great price. But we must be permitted to assure such parties, that if the half of the little which children are said to learn in their dayschools is not to be subsequently lost, it must be retained by the intervention of the Sundayschool; and that if their teaching of the young is to be the moral and religious affair they insist on, that, too, must be accomplished, for the greater part, by the Sunday-school.

According to Mr. Baines' returns from the counties of York, Lancaster, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, in 1843, we are warranted in concluding that the Sunday-schools connected with the different bodies of Nonconformists in our towns and great cities, and through our manufacturing

districts, are considerably more than double the number connected with the Church of England. We must venture to say, also, that, making allowance for instances of exception, the schools connected with the Nonconformists are much more efficient than those connected with the State Church. This arises in part from the difference between the Conformist and Nonconformist systems. The tendencies of the latter are more favourable to self-reliance and independent action; and the teachers are not only more zealous and competent, but exist in much greater proportion as compared with the number of the scholars. In the support of common day-schools, however, Churchmen are greatly in advance of Nonconformists; partly from their greater wealth, and the greater leisure of their clergy, and partly from their preponderating influence through the rural districts. Should the Minutes of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, which, while we write, are exciting so much controversy, really be carried out, a mighty and most mischievous change in this respect must ensue. The Government bribes will be all on the side of the Church day-schools, and tend necessarily to drain the Nonconformist Sunday schools. The degree in which such a scheme should succeed, must be the degree in which bad blood would be diffused through the body politic-the very best elements of our social system being those where the deepest wrong would be felt to have been inflicted,

METHODISTIC CORRESPONDENCE.

THE following letters comprise points of great importance, and which well deserve the serious consideration of those whom they do or may concern:

I.

Worcester, March 5, 1847. SIR,-For some considerable time past I have been a subscriber to the CHRISTIAN WITNESS. I was much pleased with the perusal of your masterly and unanswerable "Review of Wesleyan Methodism," contained in the January number. I have read Mr. Vevers' (reply?) contained in the WITNESS for the present month; but find, as you truly observe, that "it leaves every one of the strong points of the case wholly untouched." Moreover, some of the assertions made by Mr. Vevers are, in my opinion, open to serious and strong objection. Speaking in reference to the admission of candidates into the ministry, he says, "They (viz. the Conference preachers) have power to admit candidates to the ministry; but such candidates must have been previously nominated, without being objected to, in the March Quarterly Meeting, where laymen greatly preponderate in number." -Yes, in "number" but not always in power. It would not be difficult for the writer to prove, that such a "meeting" has been overruled by the travelling preachers; and that candidates who have "been objected to," have been pro

posed at, and received by the Conference. Hence there was not any particular need for the vaunted inquiry: viz., "Is there any similar arrangement by which laymen can check or prevent the introduction of improper persons to the ministry either in the Established or Nonconformist churches?"

I have also read the extracts of letters from others of your correspondents, all of whom appear to be Wesleyans. What they have written seems to me, at least, somewhat strange; and I am led to wonder whether, to some extent, they are not chargeable with inconsistency. If, as they affirm, the body to which they belong contains so many serious, growing, destructive evils (as connected with its polity), then why do they any longer remain therein? Perhaps it would be replied "To reform the body." Alas, as well might they try to dash to pieces with a feather the flinty rock, or even bind the ocean with chains; unless they could get many others to co-operate with them-who would gladly do so, but dare not.

I have been a Wesleyan Methodist myself, for a considerable number of years. I have been in their district meetings, their private committees, &c., &c. I know what I have heard, seen, and felt; and I congratulate myself, that I am now a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Association, where I enjoy liberty and rest. You are free to make what use you please of the above statements.

Yours most truly,

T. SWALLOW.