and strength, who hath borne the curse for us. Whatever may have been our goodness in the eyes of our fellow-men, whatever our zeal for God, whatever our piety, whatever the abundant evidences of our having walked with God, yet we may expect that the Great Adversary will at times be permitted, like a chained lion, to harass or vex us: we are told to expect tribulation in this world- but then the blessed truth is added, IN ME ye shall have peace. Here, then, let the believing teacher, however tried, rest all his anxious difficulties about the future of responsibility; and let him say with one of old, who well knew what it was to be at times in the miry clay, "Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord."

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CHAP. IX.

DIFFICULTIES AFFECTING PERSONAL RELIGION.

TRULY, it is a melancholy thought, that any persons should in these days, and in this country, be entrusted with the training and education of poor children, who do not possess any due sense of the importance of acquainting themselves with God. One would almost doubt whether living instances of such obduracy, or gross darkness, could be found: yet no one can hear, or read, the inquiries and advertisements of school-committees for pious teachers-no one can listen to the statements and experience of those who take a practical interest in visiting schools -without soon perceiving that a large part (dare it be hinted, the greater number?) of our elementary teachers are in this matter lamentably, most lamentably, defective. Allusion is not here made to that miserable set of persons-report says an increasing band-who, in all the more important truths of Revelation, are actually infidel in principle, but of that far larger class who, though they may profess to admit every Scriptural doctrine, are yet strangers in heart to the power of divine truth.

It is, probably, almost a hopeless task to expect to work any improvement in the former of these bodies of men. Baptized infidels as they are, many

of whom have had almost every advantage in training for their duties, though some are self-taught, they have added hypocrisy and falsehood to their other crimes. They could not occupy their present position, if they had not contrived to veil their real views by guile; if they had not all along deceived, or at any rate were not now deceiving, examiners and employers alike; if they did not pretend to a certain profession of Christianity, and put on the appearance of it, which possibly some experienced inspector or manager may see through, yet not sufficiently to detect their wickedness, and, by exposing their real character, to rescue the children from that aspish poison which is under their lips. Such awfully deluded and deluding persons seem, indeed, fit to be numbered with those tares sown by the old enemy of mankind amongst the children of the kingdom. And when we hear of the vast efforts which the followers of the great apostate spirit are now making; and when we read that, in these latter days, he shall increase in power and wrath, because his time is short

one cannot but shudder even at the thought of any of his ministers being thorised teachers in our elementary schools; much more, at the eternal interests of the lambs of the fold being tampered with, neglected, and to a certain degree perilled, by such "children of the wicked one." Whatever anxiety, then, may be felt to arrest such miserable men in their headlong career of destruction, it is feared that in most cases the endeavour will fail; not so much from the blackness of their guilt, as from the finished

hypocrisy wherewith they deceive all around them, until, self-deceived, they discover, too late! that our God is a consuming fire. But anything that could be added for their benefit, in these pages at least, would probably be only utterly disregarded with sarcastic scorn: and so, this dreadful band must here be taken leave of, with the hearty wish that their number may decrease, and that they themselves may in due season be turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. Meanwhile, as long as such wolves in sheeps' clothing are known to infest our schools, it is clearly the bounden duty of every upright teacher, both in the sight of God and man, to do what lies in his power, and comes within his undoubted knowledge, to assist every committee, inspector, and minister in putting an effectual stop to their designs. And, surely, where proper watchfulness is exercised by all in authority, even if these wretched beings cannot be at once detected, most of their abominable leaven will be hindered from actively working; except in their constant and systematic suppression of Divine truth, on every occasion when such duplicity is practicable. Wherever, likewise, real faithfulness to the cause of God in the world is the active principle in committees, and where they are men of piety and men of prayer, one can hardly doubt but that He who knows the secrets of all hearts will frustrate the evil counsels of such wicked teachers: "Surely the wrath of man shall praise him, and the remainder of wrath shall he restrain." Even under the most favourable

circumstances, the watchman waketh but in vain except the Lord keep the city: and why should He not watch over the plans of every good man, and every good institution, to advance His glory, notwithstanding the devices of Satan, and the guileful hypocrisies of any of his agents?

But mention has been made above, of a very different, and much larger, class of teachers; persons who, as they themselves say, and perhaps think, truly believe every doctrine contained in the Bible, and about whose general conduct and purposes such as are associated with them find little that is to blame, except in their deficiency as to real piety. They are, mostly, sincere people; both practising and enforcing (or, at any rate, professing to do so) all that they know and believe. You may, perhaps, hear them speak with indignation against everything like infidelity or scepticism; they have no taste for the shallow conceits of modern rationalists and wouldbe liberals; they turn away from the ribald joke and flippant sarcasm of the worldly, as they do from the filthy song of the drunkard or sensualist. Yetalas! that it should be so with kind-hearted and moral men, with hard-working, intelligent, respectful, and amiable men, as a large portion of them notoriously are-alas! that, where so much is good, there should be so great and serious a deficiency. The one thing needful is not there. The truths of Christianity are accepted in a general way, but they are not engrafted and living principles in the heart. The children, it is allowed, are more or less well