The Layman's Desk.

17. AN ANXIOUS YOUTH'S INQUIRY.-Ps. cxix. 9.

19. A MORAL REVOLUTION.-2 Cor. v. 17.

I. THE ABOLITION OF THE OLD -in tendencies and habits of thought, in feeling, conversation, and general conduct.

II. THE CREATION OF THE NEW -in all these particulars.

THE

III. NECESSITY FOR CHANGE-Man out of sympathy with Jehovah.

IV. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THIS CHANGE IN ALL WHO WILL BE CHRISTIANS-"If any man, &c.

V. THE TEST OF TRUE RELIGION. No patchings and slight improvements of men nearly perfect in themselves; the change is nothing less in any case than a new creation.

20. A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN.-Ezek. xxxiii. 11.

SYSTEMATIC BIBLE TEACHER.

Sunday School Conferences; the Topic for 1873.

PUBLIC conferences are now the order of the day among Sundayschool workers; and the fact should augur well for the future. When practical men meet together for earnest deliberation upon the best means of furthering a good work in which they have a common interest the result must be useful. Difficulties are solved, new methods are suggested, and zeal is intensified by the friction of sympathy. But we fear there are many Sundayschool conferences held whose origin and results cannot be thus described. Combinations of circumstances may produce a semblance of what should spring from spontaneity alone, until there comes to be a fashion in these things. The same is true of the topics discussed, so that the result is as often the exhibition of a hobby as the realization of any practical good. Only on this ground can we account for the popularity of the topic which was discussed at the annual conference of the Sunday School Union at the Old Bailey in May last, and which is going the round of the provinces now, namely, "The Relation of Children to the Church." That this topic is not regarded as a practical question is evident from the way in which it is usually discussed. It is made the peg on which to hang desultory remarks upon all sorts of matters, from the "hereditary bias of a child to the need for Sunday-school class-rooms, but the essential matter of "The Relation of Children to the Church is rarely touched."

When, however, discussion does happen to drift near about the subject one phase of it that invariably affords a good deal of irrelevant conversation is that which affects juvenile communion. We hear it said on one hand, for example, that children ought, for various reasons, to be church members when very young; while on the other hand it is warmly retorted that it is not safe to the Church to endow them with the full privileges or functions of membership under such and such an age. But

School Union Report tells us that "The number of scholars in the London and country schools who are reported to have joined Christian churches during the past year is

about

11 per 1,000 of the entire number of scholars in the connected schools." This surely does not present much cause for fear that our churches are in danger of being flooded by those who have not reached the years of discretion. And yet, strange to say, this is one of the chief things discussed anent "The Relation of Children to the Church." There is a fashion in these things which does much to blind the eyes of men who would, if left to themselves, be rational and practical enough. "The Relation of Children to the Church" is a simple matter. In truth the children of our country are the Church's responsibility—a responsibility which has never yet been faced as it must be faced if the Church is to save her garments from the blood of the millions of British youth who are born and grow up in her presence, and die away from under her hands in utter ignorance of the first principles of saving knowledge. She is guilty to-day of the ruin of hundreds of thousands who are irretrievably lost through sheer neglect, and it is mere trifling to discuss such minor and future questions as the one to which we refer when the great weight of this primary and terrible responsibility rests upon her like a crushing nightmare.

The next phase of the matter which presents itself to us is essentially ritualistic. Children of Christian parents have, it is said, an "hereditary preparedness" for religion. What then? Do they therefore sustain any closer relation to the Church than those who are not equally favoured? Can they be received into the Church on this ground alone? If not, what possible good can it do to propound such controverted topics as the difference between the children of Christian parents and the children of those who are irreligious? One of the speakers at the Old Bailey conference is reported to have said, that to regard the Sunday-school "as an institution for the religious training not of the children of the Church but of the neglected poor outside" " was an error which needed correction." And sentiments like these are uttered so often that one is tempted to wonder what new construction ought to be put upon such old texts as those in which the Master announced that His mission was to seek and to save the lost. In our opinion the Sunday-school has been too much regarded "as an institution for the religious training of the children of" Church

members-as an institution, that is, to save them the trouble of fulfilling their first and most solemn religious duty. Let it include these by all means, but if it confine its attention to them, either wholly or mainly, where is the Church's agency for reaching the neglected children of ungodly parents?

upon the critics.

The final aspect of the question, which we shall now mention, may be termed the apologetic; and this has more than a little to do with the whole matter. During the last few years the Sunday-school system has been subjected to a considerable amount of searching criticism. Its weakness and lack of adequate results have been severely dealt with in many quarters both by friends and foes. This has provoked retort It is contended, for example, that the usefulness of the Sunday-school is not fairly shown by the figures quoted against it, as many more would be in communion but for the reluctance of the Church to receive them. This we have no hesitation in denying. Without any disposition to screen the Church from its just and terrible share of blame as to the condition of our youth, we hold that the blame does not lie here. The Church is to be blamed, not for refusing to receive the young who have been received by Christ-the stress now laid upon figures in annual reports is a sufficient guarantee against that-but rather for her guilty sloth in not striving to bring them to Him. One of the speakers at the Old Bailey conference to which we have referred questioned this alleged unwillingness on the part of the Church to receive young Christians; but the only answer tendered to him was a curt reference to "Mr. Mander's statistics, which had not been controverted." "Mr. Mander's statistics," however, dealt only with facts and figures, not with methods of accounting for them; they mentioned the number of young people, and their ages, in actual communion with certain churches, and said uothing of the reason or reasons why others were not admitted. The fact is-and we can gain nothing by disguising it—that our children and youths are outside the Church because they are not qualified to be inside. Let this be frankly admitted, and then we are face to face with the true question of the relation of children to the Church-the relation, that is, not merely of those who are supposed to inherit mystic graces and privileges from Christian parents-but the relation of all children, without distinction, to Christ's Church, as His repre

Uncle Timothy's Bible Stories.

THE RAINBOW.-GEN. IX. 8-17.

WHAT a magnificent sight is that of the Rainbow! A perfect arch based upon the hills on either side it seems to rise to heaven and overspread the earth from pole to pole. And then how splendid and varied its colours! To examine the gorgeous band through from the lower to the upper fringe is to pass the eye over every colour and every shade of colour that we have ever seen or can imagine. These colours too are naturally arranged. Sometimes we see colours so put together in dress, and in various decorations, as to indicate what is called "bad taste"; they are put in such relation to each other that they neither blend nicely together nor present a pleasing contrast. It is not so with the Rainbow, for its colours are so beautifully and perfectly arranged that any one desiring to study the relation of colours could not study any example so perfect; only, unfortunately for him, he could not study it long, for the beautiful sight soon vanishes away.

Now the verses referred to at the head of this page give us the account of the first Rainbow that was ever seen, telling us at the same time what it means. The world had been drowned by a great flood, and all the inhabitants, except those preserved in the ark, had perished. Noah and his family and their descendants were likely to see big clouds rise and blacken the sky again, as when the flood was coming; consequently they were likely to be alarmed lest another flood should come; and so the Lord told Noah and his sons that the world should never be drowned again as it had been. And in proof of this He gave the Rainbow, which has appeared, every now and then, ever since that time. In future, then, whenever you look up and see that gorgeous arch of colour you will know that that is the great God's token to man that He will never drown this world again.

For many centuries people did not understand how the Rainbow was formed. Superstitious people in many parts of the world regarded it as 66 a sign" of this, that, and the other, while people who knew the Bible account considered that Jehovah kept it in heaven as a rule, but put it out sometimes