libraries. Of the twenty-five hundred new Sunday-schools, containing more than one hundred thousand children, organized by the Missionaries of the Sunday-school Union last year, about eight hundred schools, containing about thirty thousand children, were organized by these young men. Aside from the positive results of their labours, the reflex influence exerted upon themselves in training them for future responsibilities, would well repay the Church for the funds thus expended.

(4.) By cultivating and promoting an intelligent and habitual Christian benevolence.

All well-conducted Sunday-schools train their pupils to habits of benevolence, and the habits of the child are generally the habits of the man. The principle of systematic giving, taught by the faithful Sunday-school teacher, and impressed upon thousands of young hearts, at a period when impressions are most easily made, and most enduring, has doubtless had much to do, through the Divine blessing, in the very great improvement of the Church in this respect. It is important to attack the native selfishness of the human heart, while it is yet comparatively feeble, by inculcating the opposite principle. The weekly offerings of the Sunday-school amount in the aggregate to a considerable sum, but the influence exerted upon the hearts of the givers, and the results which are sure to follow the habit thus formed, are incomparably more valuable, than present gifts. Let children be properly taught in the Sabbath-school, and the Church will soon have a membership gladly confessing that they are stewards -and so acting in matters of Christian beneficence.

(5.) By the facilities which it affords for the distribution of the Bible, and the circulation of religious books. The Sunday-school is the parent of all Bible Societies. The Foreign and British Bible Society originated in the wants of a few Welsh Sunday-schools. The first question asked a Sunday-school scholar is--Have you a Bible? Is there a Bible in your house? The first lesson, whether oral or printed, is a Bible lesson. Thousands of copies of the Holy Scriptures are annually circulated among the destitute through Sunday-schools, and numerous facts go to show, that there is no better way of distributing the Bible among the destitute-with the hope of its being read-than to establish Sunday-schools among the destitute.

And so with regard to religious books and tracts. No books are so eagerly read, or read by so many persons, adults as well as children, as Sunday-school books, and every Sunday-school library is a circulating library. Every child becomes a most efficient colporter, carrying good books to his home, and by his own interest in them commending them to every member of the family circle. What must be the influence of one hundred of such little colporters in a single neighbourhood, changing their books, and returning to their friends with beaming eyes and bounding hearts, fifty-two times in a year! And how important this work, in view of the alarming prevalence of a cheap poisonous literature, scattered by the steam printing-press

in the most insidious forms, like the leaves of autumn, familiarizing the youthful mind with the wickedness of London villains and French debauchees spreading moral pestilence and death in every direction.

"Our log-cabin Sunday-schools," says a Western man, "are so many reservoirs scattered over our valleys. Every school is a distributing reservoir, with from twenty to fifty families, and two or three hundred immortal souls, all thus supplied with the living waters, of which, if a man drink, he shall never die." Here, then, is an element of power not easily over-estimated in its resistance of evil, and its salutary influence upon the Church.

(6.) As a pioneer in Church extension.

That the Sunday-school, as a nursery, in connection with an organized church, is a glorious institution, all will admit; but few persons, comparatively, appreciate it as an evangelical missionary agency. That a Sunday-school cannot exist without an organized Church in connection with it, is now an exploded figment. In multitudes of instances schools are planted and are sustained in advance of the Church organization, and in our frontier States, and sparsely-settled territories, the Sunday-school is denominated "the Pioneer of the Church." A Presbyterian minister who has been a missionary of the American Sunday-school Union, in the West, for nearly twenty years, professes to be able to furnish a list of fifty churches, connected with evangelical denominations, which have grown out of union Sunday-schools, organized by himself, or under his superintendence.

Another missionary, a ruling elder in our Church, claims more than forty churches, organized in connection with the Sunday-schools planted within the bounds of his field of labour, and in advance of Church extension. And it is the opinion of a Western man, well qualified to judge, that eight tenths of the churches organized in the Valley of the Mississippi for the last fifteen years, have grown out of Sunday-schools first organized, and that these schools, with scarce an exception, were, from the necessities of the case, first established upon the union principle.

Finally. It would be easy to show that the Sunday-school enterprise is connected, either directly or indirectly, with every good cause cherished by the heart of Christianity and patriotism, and that it sustains an intimate relation to all the great reformatory movements of the day. Its object, its spirit and prospects, are identical with Christianity. Its subjects are most hopeful, its principle of pre-occupation or priority of influence-philosophical and Scriptural. Its success is wonderful--its progress onward-its ultimate triumph certain. He who labours successfully to promote the Sunday-school cause, is the friend of every good cause, and is a general benefactor.

ARTICLE XI.

THE CHURCH'S CARE OF HER CHILDREN AND

YOUTH.*

BY THE CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE BOARD.

THE Church, in conducting the work of education, may be properly called to consider some of the first principles which control her action in regard to the young, and some of the methods employed for the effectual exercise of her guardianship.

By the constitution of nature, children come into the world in the most helpless and dependent condition, both as mortals and as immortals. A system of religion that made no provision for the training of the rising generation, and had no sympathies with it of heart and of life, could scarcely expect to maintain an existence in the world. Simply preaching to the adult population, would be to pass by vast portions of the human race at the most hopeful and formative period of life. Preaching, indeed, must always be exalted as God's great instrumentality for bringing mankind to the know ledge of the truth; and, where the Gospel is duly proclaimed and received, other instrumentalities are set in operation, whose influences pervade all the relations of society. Christianity has special condescension to two classes,-the young and the poor. It says of children, "Of such is the kingdom of Heaven," and of the poor, "the Gospel is preached" unto them.

I. The Church's care for children and youth is exhibited IN THEIR BAPTISM AND CONSECRATION TO GOD.

The covenant made with Abraham, included his children, and consisted of the promise of a spiritual blessing. "I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee." The external condition of the covenant, enjoined upon Abraham, was the rite of circumcision; the performance of which was declared to be the "token of the covenant" between God and Abraham. This covenant, which preceded the Old Testament economy under Moses, rules the administration of grace under the New Testament; for "they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham," and "the promise is unto you and to your children." The seal of the covenant is changed in the commission to "baptize all nations." Baptism is, therefore, the ordinance which proclaims, as from heaven, God's unchanging purpose to fulfil His gracious covenant with His people and their seed, in their generations.

If this view be correct, the importance of baptism, as a sacra

*Part of the Annual Report of the Board of Education of the Presbyterian Church to the General Assembly, 1855.

ment to which the children of believers have a title, cannot be overestimated. The Presbyterian Church duly exalts this sacrament in her doctrinal standards, and in its form of administration. "Baptism is a sacrament ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; but also to be unto Him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace," &c. "Not only those that do actually profess faith in, and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized." "Baptism is usually to be administered in the church, in the presence of the congregation." "Before baptism, let the minister use some words of instruction respecting the institution, nature, use, and ends of this ordinance, showing," &c.

Baptism is thus made by our Church a memorial of covenant truths, a remembrancer of covenant duties, and a pledge of covenant blessings.

The admission of children into the visible Church, and their consecration to God, have much to do with their salvation. He who appointed sacraments, has connected them with the administration of his grace. Aside from the promised workings of the Divine Spirit, which faith acknowledges without attempting to explain, there are other clear testimonies to the value of the ordinance in relation to the young. One is, that the sacrament becomes a powerful means of stimulating and enforcing the obligations of parents. A second is, that baptized persons may be made to feel in a peculiar manner, their duty to take upon themselves the vows of their baptismal consecration. And the third, is the fact, that the great mass of those who profess faith in Christ, were baptized in their infancy.

It is one of the practical excellencies of our Church system that it urges upon believing parents the duty of affixing the seal of the covenant to their children. During the last year reported in the Minutes of the Assembly, more than 10,000 infants were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This number, although relatively large when compared with some other Protestant churches, is probably considerably below what parental obligations require. There are always deficiencies in outward, as in inward duties. A Church's prosperity depends upon her obedience to Divine commands; and among the ways of showing her love to the Saviour, and her care of His little ones, is to bring them in covenant faith, to be baptized before His altar. The true exaltation of the sacrament of baptism is one of the precious privileges and obligations of the Church, and secures, through the grace of the New Testament dispensation, spiritual blessings upon our youth from generation to generation.

II. The Church exercises her care over children and youth, in attention to their DOMESTIC RELIGIOUS TRAINING.

The work of bringing up children belongs by Divine authority to

parents. The Church may co-operate, but not interfere, except where parents neglect their obligations. Instruction in parental duties belongs to the preaching of the Word in the sanctuary, and to the exhortations and admonitions of pastoral intercourse. Christian parents sustain a relation to the Church, which is within the reach of her ministrations, her ordinances, and her discipline; and a great public and social end is accomplished when the power of the Gospel is felt in the active piety of households.

The family is a divine institution, coming down, like the Sabbath, with the glorious hopes and memories of Paradise. Its relations to private, social, and public happiness, are incidental to its chief aim of advancing the kingdom of God. It is an institution, pre-eminently religious in its nature and duties. God, alluding to his commandments and ordinances, says, "These things which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be as a frontlet between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates." The great end of families is to fulfil the covenant which God made with parents and children, and to secure divine blessings from generation to generation.

God gives to domestic training a great advantage in its early opportunities. The true season for parental effort is childhood and early life. The constitution of nature, which perpetuates the race through the birth of babes and the growth of childhood and youth, has at least one of its mysteries solved in the influences which religion can early and systematically bring to bear upon human destiny. There is hope for the development of religious life, through the means and methods of Christian nurture. Family instruction, family government, family example, and family worship, all pervaded by the spirit of private prayer, have been efficacious, under God, in making the sons and daughters of earthly households "the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty."

Home is the most glorious of all the training places of earth. There, love and natural affection dwell. There, the light of the covenant shines. There, the arrangements of nature give power and life to spiritual instrumentalities. There, God loves to abide. There, are centred the hopes of State and of Church; and the destinies of eternity are, for the most part, decided there.

Among the things needed to render household training more effective in the bounds of our Church, is

1. Scriptural instruction by parents themselves. The duty of teaching religion to children belongs to the father and the mother. Instruction comes best from their own lips. The presence of the parent is a sweet and impressive testimony to the value of the lessons taught. There is some danger lest the opportunities of the Sabbath