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Looking Ahead !*

DEAR FELLOW TEACHERS,-I want to talk to you, this New Year's morning, about "Looking Ahead," or fetching help in to-day's duty, by a far away vision of the incidents and accidents, possibilities and probabilities, of our Sunday School work. As a wise captain studies the chart of his ship's course; vividly represents to himself quick-sands and shoals, possible storms and collisions, and takes due care to prepare for the worst; so the teacher, whilst maintaining his faith in God, in his children, and in the Gospel, should work for his pupils, in full view of the fearful perils they have to face, and the prodigious difficulties they will confront; that is, he should use the best materials, adopt the best methods, and work on the best principles, so that he may prepare them to endure any strain of trial or shock of temptation, to which they may be exposed, and inspire them to attempt the loftiest height of spiritual achievement life may offer them.

That is a high aim and a difficult task. But I have long felt it is "the one thing needful" in Sunday School work, the supreme educational problem-nay, may I not say the chief national and world problem?

For we dare not deny that we too frequently fail to give our young friends help, where it is most wanted, and when it is most difficult to get it, and of the precise sort they most acutely require. We take hold of infant life and nurture it, with delight in its charming simplicity, openeyed curiosity, singular freshness, and beautiful trust. We detain the child in the gentle grasp of the soft tendrils of affection, by the ministration of knowledge, sympathy, and love; and in many gladdening instances we keep the children as they travel through the first year or two of their "teens," but as they get to

THE BRIDGE

that unites the life of the youth and the man, of the grown girl and the woman; and on whose pathway temptations crowd in terrific numbers and appalling strength, we let go their hands, and in many cases never lay hold again. Hence, a large portion of the manhood and womanhood of the land is indifferent to the charms and claims of religion, neglectful of the love and law of God, and unenriched by His mighty and life-ennobling salvation.

The last census of religious worship suggests that, notwithstanding our conspicuous successes, this is where our work fails. Only one in four of the population seek the help of religious teaching and Sabbath worship, instead of one in two; and competent witnesses assert that most of those who are alien from organised Christianity have passed through our Sunday Schools, received religious instruction, and heard the warning voice of teachers and friends. But now they care not for the services" to which they were trained. The school has not led to the church, as a porch to the temple, or childhood to manhood. Home, school, and church, together have failed for them. We began to build, and built with fine promise. We had capital tools, good materials,

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*Opening paragraphs of "LOOKING AHEAD!" a New Year's Address to Sunday School Teachers. By J. Clifford, M.A., L.L.B. Sunday School Union. Price One Penny.

LOOKING AHEAD!

earnest workmen, and brilliant hopes, but from some cause or other, where we expected a solid edifice we have a gaping ruin, and where we looked for a home of all the virtues we have a disappointing and irritating chaos.

I know, and rejoice to repeat, that our success has been wide-spread, immense, solid, and reproductive. I do not forget that most of those who preach and those who "hear," who toil in our mission fields and teach in our schools, who lead in our civic life, and shape our national activities, received early and immeasurable accessions of power in the Sunday School; but who does not mourn the vast mass of what I may call "Sunday School Drift," the numbers who have slid into incertitude of faith in the love of God, stolid indifference to the Unseen, and, in many instances, into violent irreligion? Surely this would not have been, if we had so done our work as to be of the greatest service in the most perilous part of human life; when the impetuous, independent, and "headstrong" boy is laying hold of himself, and stands gazing and delirious at the threshold of man's alluring and illusive privileges; and the girl is thinking, not of the "old home" in which she has been reared, but is hasting with restless and heedless spirit to the duties and responsibilities of womanhood.

Ah! this is a tragic hour! No moment in life's short day equals in pathetic interest that early one which links the youth with the man, where there is dimly, but with growing distinctness, dawning on the soul, the sense of its unfolding powers, immense capacities, huge desires and untried capacities. The excitement is portentous. As when the sea is lashed by fiercest winds; so the soul is agitated to its lowest depths. Every faculty is raised to the highest pitch of action. Ambitious schemes march through the soul like troops of fancies through the poet's dream. Visions follow visions. Temptations gather in besieging crowds and impetuously rush at every gate of the soul. It is the real entrance upon life; and it is through a wilderness tenanted by demons waiting to assail the spirit in its extremity, and by successive strokes of flattery buy the worship for themselves which should be given to God only.

If, then, our teaching and training are not effective for this time of stress and storm, what are they worth? Where is their value? "Good as far as they go." No doubt, but "good" for what? The anchor that has a chain of forty fathoms in fifty fathoms of water is "good as far as it goes"; but not carrying the anchor to the sea bottom it is simply good for nothing in a storm. "I am only minute late," says the selfexcusing traveller as he sees the back-most lights of the train disappearing from the platform, but he might as well have been a week too late so far as journeying by that particular train is concerned. No doubt, we do good as far as we go; but unless we go with our children up to, and right through,

THE CRISIS OF THEIR LIFE.

we fail where and when the help is most wanted, lose the appropriate reward of our work, and miss the very end for which we have prayed and toiled. Our scholars lack our support when they most need it, and we look in vain for them when they are wanted. We win at Austerlitz and Jena; but we lose at Waterloo, and, losing it, lose all. J. CLIFFORD.

Some Classic Books of the English Church.

HAVING, in a former article, said something about the classic preachers of our favoured island in connection with a series of lectures delivered at St. James's Church, Westminster, we will, on this occasion, devote attention to an array of great books, which, in their way, are perhaps even more imposing than great men. The fact is, that acting on the suggestion of the Bishop of Derry, the Rector of St. James's the Rev. J. E. Kempe, M.A., arranged for a series of lectures on Books to follow the course on Men; and these now constitute a highly suggestive volume, published by Mr. Murray, under the title of "Companions for the Devout Life." The books selected by the several preachers are all old and established favourites, although, with some of them, it is probable that our readers will be totally unacquainted. In saying this we refer to such partially obsolete authors as Fenelon, Pascal, and Andrewes; but we might go even further and say, that too few now-a-days are familiar with the works in our literature whose titles are 66 familiar in their mouths as household words." Who, for example, reads The Saint's Rest as Baxter left it; and what "general reader" is there who displays any competent knowledge of Paradise Lost? The very richness of our literature has the effect of promoting dissipation; and numberless readers resemble persons at a banquet whose uncultivated, or eccentric taste, prefers inspid entremets, while the best dishes of the centre remain untouched. The defective knowledge of such persons, however, may possibly make them the more desirous of knowing what such competent critics as Dean Howson, Cannon Farrar, and the Archbishop of Dublin, and ten more, have respectively to say on The Pilgrim's Progress, De Imitatione Christi, The Saint's Rest, and other works, which complete the list we are now considering. These books have all exercised an amazing influence on the world; they have been read without having their statements questioned by a very large number of admirers; and yet, with Mr. Kempe, we can well believe, that, as human works, there is not one of them free from many defects. It is not only a personal gain, the authors themselves occupy vantage ground when we, as readers, clearly comprehend their characteristics. We cannot take any uninspired author to set him up as a perfect model without danger; and the eye is quickest to discover excellencies which is able to detect a fallacy. Though it would be easy to sneer at the thirteen distinguished men who, on successive Sunday evenings gave their expectant congregation what may be called a review instead of a sermon, we are not disposed to do so, because we should certainly have profited had we been among the occupants of the pews. There is wisdom in a little diversity; while nature is so full of it, the church must not be afraid of now and then getting away from the dull routine of stereotyped uniformity.

Speaking to us like a voice from the Middle Ages, "The Imitation of Christ" is undoubtedly the most popular book that was ever written next to the Bible; and even if its popularity is in any sense on the wane, the book is still exceedingly popular. Written in an age of relentless war and of fierce disputation, in the age of the Great Schism, when Christendom beheld the edifying spectacle of one pope in Italy and another in France cursing each other with unapostolic warmth, the

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