And from what we have stated, arises the fact of expansiveness, which we claim to be a feature of a divinely associate Thought. Expansive! yes, behold how far-stretching the Sunday school Idea has become in some sixty or seventy years! it is now world-wide. At first it promised little, in comparison with the realisation of its augury. It was frowned coldly upon by many; some called it a whim; others proscribed it as a heresy; and some, argus-eyed, saw in it the portent of a revolution! It was none of these; it was the shepherd going after the sheep he had lost, and seeking until he had found the wanderer. Yet, alas! there were some, well meaning persons it might be, who did not wish the shepherd God-speed on his journey. It was an unheard of thing, to care about poor children; it was a dangerous thing to teach a poor man's urchin his alphabet; it might subvert the constitution or upset the throne. And so, numbers looked with a strange, suspicious eye, upon the Man of Gloucester; and they built a wall of prejudice, thick and strong; and the Thought finding on the right hand this wall impeding its energies, turned to the left hand, and in an unaccredited agency, was invited to afford its inspiration. But it was not contented with a onesided activity; its energies were mighty, so mighty, that just as massive walls have given way to the living force of growing plants, so did that wall of prejudice, which antiquated notions had reared, fall for ever before the impetus of a spiritual Idea. And now it has reached every where. Wherever the bible and the missionary go, thither goes also this Thought. It has expanded itself even upon the shores of rigid, bigotted India, and the soul-less little girls, to whom reading was an impossible acquisition, (so the Brahmins talked,) have gained both souls and alphabet-wisdom, from the religious education movement which this Thought had aroused in England. Like a grain of mustard seed, it was small in its beginning, but now it has spread its foliage over every continent, and across every sea, and little nestlings of every clime and of every colour, lodge among its branches.

Because also, this Thought is God-like, we judge it to be imperishable. It has within itself, since it is the springing forth of christian love, the principle of vitality; it stands alone, independent of other embodied Thoughts; it rests upon no synodical decree, it asks no tithes, it is bound to no hierarchy. Church polity might be demolished, and church systems be drifting down the stream of time, and Sunday schools nevertheless exist; for they are free as the air you breathe, and wherever a group of little children could be gathered, and a teacher full of love be found to meet them, there would still stand forth that most catholic of all catholic things, a Sunday school. It is amaranthine, for it cannot wither away. It

is asbestos-like, for it cannot be consumed. Imperishable! or if it cease to be, no nearer date of its extinction, shall be found, than thatwhen its existence shall be unneeded, when all shall know the Lord, from the least unto the greatest.

But of this Thought we have yet something to assert, besides its greatness, its expansiveness, and its asbestos-nature; we have to assert that it is marked by various stages of developement; and this we naturally expect, for what is good for any thing, is of slow growth, and has a history of progressiveness. Quick maturity is weak and unhealthy; usually, the seeds of decay lie germinant within its fair but deceptive frame. Evil too, may mature itself into rank and poisonous luxuriance. Good, however, and what is Durable, make their way upward by slow and painful struggling; and being slow in their progression, they come to have epochs, their years of growth may be arranged under certain periods of moral developement; and it were wise to impress upon our minds, the association of such truths with the Sunday school which is a thing good and durable. For observation having shown us, that our system of religious teaching has grown, and grown, we mean, not so much in the sense of multiplying its institutions, as in the sense of maturing its germinated thought; reflection would infer that what has grown, might possibly still grow, and would then try to ascertain these two things; is there need of more growth, and is there capability of more growth?

And as these two points of inquiry are points of great practical moment, we must endeavour to throw upon them some little light, Look again therefore at the Thought of Sunday school instruction. Has it only expanded itself in its embodiment? Has it not been developed in its intellectuality, that is simply as a Thought? for if you compare what we might call the pretension of the first Sunday schools, with the pretension of those which now cover our land, you will discover a developement of idea, you will see that the Thought, as a Thought has grown. And it will be generally conceded, that an advance of design is clearly indicated by the present Sunday school system, an advance which perhaps was never contemplated by the founder of such a system, though it is a most natural, even a necessary developement of it.

Now the question for us to answer is, Has this advance of design gone far enough? and we answer it by requiring another question to be first replied to. What ought to be the position of Sunday school teachers, relative to other modes of popular education? At first, alas! a Sunday school had no such relative position; it was a moral and mental isolation; it was a green oasis in a sandy desert. Other schools did not exist, and as a means of even secular, alphabet learning, Sunday teaching was the only teaching for the poor. It was not

long since, to name one case out of many, that a Lancashire millowner of prodigious wealth, acknowledged publicly at some school anniversary, that all the education he had received, was in a Sunday school. Such schools therefore, in their early history, had no relation to any other scholastic system. We are not surprised when this is taken into account, that the Sunday teaching was greatly secularized. It is scarcely matter of wonder, that writing and cyphering were numbered among its provisions, seeing that one day in seven was the only day when the temple of human learning stood open to the workman's child. But the Sunday school altered in its character; it became more exclusively religious; it had seemed as the fountain of popular education, there being no water elsewhere. But it was now to be regarded rather as the CRADLE of popular education. It had nursed the Truth, which otherwise would have perished in its infancy, that popular education is a national safeguard; it had forced upon the most unwilling, the striking fact, that Sunday schools kept people from prisons, and saved government the expenses of their expatriation. And then, when upon these revelations of the secular benefits of Sunday schools, there followed schemes for affording on the six days, what had only been furnished on the seventh, and the mighty impetus had been given to the progress of popular education, the THOUGHT had reached a stage of its developement. Henceforward it was to have a relation; its use and its value were to be viewed with a regard to secular teaching. So the Thought became more theological in its embodiment. The slate and the copy book were banished; and, to make the educational agency still more religious in its character, it became entirely gratuitous. Teachers taught without wages, and they began to call their occupation, "a labour of Love." It was felt that if the six days were employed in acquiring such knowledge as would fit for the present world, that the holy day should have a chief reference in its tuition, to such knowledge as would prepare for a world to come. And the little children were told that their teachers came on Sunday to endeavour to make them wise to salvation. To this end were purposed Sunday school addresses, and to this end were spoken by the teacher in his class, many a warm hearted appeal. Catechisms, devotional, historical and practical appeared in abundance. Reward books deluged the country. And-but time would fail to tell all the contrivances which pious zeal invented, in order to exhibit practically the religious purpose of Sunday school teaching. Such became the relative position, and it developed the important rule, that the Sunday school ought ever to have a higher religious position than that which any week day school can claim. If the one trains for earth, the other must train for heaven.

Having gone so far, is there need for the Thought to go farther? And we reply, There is need, for the relative position of which we have just spoken, is becoming a merely nominal thing. And unless there be a farther developement, we shall witness assimilation instead of relation. It is now confessed, by the highest educational authorities in our country, that religion is not a matter merely for the Sabbath school, but that it has to do with every school, and that no schoolmaster fulfils sufficiently the duties of his station, unless he admit religion into his teaching, and cast the influence of eternity over the things of time. We refer you to the reports made to the Council of Education by her Majesty's inspectors, and you will find how carefully they examine the theological acquirements of the children of secular, week-day schools, and how decidedly they pronounce a deficiency in religious knowledge, to be a lamentable deficiency. Let us set before you a short extract from one of these reports (Rev. John Allen's, 1847.)

"My desire that teachers should realize the responsibility of their position, has led me to regard with extreme jealousy, any proposal that might seem to limit the services of a schoolmaster for the poor, to the communication of a secular instruction; unless the teacher feels that he is intrusted with the training of the noblest part of the child's nature, I do not believe that, in ordinary cases, the most serious men will give themselves to the work of school-keeping. If the teacher, standing at his class, feels that the little ones around him are his flock, whom he, by his care and industry, may be the means, under the Chief Shepherd, of feeding and guiding to their future and enduring, as well as their present and transitory wellbeing, surely he will have hope and encouragement in his work; as he is intrusted with a talent of the highest value, he will feel that if he be faithful in the use thereof, he will receive at the last, the highest reward. * * * The schoolmaster, ought, (in my judgment) to be trusted with the most important teaching of the poor—a fellowlabourer with the minister of religion."

To these opinions we might add facts which have come under our own notice,-facts which would show that the religious teaching of a day school, is sometimes greatly superior to the religious teaching of the Sunday school which is connected with it, and which comprises most of the week-day scholars.

Now, if the opinion gains ground, and is acted upon, that religion ought to be a feature of secular instruction, the question will assuredly be asked, "Of what use are Sunday schools now?" And this question must not be put aside by the observation that Sunday schools educate those who cannot attend day schools, for is that a general fact? We have gone through many Sunday schools, and have found the greater

proportion of the scholars attending some school in the week. We say not that this is always so we say not, that popular ignorance does not still largely need the mere secular advantages of a Sunday school; but we do say that if our Sunday schools were thinned, by the taking away of all those children who go to a week day school, multitudes of teachers would find their occupation gone.

We want A CHANGE in our Sunday school system. We want another developement of the great Thought. If we only give on Sunday what is given to the same child quite as well on Monday, is it needful, and is it wise, to employ the sacred hours in what is scarcely beneficial to the scholar, and if not, is an injurious loss of time to the teacher? If the schoolmaster is giving a sanctified bearing to his instructions, what more are you, teacher, doing? You teach catechisms and scripture, so does he. You explain

the child's duties, so does he. You point to the knowledge of Christ as the most excellent of the sciences; so, if he be a man of God, is he doing every day. Of what higher value then are your instructions? Truly, the "advance of design" must take another step. Sunday schools, if they are to be worth anything, must do more than they are now doing. They must strive to do what is not done, and what cannot be done in weekly instruction. So will they yet be embodiments of the great Thought.

But can they do this? This was a point which we named for inquiry. Is there capability of more growth? We believe that there is. We believe that the simple, but extensive machinery of Sunday teaching, will work out greater and nobler results. Let us see what is practicable.

In the first place, alphabet teaching must be banished, (except in schools, such as ragged-schools, where the children have no other means of learning to read). The teacher's time may be more usefully employed than in showing the difference between the A and B. We hope such a thing as a spelling-book will soon be sent to keep company with the already banished copy-book and slate. The children must be made to understand, that they do not come to school on Sunday to be taught to read. Their parents must learn that something more than an ability to "read in the bible," is the aim of Sunday school tuition. The teacher must bear in mind that the schoolmaster is teaching the scholars better than he can do (witness the "Disentangled" and "Phonic" methods) how to put the key of knowledge into the lock.

In the next place, the technical inculcation of religious knowledge, must be regarded as a very subordinate thing. In how many schools is it the end of teaching? How many teachers consider they have done enough when they have crammed their scholars with verses of