......... 9. Kirkcaldy Union and Branches,....... These returns, number of Sabbath schools, teachers, and scholars. although confessedly defective, are, so far as they go, highly encouraging. Irrespective of the other religious denominations, the Established Church, Free Church, and United Presbyterian Church have together 10,514 teachers, and 101,956 scholars. The returns of Local Unions are the following: 1. Glasgow Union,........ 7. Perth Union, estimate,.. 10. Dumfries Union,......... 11. Alloa Union,......... .................... 12. Dunfermline Union,....... 13. Stirling Union,........ 14. Inverness Union,....... THE American Sabbath school journals abound with notes on lessons, black-board lessons, model lessons, infant-school lessons, and every imaginable help of that sort which can be afforded to the Sabbath school teacher. The growing tendency to lean unduly upon such helps is evidently giving rise to an apprehension that they are being converted into hindrances. The same tendency, it is to be feared, exists amongst ourselves. The "Notes on Lessons," we have been informed, are sometimes substituted for the lessons themselves, by teachers who actually take them to the class, and rote mechanically and slavishly over the thoughts of others, instead of thinking out the lesson for themselves. Surely this must be a rare case, as it is anything but creditable. We have always insisted that the true utility of notes on lessons lies in their being suggestive, not exhaustive,-outlines of thought to be filled up by careful preparation on the part of the teacher; or rather, things to be resorted to after the teacher has thought out the lesson from his own point of view, and exhausted his own resources; and then only for such supplementary hints and additional information as may be expected from the skill and practical experience which, we may venture to say, are happily brought to bear upon the notes appearing in these pages. The following remarks in the Sunday School Times, from the pen of the Rev. A. J. Rowland, put the subject in a clear and satisfactory light, and deserve the earnest consideration of any who are being "helped into helplessness," by making a "crutch" of the "Notes on Lessons":— Let me not be understood as finding fault because of this overabundance of exegetical literature. We cannot have too much light upon any subject, and the more we can have upon the precious Word of God the better. But then I fear many of our Sunday school teachers scarcely look at the Biblical text. They cram for their Sunday school teaching by gorging their minds with the thoughts of others. The comments they make upon the lessons are reproductions of ideas borrowed for the occasion, rather than the conclusions to which they have been led by patient, and faithful, and prayerful study. And so instruction becomes stilted. There is none of that ardour which comes with the announcement of a truth discovered by original investigation, or drawn from a living experience. The teacher does not feel; he only talks. His lesson is not drawn from his heart, but from his memory. His own soul has not been touched by the lesson; and there is none of that subtle and wonderful power of sympathetic communication which a thinking mind is always sure to possess. One of our best Sunday school men said to me, a little while ago, that he was afraid our Sunday school teachers were being "helped into helplessness." Is there not such danger? The best of commentaries should be looked upon, it seems to me, simply as crutches. What the teacher should do first—in time as well as in importance—is to take that part of God's Word which is designated as the lesson, and bend the mind upon this, with no other helps than his own powers of analysis and thought. Of course he must look to God for help, but this God has already promised to the faithful student who feels his need of wisdom. Then, when he has done his very best himself, may he resort to human "helps." His own thinking may then be corrected, difficulties be cleared up, more illustrations be gathered, and all the aid he needs to classify and complete his analysis or explanations be secured. But let the main dependence be upon God, and the powers which God has given. THE LORD CHANCELLOR. WE have had repeated occasion to notice that Baron Hatherly, the Lord Chancellor who recently demitted office in consequence of the failure of his eyesight, was well known to maintain a consistent Christian profession, and that he was a Sabbath school teacher while occupying the highest position to which a lawyer can attain in the State. His place has been filled by Sir Roundell Palmer, now Lord Selborne, also, it is gratifying to add, a man of established Christian character. His invaluable collection of hymns, collected and edited with scrupulous care, is doubtless familiar to many of our readers. Lord Selborne, some time ago, entertained his tenantry and others on the occasion of completing his Hampshire mansion, and one or two of the sentiments that fell from his lips will be read with satisfaction: I may say that the best gifts I ever received-gifts, beyond all comparison, exceeding all gifts of station, all honours, all pecuniary means which by my labours I may have enlarged-are two which, in God's providence, I received in my childhood. The one was that I had good instruction in the knowledge of God; the other the best education which my parents were able to give me. Mr. Jelf has kindly referred to the great, and I am bound to say, the overwhelming honour and responsibility which Her Majesty has recently laid upon me. Perhaps the minds of some may be attracted as much to the honour as to the responsibility. I hope it may please God to preserve my mind from being directed to that, because, although the honour and dignity are certainly great, earthly dignities and honours are useful only for the sake of the public objects for which they exist. A man who sets his heart upon them is certainly not likely to turn them to good account. They may last a very short time, and when they go it is certain that we can take nothing of them away with us. No; it is the duty and the responsibility which are the real thing. I only trust that those amongst you who know and understand these things will sometimes, when they pray God to guide the minds of those who are set in high places in this kingdom, remember me, and ask God to give me those gifts of which your minister has spoken. I do not agree with some of my friends, who, in private letters, say it may be presumed that I have now reached the highest point of my ambition. That is not so at all. My ambition is not high place. My ambition is, if it be possible, to do some good in the position to which I am called; and if I cannot do good in that position, I would rather leave it and try some other. For we must all remember that there is, after all, one other final step which all of us have to take, and which, if it lead to the very lowest place in our Master's kingdom, will be an advancement and promotion inexpressibly greater than any that we could receive on earth; whereas, if it leads to no place, all the other honours will be of little use. SAINTS OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD, In closing one of his minor epistles, the Apostle Paul records a very striking and suggestive utterance. It is this: "All the saints salute you; chiefly they that are of Cæsar's household." So it seems there were saints in Cæsar's household, and that they were not ashamed of their discipleship; and still further, that they were the most eager of all to send their salutations to the saints at Philippi, whom they had never seen. This will seem the more remarkable if we remember who was at that time the Cæsar. He was Nero; a monarch whose name has been familiar through all the ages since as the synonym of cruelty and infamy; a man who earned the reputation of introducing into his history, as facts, crimes so enormous, and combinations of wickedness so revolting, that but for him they would have been held too fabulous for the wildest fancy. He hunted his kingdom over to find fresh species of torments. He tried three ways to kill his own mother, and at last succeeded. He caused a great conflagration in the capital, and then charged it on the Christians. He tortured them in unheard-of ways. He wrapped them in the skins of wild beasts, that fierce dogs might tear them to pieces. He smeared them with pitch and set them on fire; and actually used them, as we do our street lamps, to illuminate the streets by night. He instituted a general persecution of this despised sect all over the empire, in order to divert the public attention from himself as the real incendiary of the city; and to such a malignant extent did he carry it, that Tacitus, a heathen historian, declares that “the public abhorrence was changed into commiseration, from the opinion that those unhappy wretches were sacrificed, not so much to the public welfare, as to the cruelty of a jealous tyrant." Surely to be a Christian in the household of the worst persecutor Christianity ever had was something heroic. It was no child's play to confess Christ, where the word of confession might send a man to the lions, or bring his neck under the sword. No wonder Paul thanks God that even then the faith of the Roman Christians was "spoken of throughout the whole world; " for when sainthood is so difficult, it is a great thing to be a saint. There are Cæsar's households everywhere and always. There are Neros living to-day. Fashion is a Nero; so is fame; so is popular opinion. And there is the same need now that there was then for the sort of piety which Paul compliments in these anonymous disciples. Wherever hostile influences frown on Christian fidelity; wherever evil associations work against holiness; wherever worldliness is the prevailing religion, there is an urgent demand for just that old-fashioned, all-enduring, stubborn devotion to the right. And wherever you find a man who puts duty first and everything else afterwards; a merchant who, for the love of Jesus, would sooner lose his fortune than deviate from the line of strict honesty by the width of a single hair; a mechanic who does all his work as "under the great Taskmaster's eye;" a woman who, amid all the temptations of great wealth and elegant leisure, is in every act loyal to the Son of Mary; or a daughter of toil, who, overburdened with the various pains of penury, treads her obscure and weary round with uncomplaining heart, and is even so possessed by the spirit of her motto, 'Do all to the glory of God," that, when her toil is the humblest, and her cares the heaviest, she can sing with quaint old George Herbert "A servant, with this clause, Who sweeps a room as for thy laws There you behold "saints of the household of Cæsar;" "the moral apostolical succession of Christ's unterrified witnesses." These households of Cæsar, these places where it is so hard for religion to take root at all, and yet where for a thousand reasons it is so imperatively needful that religion should take root and grow mightily, abound in cities more than anywhere else. In them are the most numerous and the strongest temptations alike to shameless immorality, to decent irreligion, to the hollow semblance of piety, and to engrossing worldliness and the slack discharge of religious duties when the profession is sincere. The maintenance of a thorough and growing spiritual experience is not an easy thing in a large town, where there are twenty times as many liquor-saloons as churches; where theatres, and billiard-rooms, and dance-houses invite the unwary steps of young men; where vice walks forth in gorgeous robes, and virtue, with modesty unmeet, hides her face; where the vitality of the Church is sapped by prevailing worldliness; and where the comparatively feeble agencies for good seem to be hopelessly swamped by the confluent and swelling tides of manifold evil. THE CAVE OF ADULLAM. (From "The Tract Magazine.") MANY Eastern travellers examine this cave, and some go a certain distance into its dark passage, which is said to extend for several miles. Having resolved, during a recent visit to the East, to penetrate beyond the usual limits, we, unknown to our guide, lest it might frighten him altogether, took a private supply of cord, about twice the length which he had got ready, to be unwound as we went along, for a clue to return by. Leaving our horses under a steep cliff in the Valley of Rephaim, not far from Bethlehem, we climbed a pointed rock, the top of which is within a few feet of the cavern's mouth. The precipice between this rock and the cave could not be crossed if even a single person in possession of the stronghold opposed the entrance. Thus, unlike most caverns, which are not secure against stones cast into the opening, or fire applied to "smoke out" those inside, this retreat was entirely unassailable. David chose the place wisely for himself and his faithful band. "And three of the thirty chiefs went down, and came to David in the harvest time unto the cave of Adullam," (2 Sam. xxiii. 13.) It appears to have been a well-known place of safety even in the midst of enemies. "And David was then in a hold, and the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem." We declined the help of some Arabs who had pitched their tents in the neighbourhood, although our guide was nervously anxious lest our doing so might cause them to take away the horses. Then, clearing the gap between the rocks, we found the opening gave room to turn and arrange for our journey inwards. Many dark entrances to dark passages presented themselves. Each appeared to be worth trying, but at length one was fixed upon; our candles were lighted, our lucifer matches secured, our heads bound with scarfs, to blunt the many sharp knocks from the pointed roof, and our cord fastened by a peg, so that, being unrolled as we went in, it might lead us out by the same path. |