bility. While our schools are furnished from the students mentioned, it is evident that they must suffer all the embarrassments, losses and other evils which cannot fail to arise from inexperienced laborers; and not inexperienced merely, but those making no calculations and taking no means to acquire either experience or skill.

Let young farmers adopt teaching as their profession during the winter, for a course of years, and these two hitherto insurmountable obstacles, the want of salaries and inexperience, will, in a measure, at least, be removed. The farmer could afford to teach in his own district, at thirty dollars a month, for four months in a year, better than one who depended entirely upon teaching for the support of a family, could for fifty dollars; as with the aid of a laborer whom he might hire for ten dollars a month, or perhaps by the assistance of his sons without hired labor, he might attend to all the winter business of his farm in addition to his services in the school.

It is evident that a young farmer, who at sixteen or eighteen years of age, should commence shaping his course for the business of teaching as a profession, though it might be but for the winter, would act under very different motives, and consequently make greater and higher efforts that a kind of interloper, who had escaped from another profession just long enough, and devoting just hours enough, to secure a few dollars to help him on to his more respectable calling. The former would be upon the alert to learn the best modes of teaching, to ascertain what were the best books, and to become truly intelligent and skilful in his adopted profession; while the latter would meet, they always do meet, any proposal for school improvements with "I have not time to attend to them," as I must keep along with my class in college, or I wish to be admitted to the bar next court, or next year, or to a license for preaching or practising medicine.

To my mind it is evident that a practical farmer who has also the science and the experience for teaching, may be better qualified for educating farmers than any person who makes teaching exclusively his profession. By connecting his pursuits of science and reading in winter, with his farming operations in summer, he would not only make education more practical, but farming more scientific, consequent

ly both professions would be benefitted. His illustrations and experiments in geology, botany, entomology, chemistry, natural philosophy, geometry, &c., made for the benefit of his pupils in his school, could be applied, during the succeeding summer both by teacher and pupil upon the farm.

Experience fully proves that summer schools, which are composed principally of girls and small boys, are most prosperous under the charge of ladies, as are schools of small children at any season. If a farmer should have charge of a school in his own district for a course of years during the winter, his sister, or as the case might be, his daughter, might have care of the same school during the summer, when he would still have a kind of double interest in its suc

cess.

It must be evident from these views that the plan here proposed for supplying school teachers, would have at least three advantages over that now pursued, viz; it would be economical, it would make teaching a profession, it would give schools the advantage of practice with theory. It must also confer upon children two advantages which would be lost, if teaching was exclusively a profession, viz: the advantage of experimental knowledge with theory, and to all young children, and to girls advanced in education, the advantages of ladies for their teachers.

In connection with the system here presented, circuit schools, to be held weekly or semi-monthly, and attended by teachers and lecturers who were familiar with the sciences, and supplied with apparatus and specimens for illustrating them, would be highly important, especially in aiding young gentlemen and ladies in qualifying themselves for teaching. Much might be said on the economy and power embraced in a system of itineracy, whether connected with religion or education, but the present occasion does not permit it.

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ART. IV. THE TRUE POSITION AND USE OF THE SABBATH

SCHOOL.

(Communicated for the Annals of Education.)

THE SABBATH SCHOOL!-When I have named this, I have named an institution, concerning which it is difficult to say, whether is greater,-the intrinsic importance, with which it is invested;—or the strange indifference with which it is too generally treated, and the strange mistakes concerning it, which too widely prevail. Let us endeavour to form some definite ideas of this peculiarly christian mode of doing good.

It can scarcely be necessary to remark that childhood and youth are the periods appointed of heaven, for giving form and character to the man, whether considered physically, intellectually, or morally. The impressibility of our whole nature during those periods is proverbial. As in the body there is a pliancy even of the bones, which enables the savage, by unnatural pressure, to train the very skull of his child into odd, fantastic shapes; and which permits the more civilized, by a scarcely less unnatural force, to run the hazard of fearful contortions and deformities to their offspring; so it is with the mind. There is, in all its young susceptibilities, a tenderness, a delicate pliancy, through which almost any shape of moral deformity may, by barbarous, or indiscreet discipline, be impressed on this nobler part of the human fabric. On the contrary, as this very pliability of our bodily material in childhood gives scope to judicious diet and exercise in the developement of a human figure, marked with either the finest touches and most graceful lines of beauty, or the boldest expressions and most manly forms of strength; so this very tenderness of our childish susceptibilities of mind, gives room to wholesome culture and discipline in the formation of a human character, shaped into the beautiful mould of heavenly virtues, and according to the noblest models of intellectual energy. Hence the infinite importance of early, well chosen, well applied religious instruction. And hence, as one of the modes of this instruction, the corresponding importance of the Sabbath School.

Under the circumstances of the present age, this mode of

instruction has become an indispensable auxiliary to a preached gospel; more correctly I might say; one of the most efficient agents for preaching the gospel to one of the most interesting portions of every congregation. The mind of childhood, open, as we have sun, to either good or evil, is surrounded with innumerable subtle and powerful influences in favor of the latter; and must therefore be early preoccupied with holy principles as a foundation for good habits, in order to prevent its running to ruin amidst the implanted seeds of sinful principles, and the resulting fruits of evil habits. To do this is the office of the Sabbath School; an institution, which, seen in this light, shows at once much of its peculiar value, much of its peculiar claims to attention.

Our greatest danger, however, arises, not from undervaluing the importance of the Sabbath School, but from mistaking the place which it is designed to fill. Many it is to be feared, when the character and claims of this mode of religious instruction are presented, drop at once into something like this conclusion. Truly, here is a valuable expedient for the moral education of our beloved offspring. How wonderful its power for good! How exactly fitted to supply their wants, and to sustain our responsibilities! Or, if none go so far as to say, "the Sabbath School may safely take the place of the parent, in religious education," still are there not those who allow it to lighten their sense of obligation, and think it designed to perform part of the duties which naturally rest on them? Is it not hence, that so many children are allowed to fill the six days of the week with idle amusements; or, more probably amongst us, with those unnaturally accumulated studies of an education for this world, which leave but little time for any thing else, save hastily received food and feverish sleep? Is it not hence, that the great burthen of an education for the world to come is thrown upon the seventh day alone and upon the teachers to whom it is appropriated; thus rendering the Sabbath a day of oppressive toil, and not of holy rest; and the Sabbath School, not a resort to which the rejoicing child will leap with a glad spirit, but an uninviting and a dreaded place?

However this may be, it will not be impertinent to remark the Sabbath School was never designed to stand in the place of parental religious instruction, or to lighten, a

:

single tittle, the weight of parental responsibility. The family, after all, however frequently that holy place is profaned, -the family is the school,-the heaven established school for the best rudiments of all divine instruction; the sacred spot, where God designs that young immortals shall be trained for the church; that, in the church, they may be further nurtured and perfected for heaven. Nothing, in sacred economy, can ever take the place of a well ordered religious family; and nothing, but an afflictive providence, can ever lighten the weight of responsibility, which rests on the soul of every parent, binding him to the extent of his abilities, to educate his offspring for God.

The Sabbath School, as it meets us here, is designed-not to excuse, but to assist the parent in this untransferable duty not to enable him innocently to neglect, but more successfully to attempt the religious education of his child. With the best intentions and the most diligent endeavours, there will still be much to hinder him in this great work. Aids will be always needed, and if judicious, always acceptable; and, when they are afforded, they should increase, rather than diminish a parent's activity in duty, if so be that the glorious issue of a child's salvation may with the greater certainty, be realized!

Such being the importance and place of the Sabbath School, our duty to it is clear. No parent, whom God has honoured with offspring, should ever let a day pass, without attempting their religious instruction. And, as the Sabbath was designed to be a day of holy and delightful rest, all that is most irksome in the formalities of such instruction should be attended to before its pleasing hours begin. This type of heaven's own blissful repose, should never be made an odious season to those young immortals, whom God has given us to educate for Himself. A due proportion of every day in the seven should be allotted to that great work, for which we are all born, and without which we shall never be fit to die. Thus, while no day is without its share in this work, none will be made odious by being burthened with the whole-and the work itself will be the more likely to please, by such a timely mingling with all the other pleasant charities of life.

And, against this apportionment of time amongst the va rious and weighty objects for an education for our offspring,