souls of men begin now,-1. Where there are ten children whose parents are in society, meet them at least an hour every week. 2. Talk with them every time you see any at home. 3. Pray in earnest for them. 4. Diligently instruct and vehemently exhort all parents at their own houses. 5. Preach expressly on education." More and more strongly has the discipline of the American Methodist Church insisted upon this subject, and the result is that nearly all our preachers in America are what are termed Sunday school men, and we have almost quitted discussing what is the object of the Sunday school. We have known no other objects from the beginning than the conversion of children, the edification and spiritual adornment of the Church, and the evangelization of the world. Much the same interest is felt among other denominations, and in every convention of Sunday school teachers additional evidence is furnished of the growing identity of the Sunday school and the Church. 3. Our American Sunday schools, in the large and flourishing adult and senior, and in some cases normal classes for the training of teachers, still further evidence their conviction of the value of the Sunday school. The old jewish Sunday schools had adult Bible classes. The Jews and the primitive Christians not only heard but searched the word of God, and spake often one to another. Have you ever read God's own ideal of a true Sunday or Bible school? In Deuteronomy, 31st chapter, at the 12th and 13th verses, it is written, "Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law and that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land." Here are all the elements of the model Sunday school; here the home and the mission work-"the people," and "the stranger;" here the legitimate ends-the intellectual, "that they may hear, and that they may learn""—the experimental, "that they fear the Lord"—and the practical, "that they may observe to do all the words of the law." Here are all grades and classes; the adult, "gather the people, men and women' the juvenile, "and the children"-even the infant class is specified, "that the children which have not known any thing," &c. Why, we find that the model Sunday school, about which we talk so much, is an institution old as the jewish church. I may just here observe that in America there are scarcely any schools in which there are not senior and adult Bible classes. - 4. The efforts put forth for the improvement of teachers is another evidence that the Church begins fully to appreciate the value of the school. Courses of lectures, local associations for teachers, conventions, normal classes, and Sunday school teachers' Institutes, are held in different parts of the land. These have not attained perfection of system nor universality of adoption; but everywhere are they talked about, and in many places are now in active operation. 5. If the American Church places such confidence in her Sunday school department, she has a right to expect that from that nursery shall come scores and hundreds to her altars. Thank God she does not look in vain. The Christ who presides at her public service, comes always thereto from the Sunday school. And will not He who said, "Feed my lambs,”—will not He bring some of the lambs with Him to the communion of the saints? We find that He always does. There are many churches that mourn an absent Saviour, and say, Where is He? Why doth He not come? The fact is, He has been standing at the Sunday school door of the Church, and crying through the long night, "Open to me; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night." If we want a living Christ in our church at this age of the world, we will find Him at any time at the Sunday school door of His church. I cannot repeat definitely the numbers of annual additions to the church from the Sunday schools. I am happy to tell you to-night, that the Sunday school union which I represent, reports within the past year, that though from twelve conferences no report was received, the balance report 19,517 conversions in our schools. The question may be asked, Do these conversions prove genuine? I have no statistical information on this point, but I am sure, from personal observation in a limited field, and from the testimony of brethren in the work, that where the subjects thus reported are cared for by the pastors and leading members of the church, and where they have the basis of a careful Sunday school education, there is no question concerning their faithfulness. Here The Sunday schools of America send greetings to the Sunday school teachers and labourers of Britain. In this sphere we may be one. we are above all partisan strife-all national and civil disruption-all selfishness and jealousies. I see the genius of the sabbath school standing upon the trembling shores of my own land, and reaching forth over the rolling sea the hand of christian greeting. There are tears upon her cheek, there is care upon her brow. She mourns the loss of many a brave son on the field of battle, and weeps because of the dreadful gloom which falls upon our noble land. But through that veil of tears I see the unchanged purpose to press on in her labour of love, and maintain an unfaltering faith in God. If the men whom she has reared from infancy into the maturity of a christian manhood must perish in this struggle, she resolves to go forward and rear the coming generation for a nobler and bloodless warfare, and an eternal victory. She has a dream in her heart of a coming day when wars shall cease-of a day when Christ shall reign, and her noble sons in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, shall stand together, clothed in white robes, and with palms in their hands. Mr. W. C. CHAPIN, of Massachusetts, U. S., said,—Mr. Chairman and christian friends, I am well aware that in standing before you to-night I am subject to special temptation. I love America as my native land; I love Great Britain, I love France, I love Switzerland, Italy, the whole world-but the temptation to me is to try to make you love America, and to make you think better of America than you have ever done before; and, therefore, excuse me if I should say some things a little too strong in favour of my native country. I am to speak to-night upon the state and prospects of Sunday schools in America. This, of course, means their present state. But allow me to go back just a few years, and to state that within that period-say within the last five or six years-there has been a very special impulse in the Sunday school cause amongst us. It is not very long ago, that our elder clergymen and laymen were in the habit of saying, "Be careful, or you will place the Sunday school before the church;" but somehow or other, through the influence of what some would call ". 'young America," but what I would prefer to recognize as the influence of the Spirit of God, all parties, in the pulpit and out of the pulpit, hail the work with delight, and say, "Go on and prosper; we are heart and hand with you." I believe that during the last four or five years there has been a more rapid progress in the Sunday school work, in the numbers and regularity of the attendance of the children, and, above all, in the conversion of souls to the Lord Jesus Christ, than was ever before witnessed. We have now, I am grateful to say, large classes of scholars, every one of whom is converted to God. It was suggested to-day, in the Convention, that it might be well to take these scholars from the Sunday school, and form them into separate classes. That is not the opinion entertained in America. We consider it better to keep those who have come to the knowledge of the truth within the Sunday school, that the influence of their example and teaching may, by God's blessing, be the means of drawing others to Jesus. It is also my impression, from what I have seen during the last twenty years, in my frequent visits to this country, that we have a larger proportion of elder scholars in our schools than you have here. In our manufacturing towns we have, at any rate, more adult scholars than children-more who are over fifteen years of age than under. I think, too, it is a rule throughout the country, that the congregation generally is expected to become connected with the Sunday school. It is not true that they all come-some have not the disposition-still the number is very large among the adult population who are connected with our schools. I have not full statistics with me, and if I had there would not be sufficient time to present them; but, taking the entire population of the country, the free and the slave, the uncivilized Indian and the civilized white man, and taking also the Mormonites into account, we have, as near as can be ascertained, in our Sunday schools, about one in every 83 of the whole population. The Catholics in our country, as a rule, do not have Sunday schools, although in some of the larger cities they have been forced into the establishment of them. In the state of Massachusetts, where I reside, the present rate of attendance at the Sunday schools, throwing out the Catholics, Unitarians, and Universalists, for they have large schools of their own, is about one in every seven, and rejecting the Roman Catholics, there are in our own Evangelical schools about one in every 5. This I believe to be near the truth throughout the New England states, and several of the older Northern states-as New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and a few others. I do not know how it is with respect to the Sunday schools of London, but in the city of New York, taking its entire population, which is now nearly one million, there are about one-third in attendance at our schools. I state these facts, because they may be of interest to you in some particulars. The object which our sabbath schools aim at is the same as with you—to bring souls to Jesus Christ-we never had any other conviction with reference to their establishment; we received the impression from the mother country, and we have always carried it out. You have already heard from my brother Vincent, that we do not do so well as we ought. It is true that we do not bring all our children into the fold of Jesus Christ; and we now and then find in our prisons a Sunday school scholar. It is not unfrequent, now-a-days, for a person, when brought up before the magistrates for crime, to state that he was once a member of a Sunday school; so that, you see, sometimes there is no good result from our labours. We would to God it were otherwise ! It has been my impression, from frequent conversation with the people of this country-I do not know but what I am wrong in the impression-that there has been a kind of fear, lest those persons who have been reported as being converted to God in our most glorious revivals of religion, were not truly converted, and that their profession of the faith would not hold; that the truth with them would prove like seed sown upon stony ground, where it had but little depth of earth, and which withers away almost as soon as it is grown. I assure you that that is not my own conviction. I believe that they do remain steadfast, and that many of them are the strength and support of our churches, and amongst our most laborious and useful Sunday school teachers. I believe that the present state of our schools is very encouraging. During the past summer, in the city in which I reside, the attendance at the Sunday school was never so large, and I have reason to know that the same remark holds good with reference to other cities, towns, and villages. Before I sit down, allow me to refer to one feature in our Sunday school enterprise which has not yet been brought before you, but which, I believe, has very much to do with the present state and prosperity of those institutions-I allude to the practice among us of holding conventions like this very frequently. In about twenty of our Northern States, there are now held annual conventions of Sunday school teachers. Besides these annual state conventions, there are conventions of the different denominations, and conventions in the different counties. The members of our Sunday schools are invited to be represented at these conventions by the pastor H and superintendent ex officio, and by a certain proportion of teachers, male and female. They meet usually in the summer season, and are received as the guests of the people of the town in which the convention assembles during the two days it lasts. The discussions are conducted very much as they have been here, only that the speakers are generally more limited as to time. It is customary to give to each not more than two minutes and a half, and I assure you that, as the presiding officer over one of these conventions during the last year, I found it quite as much as I could do to keep them within the prescribed limits, and though I rang the bell at the two minutes and a half, I am not sure that some of the speakers did not go on for two minutes and forty seconds. One feature of our conventions is a matter of interest, and I submit it for your consideration, although it is not for me to say how such proceedings should be conducted in this country. In our conventions we have frequent prayers-prayers of two or three minutes' length-and also frequent singing. Another feature is, that on one of the afternoons all the children of the town are invited to be present, and that afternoon is devoted expressly to them. Seats are arranged in one part of the hall for 200 or 300, and the children who have been trained to sing conduct the musical part of the engagements, and some members of the convention address them. The scholars are thus made to feel an interest in our proceedings as well as the older members, and we find that on these occasions the hall is sure to be crammed full. One word about our prospects. God, as I have told you, has blessed us, and is still blessing He has warmed our hearts with love for the work, and we feel devoted to it. Will the Divine Spirit take from us that love for His cause? Will those Sunday school teachers and ministers of the gospel who are now so keenly alive to its importance, for the sake of securing the very life of their congregations, hold back from it? O no; we feel that the work is onward; that He who has hitherto blessed us so largely, and to whom we ascribe all the glory of our past successes, will help us in the future, and that our Sunday schools in the United States will still continue to prosper and advance, and that we, with you, shall at last, when our labours here below are over, join in singing the glorious song of Moses and the Lamb. us. Rev. H. PAUMIER, B.D., pastor of the French Reformed Church, and secretary of the Paris Sunday School Union, followed. He said,-Mr. Chairman and christian friends, I remember when I first came to London, many years ago, I came with the notion that I should find none but Protestant people here. One day I addressed a gentleman in an omnibus, who I found, in the course of conversation, was an Irish Roman Catholic, and he was just as much surprised to find in me a Frenchman who was a Protestant minister. It may be, perhaps, that the notions of some present this evening may be not more correct in reference to France than were mine respecting England at that time. You may, probably, think of France as a country wholly Catholic, and where the influence of the Romish faith is so complete that |