haps you have a personal experience on this point. How much of all this do you think is justified by the results attained? May it be possible that over-solicitous parents have in some cases, by their failure to understand this, actually Difficulties defeated the very purpose they had so much at heart? I understand how difficult it is to say this without opening the way for decided dissent; but let us be fair. What are the facts as they are known to you? I once knew a child in school to weep bitterly because she was reproved for whispering. The teacher said, in giving the reproof, "You are a naughty girl." Inquiry revealed the fact that the child wept because she was in imminent fear of a visit from the devil. Her mother had repeatedly said to her, "If you are naughty, remember that the bad man will be sure to catch you." Note the struggle in your own soul between what you will to attend to and the thing you really do attend to. Your interest is in conflict with your will. For a short time your will may succeed in directing your attention, but sooner or later interest wins the strugAn Illustration gle, and we follow its beckonings. We go to church. We resolve to listen to the sermon. We hear the text. We follow the opening words of the discourse. Our will is in control, and suddenly we find our attention upon some topic wholly foreign to the service. We exert our will; back comes our attention; we again hear the discourse, and presto! once more the attention has played truant to the will, and is following again the overmastering beckonings of our interest. As a child I went frequently several miles to Sunday-school. The way in summer led through a beautiful bit of God's grand old forest. The birds sang in the trees. The squirrels leaped from bough to bough. The color and fragrance of myriads of flowers enraptured me. The green sward was checkered with sun and shadow. It seemed to my young spirit as if God had rained. beauty in endless profusion all about me. How I longed to stay and revel in this flower-scented, sun-illumined, bird-choired spot! In the Sunday-school a sincere teacher wrought as best he knew to fix my attention upon young Samuel, upon the kings of Israel, upon the wise Solomon, upon Paul's exhortations; but ever and anon I found my attention drawn as by a magnet to the scenes yonder in the forest. Interest was drawing me. My will was helpless to resist. Teachers, you little know the army of competitors against which you must struggle to gain the attention of a soul. And yet, gain it you must, if you are to enrich that soul. If it is difficult for the pupil to command attention, how much more difficult is it for the teacher to do so. The more excellent way is to ascertain the interests of the pupil. If my teacher had only known the things of interest to me, how readily he could have made them the occasion of securing my attention, of building there the tabernacles of truth, into which with joy my spirit would have entered to find and to partake of His truth. How splendidly How Jesus Jesus understood this. To those whose interests clustered about their flocks he was the Good Shepherd. To the man whose flock had been scattered, how readily would the search for the one that was lost quicken interest, secure attention, arouse concern, and lead to an understanding of his mission. To those whose physical ills had saddened life, how tenderly helpful was the statement, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." How their interest was thus aroused, and they were fitted to understand, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Interest is not some strange and foreign condition of the spirit. Interest as such is but a name to characterize the attitude of the soul to the things which, by reason of its past experiences, it cares to own. As it has come up through the years of unfolding, the soul has gathered here and there particular fields of thought, particular answers to its inquiries, and What Interest Is specific nourishment of its own, and it has come at last to relatively full and complete knowledge. Consciousness of this begets interest, and holds the mind. with a hunger which can be satisfied only when. it comes into the possession of the fuller knowledge in these several channels or avenues. The Race Craves a Knowledge of God If, then, we wish to teach easily, we must teach in harmony with the interests in the soul. It is my abiding faith and conviction that God has set in every human soul a hunger for himself. The race craves a knowledge of him, and the wise teacher will need to make no apology to secure the interest on the part of the child in the matters presented in the Sunday-school,-provided only the teacher remembers the fact that the new knowledge which the teacher yearns to present to the hungry soul, and which the hungry soul itself craves, must always be presented in terms which will link the new knowledge with the past experience of the child. The pupil must see the new in the light of the old. His knowledge must grow from a common center, otherwise it is fragmentary, uninteresting, causes dissatisfaction, and is substantially worthless. It is well to note that the secret of an abiding love for the truths of religion is best secured by creating pleasurable interest in the child's soul for the things of the higher life. A pious old minister, with a keen insight that we should strive to imitate, was deeply concerned in the welfare of a fatherless grandson. He took the boy with him when visiting the poor of his rural parish in the valleys of the Alps. The boy was enraptured by the beauty so lavishly displayed on mountain and glen. When they entered the poverty-stricken houses of the poor, and the boy saw how impossible it was for the children of these homes to enjoy God's beautiful pictures, he was led to say: "Grandpa, when I am a man, I mean to take the side of the poor." A noble resolution this! He kept it, and the world knows the result. That boy was Henry Pestalozzi, a father to orphans, the founder of universal elementary education. He rightfully enjoys the high tribute paid him by his biographer: "He lived like a beggar that he might teach beggars to live like men." By creating interest in the poor, the great reformer never could turn from them. Pestalozzi's I urge you to write the story of some girl or boy, some young man or woman, whose life was but the working out of some great resolution, made in a moment when the soul was aglow with |