10. Should a Depositor be guilty of misconduct, he shall be liable to be suspended from the benefits of the Society, in which case the amount already deposited by him will be returned, but without interest.

11. A financial statement shall be presented by the Treasurer, and a report by the senior Secretary, at each Christmas quarterly meeting, or whensoever such may be desired by the Sunday School Committee.

12.-The Sunday School Committee shall have power to alter or regulate the rate of interest; also to make any other alteration in the constitution of the Society, at any time they may deem it desirable.

SCHOOL FUNDS AND REWARDS TO CHILDREN.

(A LETTER TO À SUPERINTENDENT.)

DEAR SIR,-Two young men called at our office the other day, collecting subscriptions for your school. They seemed very earnest, and I felt sorry to negative their appeal-which is a thing I seldom do. My objection was this, the wasteful expenditure (in my opinion) of your school, in giving away books to a part of the children time after time, as "rewards."

I read your annual report year after year-see much to admire in your school, and fancy it to be generally a well conducted and thriving one. But your old fashioned practice of giving "rewards" every anniversary, seems to me at best questionable, absorbing as it does, a rather considerable portion of your pecuniary resources, and exerting an unfavourable influence—it is besides, needless and useless.

To hire children to attend Sunday schools, get off tasks, behave well, recite pieces at anniversaries, &c., is in my opinion, a wrong system. The principle is unsound, and therefore harmful. Teach a child, that the best reward it can have, is the good resulting in its own mind, and heart, and life, under God's blessing, from rightly valuing and duly improving the instructions received!

Then again, the practice is unfair, and necessarily creates discontent among the children, and dissatisfaction among teachers and parents, which doubtless you know. Some children are naturally quick in committing lessons and verses to memory. Others have considerate parents who send them early and regularly to school, and shall they be rewarded for this; and others, who perhaps have as much the desire, but not the ability, opportunity, or advantages, be cast into the shade, and go unrewarded and disgraced? I repeat, the principle is unsound and the results harmful, to say nothing of the unwise and prodigal outlay.

Children we certainly recommend having Bibles and other good books of their own, and if properly instructed and encouraged, they will readily subscribe a penny, or half-a-penny per week for them. They will buy them, aye, and value them too, more than if had for nothing. The writer can speak from experience, after having succeeded in a rather long Sunday school life, in getting more than two thousand dear children honorably to purchase themselves each a copy of the Book oF GOD as their own personal property.

We give no rewards in our school. The attendance is large, and perhaps

few children are more orderly, or buy more Bibles, hymn books, magazines, &c. Thus we implant the principles of independence and self-reliance, which we hope will take root, and in after life be productive of personal, relative, social, and general advantage-favorably influencing the pecuniary, moral, and religious interests of the possessor.

Let me add, my dear Sir, that when I get to know you have given over frittering away your school funds on questionable, if not pernicious objects, and that you still have need of help (which by the bye I hardly expect) you will find me ready to hand you a substantial donation.

Finally and faithfully let me add, that where a school possesses an intelligent and energetic superintendent or secretary-a man of business habits and liberal heart, wise and judicious plans will be devised and successfully carried out, for the self-support of the institution. And were entire abstinence from drink and tobacco generally observed by Sunday school teachers, what ample resources would accrue, which superfluities, to give them the gentleist name, do not cost the writer a single penny in the Yours truly, year. A UNION SECRETARY.

Newcastle-on-Tyne.

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND THE CHURCH.

IN the National Witness we find an illustration of the fact, so often proved, that the Mission Sunday school is the germ of the Church organization. A congregational church was organized last spring in Warwick, Canada East, which had its origin in the following circumstances :-" In 1856, an agent of the American Sunday school Union, visited Warwick, and found there a small settlement of 15 nominally Protestant families. He induced them to organize a Sunday School. When they opened the school 'not a man could be found among them to pray,' and the Lord overruled this fact to produce a serious impression on their minds. They were a community of prayerless families; to live so, would not do.' For several weeks the school was conducted without prayer. 'At length one tongue was unloosed, and then another,' till more than half the heads of families became praying men, and a marked change took place in the habits and What occurred at Warwick has been practices of the community." substantially repeated all through our Western States.

"O LORD, BLESS MY TEACHER."

A FEW evenings since 1 heard a child repeating his evening prayer at his father's knee. In child-like accents he repeated, "Our Father," and then added: "Lord, bless my father and mother; bless my teacher; bless my brothers and sister; O Lord bless me and take my naughty heart away and give me a good heart, for Jesus' sake. Amen."

Oh, how the words "Lord, bless my teacher," thrilled through my heart, for I too am à teacher. How grateful to my heart would be the feeling that all my dear pupils remembered me in their prayers.

SARAH.

The General Reader.

ACKNOWLEDGE GOD.

TRIALS IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be. The very troubles that others look on with pity,

Whoever pretends to reason, and calls himself a man, is obliged to acknowledge God, and to demean himself religiously towards him: for God is to the understanding of man, as the light of the sun is to our eyes, the first and as if he had takeu up a kind of piety the plainest, and the most glorious more perilous and burdensome than object of it. He fills heaven and was necessary, will be his fields of earth; and every thing in them doth victory, and his course of life will be represent him to us. Which way just as much happier as it is more soever we turn ourselves, we are consciously heroic. He has something encountered with clear evidences and sensible demonstrations of a Deity.Tillotson.

ANTICIPATION.

England is now a rich, victorious, polite, and scientific nation. Now therefore is the time that we ought to keep a more than ordinary watchful eye over our manners; and establish a few needful restraints, to preserve, as long as we can, some degree of industry, frugality, and fortitude, alive among us, that the day may be late in which we are to sink; for sink we certainly shall, under our prosperity, as the nations of past ages have done before us.

THE RIVER OF GOD.

The river of God is full of water; but there is not one drop of it that takes its rise in earthly springs. God will have no strength used in his own battles but the strength which he himself imparts; and I would not have you that are now distresse in the least discouraged by it. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled; and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.-Spurgeon,

great to live for, nay, something worthy even to die for, if he must,-that which makes it glorious to live and not less glorious to die.-Dr. Bushnell.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON. Sir Isaac Newton, universally ac knowledged to be the ablest philosopher and mathematician that this, or perhaps any other nation has produced,

is also well known to have been a firm believer and a serious Christian. His discoveries concerning the frame and system of the universe were applied by him to demonstrate the being of a God, and to illustrate his power and wisdom in the creation. This great man applied himself likewise with the utmost attention to the study of the holy scriptures, and considered the several parts of them with uncommon exactness, particularly as to the order of time, and the series of prophecies and events relating to

the Messiah.

DISCRETION.

Discretion, not only shows itself in words, but in all the circumstances of action; and is like an under agent of Providence, to guide and direct us in the ordinary affairs of life. Be neither simple nor subtle.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

ARISTIDES THE "JUST." After the famous battle of Marathon, Nothing can be more true than that Aristides was the only general who God is in nitely wise, merciful, and stayed to take care of the spoil and the good, and yet that he has permitted prisoners. Gold and silver were guilt and misery to enter the world, scattered about in abundance, in the when it is evident his power could enemy's (the Persian) camp. All the have prevented it. To attempt, tents as well as gallies that were taken therefore, to explain and reconcile were full of rich cloths and costly the decrees of God with the agency of furniture, and treasures of all kinds to men, the analogy between God and an immense value. Here Aristides an earthly parent will not always had the finest opportunity in the hold. "I remember," says one, world to have enriched himself, with gentleman once said to me,' Would almost an impossibility of being disyou, if you were God, create any being covered. But he not only was not to misery ?' My answer was, "when I tempted to touch any of it himself, am God I will tell you." It is not but prevented, to the utmost of his proper, therefore, to set up the human power, every body else from meddling passions as a kind of standard and

model from which God himself must form his estimate of right and wrong.

THREE LESSONS.

There are three lessons to be learned from the history of Judas:-First, that profession is not possession; secondly, that there may be the out

ward call without the effectual call; and, lastly, that conviction is not conversion.

SCEPTICISM.

can

something, when they say we affirm nothing, and admit that something is certain, when they maintain that nothing can be certainly known.

A perfect knowledge of nature is no-where to be found but in the The sceptics, who doubt of everyauthor of it; no less wisdom and understanding than that which made thing, and whom Tertullian calls the world, and contrived this vast and professors of ignorance, do affirm regular frame of nature, can thoroughly understand the philosophy of it, and comprehend so vast a design. But yet there is a knowledge which is very proper to man, and lies level to human understanding; and that is the knowledge of our Creator, and of To instruct mankind in things the the duty we owe to him; the wisdom most excellent, and honour of pleasing God, by doing what he applaud those learned men who commands, and avoiding what he for- perform this service with industry bids. This knowledge and wisdom and care, is a duty, the performance may be attained by man, and is suffi- of which must procure the love of all cient to make him happy.-Tillotson. good men.-Xenophon.

POPULAR INSTRUCTION.

and

ADMONITIONS OF THE BIBLE. every farm and meadow, and every

Among the Lacedæmonians, there was a law that none should inform his neighbour of any evil that had befallen him; but every man should be left to find it out in process of time. How many ministers and people act as if such a law existed in Britain They dare not tell, and are unwilling to be told, that the wages of sin is death," and that the wrath of God abideth on every unbeliever. But the law of God's house is exactly the reverse of that we have mentioned. "Son of man," saith the Lord, "I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel,"

PROGRESSION.

garden, and that shall flow on every day, and every day, with their gentle, quiet beauty. So with the acts of our lives. It is not by great deeds, like those of the martyrs, that good is to be done, it is by the daily and quiet virtues of life, the Christian temper, the good qualities of relatives and friends and all, that good is to be done.-Albert Barnes.

HOTTENTOTS.

Low as the Hottentots of South Africa are sunk in the scale of humanity, their character has been much traduced and misrepresented. They are a mild, quiet, and timid people; entirely harmless, honest, and faithful; and kind and affectionate to each other. They are not defective in talent, though they seldom call it into

action.

Their indolence is a real disease; and rather than be at the

If a man has stepped forward but one step, it is progressive-if every day he can increase but one in selfcommand and self-devotion to God, and still retain all or the greater part of that which he has before acquired, God will view his conduct with trouble of procuring food by the chace, pleasure and delight, and will not withhold or refuse his gracious aid, for Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and to give to sincerity the reward of perfection.

THE RIVULET.

or by digging the ground, they will fast the whole day, provided they may be allowed to sleep. Eating and sleeping form their highest gratifications. "To think," says the Hottentot, "is to labor, and labor is the scourge of life."

THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST.

It is the bubbling spring which flows gently, the little rivulet which runs along day and night by the farm house that is useful, rather than the My Saviour! it is through Thee swollen flood or warring cataract. alone that I can possibly be saved. Niagara excites our wonder, and we When I do evil, I own, most truly, it stand amazed at the power and great- is all my own fault, it is none but ness of God there, as he "pours it mine; I never did, I never can do one from the hollow of His hand." But good action, think one good thought, one Niagara is enough for the conti- or entertain one good conception, but nent or the world; while the same by thy grace, vouchsafed to man world requires thousands and tens through thy love, thy mercy, thy of thousands of silver fountains and sufferings, thy humiliation, and thy gently flowing rivulets, that water glorification on high,