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And, again, in another place, St. Paul speaks of the diversity of gifts or talents to be exercised in the household of God: "If prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith; or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth to his teaching."

But he ushers in the passage with the words, "I beseech you, brethren, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." And he winds it up with the words, "Let love be without hypocrisy."

Yes; and this is the beginning and the ending of all work for God, and especially a teacher's work. Love first, and then sincerity to crown all.

We can maintain order without love; we can secure passes without much troubling ourselves with upright sincerity; we may allow ourselves to become machines; we may look upon the children as machines—grant-earning machines—

and we may so miss the whole end and object of our work, that ourselves and our profession may sink lower and lower, till its holiness and its nobleness are lost in its success as regards percentages. But where this is so, where the truth of God which makes the soul free-free from vice and selfish conceits-is not the backbone of all our teaching, we must not be surprised that in our land there shall multiply not wise men, and good men, and true men, but fools. Fools who say in their hearts, "THERE IS NO GOD."

T

III.

The Material.

What I am-my especial gifts

Are tools by which my work is done;

The greater excellence in these,

The nobler will that work become.

But those whom I must teach and train,
It matters little what they are;

To make all better, this my aim,

Only the worst will need most care.

Most praise is due to those whose skill
Finds out the best in every one;
And trains the love, and guides the will,
Till what they do shall be well done.

EACHING would be rather monotonous

work if every child who came before

us was precisely the same in capabilities

and disposition. Our world would be a very different place to what it is without variety. We

are so constituted that nothing wears upon our spirits and energies like sameness. We may

have our favourite occupation, but if we are obliged to persevere in it for a long time, we get so disgusted with it that we seldom or ever turn to it again willingly. Or we may have a natural taste for some especial flavour, but if once we get too much of that flavour, the very mention of its name is enough to create a nausea always after. The work that has most change in it, is certainly the pleasantest work.

We have all heard that under the old prison discipline, when skilled and clever men, with minds all alert, and heavy dullards whose ideas seemed stagnant, were alike compelled to the same aimless occupation, the cleverest minds often gave way under the fearful monotony, and their owners passed from the prison to a lunatic asylum.

Now, surely, no work presents more change to the worker than the teacher's. Not only does

each subject to be taught require a method almost all its own, but each child to be taught has different features, different surroundings, different dispositions, and different capacities. And upon the cleverness and excellence of the teacher, depends the power to deal aright with every

one.

A first step to effective training in the case of individuals, then, is to feel the individuality. We are too apt to speak and think of schools and classes, and not of "the child" and "the children." If our children do not present themselves to our minds as separate beings, possessing each one a complete and perfect existence, with a mind of its own, powers of its own, faults and virtues of its own, a history and circumstances of its own, and a future of good or evil of its own, then they are not likely to be benefited by our teaching. We may train them to move as a class— to work as a class-yea, even to learn as a class, but when they are not in the class, we have

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