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offset shadow with light. Remember such in some friendly inquiry at the door, some suitable delicacy, some well-timed call. Get so near Christ that his spirit shall fill you, his presence kindle your sympathy for souls, the light of his wisdom direct you in all your steps, and then go to that bed-side and let the Christ within shine out in words that like torches shall guide some needy soul to the cross.

Don't Let it Cool.

It is the hour for casting in the old foundry with its workmen hurrying to and fro in the smoky light, its roaring furnaces, its streams of molten iron that "Don't let it cool!" flow out dazzling and white.

is the injunction as the pots of molten ore are borne
is impressible,
away. The metal runs easily now,
and will take delicacy of outline and retain firm-
ness of form as the founders may direct.

"Don't let it cool!" We are thinking now of the Sunday-school. What were Christmas and watch-night, the week of prayer, and the special efforts of January but fires under the cold mass of worldliness and selfishness in the school, bringing the heart into a molten, impressible state? Now is the time when a shape and set may be given to some one's spiritual interests. Don't lose what has been gained. By prayer, by personal appeal, by a careful life, keep up a helpful, saving influence over others. Ah, if we keep our own hearts melted at the foot of the Cross, we shall never need to mourn over the coldness about us! We may have had a good January; let there be a still better February. "Don't let it cool!"

One Sputtering Stick.

"WHAT a bright, flaming fire on the hearth," you exclaim, "throwing out such a warm glow, waving defiantly toward the black chimney its golden banners"--when suddenly, snap-p-p-p! One stick sputters out its ugly disposition with such explosive force that it dulls the cheery glow and cuts down more than one banner of flame. Only one stick that snaps and sputters, sputters and snaps, but it makes its influence felt all through the fire.

Only one sputtering stick in the Sunday-school
or church, one uneasy, fretful, fault-finding, snap-
pish disposition, but what harm it can do! It can
home with a clouded face
send genial Sister A-
and knock away the hopes of warm-hearted Brother
B. Do smother that sputter for the sake of all
that is hopeful! Keep-still.

But Brother B, and Sister A-, do not be
discouraged. The more that hemlock-soul crackles
and snaps, be all the more hopeful and cheerful.
We have seen the snap in more sticks than one
killed out by the steady burning of the logs about

it. Opposite every sputtering soul accumulate the flame of more love, more hope, more faith. It will not need any great prophet to foretell the end.

A Disorderly School.

[A correspondent who is an active and efficient Sunday-school officer, having occasion to travel on business last suminer, visited a number of SundayHe sends schools in various parts of the country.

us the following report of one, the location of which
shall be nameless. In a note accompanying he
states that this is a fair sample of many schools he
visited. This is greatly to be regretted. We com-
mend the report to the attention of al! superintend-
ents. Is your school like this?]

INSPECTOR'S REPORT OF SUNDAY-SCHOOL at
AUGUST, 1885,

Attendance-about 250.

Helps used-JOURNALS and Leaves-No Bible

seen.

Singing-Moody and Sankey book.
Order-Very poor.

Attention to Teachers-Poor.
Singing-Slow.

Noise-Large amount.

School opened five minutes after the announced time by the ringing of the bell. Scholars hanging around the door walking in and out. Bell tapped "We must have three times. Superintendent says, order," and immediately announces the hymn. Singing led by a quartet of elderly persons, who sing lustily.

In the meantime scholars are walking in, classes are arranging the chairs for study. Prayer comes next, followed by the reading of the lesson from the leaves. During the class-teaching, secretaries, treasurer, and librarian visit the classes and interrupt the teaching. Then re-assemble, sing three hymns; treasurer reports missionary collection as running continually behind; no allusion to it from the desk. The school is dismissed by bell. The first five classes wait for signal and go out orderly. After that the superintendent has quick work to keep up with the classes in the bell ringing.

Recommendations for all schools of similar irregular habits:

1. Commence on time.
2. Wait for orders.

3. At the opening, close the doors and allow no one to enter until after the opening prayer.

4. Let the superintendent announce the lesson to be read as found in the chapter and verses in the Bible, not in the leaves. Use the Bible on the desk, and provide Bibles for the scholars.

5. Arrange some other time for the officers to transact business with the scholars than during the lesson hour.

6. Dispense with the loud quartet and give the children a chance to sing.

8. When allusion is made by the treasurer that collections are falling off, supplement that report by a word of encouragement.

7. Ask the pastor to give a five-minute practical | The instances of praise show that we esteem selftalk on the lesson. If he wont, let the superintend- knowledge, which is a knowledge of human nature, ent do it himself. To do this necessitates study of and that any measure of it, however small, is proof the lesson and prayer. of peculiar penetration; that it is easier to "pass both Tropics and the Poles," the sun and the new star in Andromeda, than to know one's own heart. What reverence should we give to a living man of whom it could be said: "He knew what was in man!" What a wonder would he be among the sons of men who knew all the secrets of all men, and could read off their frailties and their strengths! There are still men who have their craniums carefully manipulated to obtain a map of their qualities and powers. We eagerly desire self-knowledge; we are ready to pay a price for it. We praise it wherever we seein to see it in others. And yet we will not get it from the one Book which contains it all, which is a chart of every man's character and life-a full and detailed statement of all our weakness and all our strength, of our glory and our shame, our degradation and our exaltation.

9. If no other plan can be devised to dismiss the school than by ringing the bell, see that it is rung intelligently, and not with a confused jumble of sounds. A better way is to dismiss as at Church service, by the benediction by the pastor; or by a verse repeated by the school; or by a prayer of two minutes by the superintendent.

In order to carry out these recommendations successfully, the co-operation of pastor, officers, and scholars must be secured. To do this, weekly teachers' meetings should be held.

Human Nature in the Bible.

BY REV. D. H. WHEELER, LL.D.

ONE purpose of revelation is to make us acquainted with ourselves. Long ago Sir John Davies wrote: "We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,

And pass both Tropics, and behold the Poles, When we come home are to ourselves unknown, And unacquainted still with our own souls."

The lines were written when the geographical discoveries which proved the earth to be a globe and filled men with wonder and the spirit of adventure, were fresher facts. Davies died in 1626, when the trackless deep had yielded up its most distant shores. But the enthusiasms of the last quarter of a century very well parallel those which the poet touches with his swelling notes. We build iron ships, iron roads, bridges of vast span, we invent telegraphs and telephones, we study the earthworms and the pigeons, we scrutinize the sun and speculate upon a new light in Andromeda, we dare the belief that the climate of a continent may be changed by management of the Gulf Stream-and yet we know ourselves so little that only the divine voice is heard revealing our true character. It may be after all that "the proper study of mankind is man," that to know ourselves is the most important and most necessary knowledge, that all other wisdom has value only in relation to, and subordination to, self-wisdom.

We meet men who pride themselves on knowledge of human nature. We analyze it and find that it consists of familiarity with a few of the weaknesses of humanity, of arts of deception, or flattery, or conquest. It is pitifully narrow, and is seldom of general application; some men can be so and so deceived; some women can be thus and thus conquered. It is a dirty knowledge, and concerns itself chiefly with degraded views and objects of life. We praise this or that writer for knowledge of human nature; we commonly mean that he knows a little of the myriad-workings of the heart of man.

We sometimes say that the purpose of the Bible is to reveal God and his will. It is a very inadequate account. It also reveals ourselves to ourselves. It is only in full view of our origin and destiny, our fall and our recovery, our relations to divine law and immortality, that we can begin the lessons of self-knowledge. The primer of human nature is in these facts of our origin, nature, and duties. To ignore all these is to build a house without any foundation-that is, not to build it at all. The divine facts encompassing human life are first facts; we must begin with them or remain a mystery to ourselves. Take them all away and huglement, a labyrinth out of which no man can find manity and its life remains an inexplicable entana path. Men begin self-knowledge with an acquaintance with the divine foregoings and surroundings of our being. These make a foundation, a primer; they are the elements of self-wisdom.

Can the study be carried further. Yes, to all lengths. God and men are in the Book. And what a vast company of men! These thousands of men lived in a far-off age and land. We are not allied to them by any secular bond; and yet it is the perpetual wonder of this Book that we find ourselves in them, and know ourselves through their histories. They give us photographs of our own souls; they cast the lead to the bottom of our natures. They stand in the divine light, and are revealed in their relations to the primary divine elements of human being. They think, feel, strive, win, lose in the atmosphere of unchanging realities. And yet each separate man is clothed with a distinct and even obtrusive personality. Even nameless persons who seem but to flash through the story are living persons who can never, while the Book lives, die out of human knowledge. We know "the father of the child" whom the disciples could not heal, though few words are spoken by him. We know them all. We know that we might have filled their places; nay, we know that we play their parts.

And these characters of Scripture are so numerous the nature of sickness occurring in their classes. If contagious cases are discovered they should be reported at once to the superintendent, so that he may see that other children of the family remain away.

and so varied that they reveal our inner lives at all points and to all depths. Our limited space forbids illustration here. It was the charm of the preaching heard in our boyhood that it laid men's lives open by use of the personal experience in the Bible. Perhaps an increase of such preaching in this age would be more refreshing for faith than " doubtful disputations" and fine-wrought speculatious. The man is in no danger of shooting too high who steadies his sermon by Bible characters. The fact that they interest us is proof of their veracity, of their likeness to ourselves. They are the abiding humanity, the unchanging nature which we bear in all ages. They are good and bad; there is never any doubt which. They are true to life, to our life as to their own. We know ourselves in knowing them. For we are of like passions and of like wants and destinies with them all. The differences are faint lines; the resemblances are large type.

Contagious Diseases and the Sunday-school.

BY W. B. TRITES, M.D.

A FATAL case of malignant scarlet fever recently occurred in my practice, which was clearly traceable to the Sunday-school which the child attended. In this school I found that no particular effort was made to protect the scholars from contagious diseases; children from families in which they prevailed were found in attendance and freely associating with the other scholars. When the attention of the superintendent was called to the danger, he acknowledged its existence at once, and stated that he had not thought of it before, and hence had taken no steps to protect his school.

This experience has led me to write this article asking the attention of Sunday-school officers to the importance of protecting their pupils from contagious diseases. Some optimist may think that anxiety here is uncalled for, that the parents of children where pestilence exists will keep them at home; but let him ask his family physician if people are always careful in such matters? If our experience is not exceptional, the answer will be that it is often difficult to get even the intelligent to obey such restrictions, while among the ignorant the most stringent rules are disregarded. Such negligence is not universal, we admit, but it is common enough to lead Sunday-school officers to take every precaution to protect the children placed under their care. To aid them in this work we would offer the following suggestions:

1. Occasionally the superintendent should announce that children in whose families contagious diseases exist must not come to school. Let him at the same time explain the danger of spreading these diseases and the suffering and sorrow which might follow.

2. Teachers should make particular inquiry as to

3. Children from families in which contagious diseases have prevailed should not be permitted to return until a certificate is received from the attending physician stating that the danger of contagion no longer exists.

4. When contagious diseases are epidemic circulars should be distributed among the scholars, to be taken home, calling attention to the danger of spreading contagious diseases and asking the co-operation of the parents in preventing the same. Such circulars should state the diseases which are believed to be contagious, for many are ignorant on this point. The Board of Health of Philadelphia classes the following named diseases as pestilential or contagious: Asiatic cholera, relapsing fever, yellow fever, typhus or ship fever, spotted fever, small-pox, varioloid, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and measles. To this list we would add whooping-cough.

It is a matter of surprise to the writer that while health boards make the most stringent rules for the prevention of the spread of disease in our public schools, they entirely overlook the necessity of enforcing the same precautions in Sunday-schools. Seven millions and a half of human beings in the United States are connected with Sunday-schools; how important that precautions should be taken to preserve their health as well as to save their souls! If officers are convinced that the danger referred to exists, we hope they will at the next session of their schools announce rules for the protection of their scholars from contagion. Do this at once, for you may thus save some precious life which has been committed to your care.

Studying Quickly.

BY REV. J. I. BOSWELL.

GENTLE reader, did you ever use the type-writer? If not, then when you first tap the keys you fancy that you can never learn, and, if you could, what use would it be when you can drive the pen so swiftly? You make so many blunders, and the work of learning goes on so slowly, that you are inclined to say, "Why waste time and patience over another Yankee invention?" Courage and patience! First be thorough and slow, and then time will teach you to be thorough and rapid.

This last remark applies to nearly all our work in life, and it certainly applies with emphasis to the study of the Sunday-school lesson. The person who would teach must first study, and study, to one who is not used to it, is a slow and tedious process. Courage and patience! Master the lesson even if the process be a slow one, and time and practice will increase your rate of speed.

Every student should first try to do his work

well, and should not stop there, but try to do it | holy life, pervading our being and supplying the speedily. It is said that there is no theoretic limit motive of our emotions and actions, the dews of

to the speed of a steam engine, and be assured there is none to the speed of the mental operations. The machinery may work slowly at the start, but its speed should grow with each revolution. Bible students should remember this, and coax their minds to work rapidly. Learn to read by sentences as you have already read by words, and grasp quickly the main truths of the lesson. Absorb in a few minutes what will help you in the writings of others, and reject what you do not need. Try to cultivate sound judgment, and what little imagination you may have be sure to rouse into action. Be at your best when you come to the study of the lesson, and you will find that rapid work, if you are well trained, is not of necessity poor work. Life is brief, there is much to be done, and what we do we must learn to do quickly.

Hiding the Word.

As workers in the Sabbath-school we study the word of God, but do we hide it in our hearts? "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee," says the psalmist. Psa. 119. 11. Do we thus hide it? We may have the "word" in our pockets, on our library tables, in our heads, without having it in the heart.

God's grace water it, the Sun of righteousness shines upon it, the Spirit's influences nurture it. Thus our lives become beautiful with the rich graces of Christian living, goodness, holiness, usefulness.

As teachers in the Sabbath-school we are compelled to study the word of God. While studying it we should make it our aim, our constant earnest endeavor, that the very life of that word may be hidden within our souls, that we ourselves may be enriched by it, and so may be enabled to enrich others. The teacher whose soul is not informed by the vital truths of the Gospel can impart little to the scholar; but he who feeds upon God's word, who meditates in it and lives by it, has that to bestow which learning in all the languages, living and dead, cannot confer. Let us then so hide the blessed truths of God's revealed word in our very heart of hearts that from us shall flow "rivers of living water."- Westminster Teacher.

Christ-Like Brotherliness. THERE is a very common sort of religious living which strengthens selfishness. It climbs the mountain-top and there builds its tabernacle, sitting and singing its hymns about heaven and During the war, on the eve of battle, our soldiers crying deliciously over them. It cannot think how would throw away their packs of playing cards and any body can like to go down among those dreadful thrust their New Testaments into their breast lepers and frightful demoniacs and outcast women, pockets; but it availed little to have the written and the noisy and vulgar people. Be quite sure Bible in the pocket, while in the heart were pro- that the highway of holiness does not lead us up fanity, dissoluteness, and ungodliness. A pack of there for a dwelling-place. It takes us down into the cards would serve as well to arrest a bullet as a market-place, and teaches us to do our business Testament. The pocket is a good place for the there, honestly and generously, as we would be Bible, but to have the Bible in the pocket is not done by. It takes us into the lanes and byways of enough. The Bible lies upon the table of many a the city, and teaches us to see in every want and man unopened. The table is a fitting place for the every sorrow a claim upon our pity and help. It Bible, but the Bible unread on the table brings no takes us home, and helps us to remember how the man nearer to God; and so it is, that a man may children feel, and to consider the neighbors and give his life to the merely intellectual study of the servants. This is what we are to set before us as word of God, studying it as he would Homer, the outcome of our faith and prayer, a gracious conHesiod, or Tacitus, without receiving its teachings siderateness for other people. And that not as busyinto his soul. It is true of men at the present day bodies, much less as patrons, but with a simple that they actually do this, and it may be that Judas Christ-like brotherliness, a considerateness that Iscariot read the Scriptures just as much as did does not only concern itself about men's souls and Simon Peter or John. We have no reason to believe that which helps them heavenward, but which runs that Saul of Tarsus was more learned in the Script-through all the commonest rounds and ways of the ures than Caiaphas the high-priest; but Caiaphas's knowledge of the Scriptures did not keep him from condemning to death the Lord of life and glory.

What we want is the hiding of God's word in the heart-not like the wedge of gold hidden by Achan under his tent, an inert, lifeless thing buried in the earth, but rather as the planting of a living seed, having within it a living germ, in the mellow earth. The heavens shower down their rains, the sun sends forth his warming beams, the winds fan it, and it grows and bears rich fruit. So if we have within our hearts God's word, the living germ of a

daily life. We are to carry such a sense of indebtedness to our dear Lord and Master that we shall be always trying to find opportunities and outlets to bless others; we are to live finding in all the daily intercourse with men a hundred fresh channels by which the Father's love may flow into their midst. For his sake, for the sake of others, for our own sakes, let us strive after this as the fairest and only satisfying token of a holy life-this unfailing brotherliness.-Rev. Mark Guy Pearse.

REFRESH your memory with good things daily.

Like an arrow from a bow,

Or like a swift course of water flow,
Or like the time 'twixt flood and ebb,
Or like the spider's tender web,
Or like a race, or like a goal,
Or like the dealing of a dole:
Even such is man, whose brittle state
Is always subject unto fate.

The arrow shot, the flood soon spent,
The time no time, the web soon rent,
The race soon run, the goal soon won,
mon's life soon done.