THE NEW BIRTH.

A FACT.

It was a bright, frosty night, some years ago, when I stood with H. H-, leaning over a swing-gate, about half-a-mile from the little town of Ledbury. Before us an avenue of trees led up a steep hill, to a greensward knoll. Behind was a beautiful open country stretching away for many a mile. We had stepped aside from the turnpike road for a holy purpose-it was even to pray. A moment's silence, broken only by the receding footsteps of the last lonely passer by, and by a sound more dear to a teacher's ear-the heavy sigh of a contrite sinner's heart; and then slow, solemn, and earnest, my voice poured forth the wishes of my heart, that the boy who stood beside me might be blessed with a view of a Saviour's full atonement. Silently we wandered towards home. As I opened my eyes and turned them upwards, I found that the cloud which for a time had eclipsed the silvery beams of the Queen of night, had passed away, and left her bright and beautiful. Thank God, thought I, for so happy an emblem of what will soon, I trust, take place in the soul of my young friend. "Do you understand it better now?" said I at last, "I think I do, said he," and we parted. The next morning he went alone to a stable-loft and prayed, and as he prayed the cloud removed, and brighter far than the silvery moon, rose the glorious "Sun of Righteousness with healing on his wings." How sweet the words to my heart, as he repeated in passing me that morning, "I think it is all right now, Sir;" and to read subsequently the ardent breathings, after final perseverance, expressed by the new-born soul, in the following letter:

LEDBURY, September, 185-.

DEAR FRIEND,-I have joined the Church since you were here, and am very thankful to say I was unanimously received. I thank God that he has given me grace to walk circumspectly before the world and the Church, and pray that he may preserve me through all the future course of my life.

I am very much troubled in my own mind about going into the ministry. I am ready to give myself, if I can only win souls and bring glory to God.

Send me your advice. Try what you can do for me; but (need I say) seek direction at the Throne of Grace, before you advise.

I will employ all my talents, which God may have given me, in his service. If I can only "finish my course with joy, I count not my life dear unto me." Not that I think by becoming a preacher of the Gospel, or going to India, or anywhere else, will be one single grain on my side when I am weighed in the balance.

I bless God that his salvation is a complete salvation. If we are Chris. tians, good works will follow. When we love God, we shall try to please him. I am,

*

HH

PLAN OF A PROVIDENT INVESTMENT SOCIETY.

MR. EDITOR,-As the importance of encouraging provident habits among the working classes is now attracting considerable attention, I enclose, for your inspection, (and insertion if you please), a copy of the rules of a Society recently established in connection with our Sunday school.

Roseberry Villas.

Yours very truly,

WALTER BERDOE, Jun.

Rules of the Kentish Town Congregational Sunday School Provident Investment Society.

RULES.

1.- THE Committee of Management shall consist of a President, Treasurer, and two Secretaries, to be appointed by the Sunday School Committee. They shall all retire at Christmas in each year, but be eligible for re-election.

2.-All scholars attending regularly and behaving well, shall be entitled to the benefits of the Society, and on leaving the school, for reasons satisfactory to the Committee, shall be allowed to continue their connection with the Society.

3. The deposits shall be paid in on Monday evenings, between eight and nine o'clock.

4.-The amount deposited shall be either 1d., 2d., 4d., 6d., or 1s. per week.

5.-Interest at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum, shall be allowed to each Depositor every three months, namely at the end of the respective months of March, June, September, and December. Such interest to be calculated on the amount standing to the credit of the Depositor at the commencement of the quarter. Depositors being more than two weeks in arrear at any time, shall not be entitled to have interest allowed on that quarter's deposits, till the end of the following quarter.

6. One of the Secretaries shall be in attendance each deposit night, to receive deposits and pay claims, and shall enter the same upon the Depositor's card, and in a book kept for the purpose. He shall also pay over the amount so received to the Treasurer, not later than the Wednesday following.

7.-When his name is enrolled, each Depositor shall be supplied with a card, for which one penny will be charged. This card must always be produced on paying in or withdrawing money, and if lost or damaged, a new one must be purchased. On withdrawing from the benefits of the Society, the Depositor must leave his card with one of the Secretaries.

8-A Depositor may at any weekly meeting withdraw any part or the whole of the amount paid in by him, together with the interest thereon due, by giving written notice to one of the Secretaries, at the previous weekly meeting.

9. The sums received by the Treasurer shall be deposited by him in the Perpetual Investment Land and Building Society, in his own name and that of the Senior Secretary. £5 shall be the maximum sum retained in his hands at any time.

10.--Should a Depositor be guilty of misconduct, he shall be liable to be suspended from the benefits of the Society, in which case the amount already deposited by him will be returned, but without interest.

11.-A financial statement shall be presented by the Treasurer, and a report by the senior Secretary, at each Christmas quarterly meeting, or whensoever such may be desired by the Sunday School Committee.

12.-The Sunday School Committee shall have power to alter or regulate the rate of interest; also to make any other alteration in the constitution of the Society, at any time they may deem it desirable.

SCHOOL FUNDS AND REWARDS TO CHILDREN.

(A LETTER TO À SUPERINTENDENT.)

DEAR SIR,-Two young men called at our office the other day, collecting subscriptions for your school. They seemed very earnest, and I felt sorry to negative their appeal-which is a thing I seldom do. My objection was this, the wasteful expenditure (in my opinion) of your school, in giving away books to a part of the children time after time, as "rewards."

I read your annual report year after year-see much to admire in your school, and fancy it to be generally a well conducted and thriving one. But your old fashioned practice of giving "rewards" every anniversary, seems to me at best questionable, absorbing as it does, a rather considerable portion of your pecuniary resources, and exerting an unfavourable influence—it is besides, needless and useless.

To hire children to attend Sunday schools, get off tasks, behave well, recite pieces at anniversaries, &c., is in my opinion, a wrong system. The principle is unsound, and therefore harmful. Teach a child, that the best reward it can have, is the good resulting in its own mind, and heart, and life, under God's blessing, from rightly valuing and duly improving the instructions received!

Then again, the practice is unfair, and necessarily creates discontent among the children, and dissatisfaction among teachers and parents, which doubtless you know. Some children are naturally quick in committing lessons and verses to memory. Others have considerate parents who send them early and regularly to school, and shall they be rewarded for this; and others, who perhaps have as much the desire, but not the ability, opportunity, or advantages, be cast into the shade, and go unrewarded and disgraced? I repeat, the principle is unsound and the results harmful, to say nothing of the unwise and prodigal outlay.

Children we certainly recommend having Bibles and other good books of their own, and if properly instructed and encouraged, they will readily subscribe a penny, or half-a-penny per week for them. They will buy them, aye, and value them too, more than if had for nothing. The writer can speak from experience, after having succeeded in a rather long Sunday school life, in getting more than two thousand dear children honorably to purchase themselves each a copy of the BOOK OF GOD as their own personal property.

We give no rewards in our school. The attendance is large, and perhaps

few children are more orderly, or buy more Bibles, hymn books, magazines, &c. Thus we implant the principles of independence and self-reliance, which we hope will take root, and in after life be productive of personal, relative, social, and general advantage-favorably influencing the pecuniary, moral, and religious interests of the possessor.

Let me add, my dear Sir, that when I get to know you have given over frittering away your school funds on questionable, if not pernicious objects, and that you still have need of help (which by the bye I hardly expect) you will find me ready to hand you a substantial donation.

Finally and faithfully let me add, that where a school possesses an intelligent and energetic superintendent or secretary-a man of business habits and liberal heart, wise and judicious plans will be devised and successfully carried out, for the self-support of the institution. And were entire abstinence from drink and tobacco generally observed by Sunday school teachers, what ample resources would accrue, which superfluities, to give them the gentleist name, do not cost the writer a single penny in the Yours truly, A UNION SECRETARY.

year.

Newcastle-on-Tyne.

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AND THE CHURCH.

IN the National Witness we find an illustration of the fact, so often proved, that the Mission Sunday school is the germ of the Church organization. A congregational church was organized last spring in Warwick, Canada East, which had its origin in the following circumstances :-" In 1856, an agent of the American Sunday school Union, visited Warwick, and found there a small settlement of 15 nominally Protestant families. He induced them to organize a Sunday School. When they opened the school 'not a man could be found among them to pray,' and the Lord overruled this fact to produce a serious impression on their minds. They were a community of prayerless families; to live so, would not do.' For several weeks the school was conducted without prayer. At length one tongue was unloosed, and then another,' till more than half the heads of families became praying men, and a marked change took place in the habits and practices of the community." What occurred at Warwick has been substantially repeated all through our Western States.

"O LORD, BLESS MY TEACHER."

A FEW evenings since I heard a child repeating his evening prayer at his father's knee. In child-like accents he repeated, "Our Father," and then added: "Lord, bless my father and mother; bless my teacher; bless my brothers and sister; O Lord bless me and take my naughty heart away and give me a good heart, for Jesus' sake. Amen."

Oh, how the words "Lord, bless my teacher," thrilled through my heart, for I too am a teacher. How grateful to my heart would be the feeling that all my dear pupils remembered me in their prayers.

SARAH.

The General Reader.

TRIALS IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

ACKNOWLEDGE GOD. The more difficulties one has to enWhoever pretends to reason, and calls himself a man, is obliged to acknow- counter, within and without, the more ledge God, and to demean himself religi- significant and the higher in inspiraThe very ously towards him: for God is to the tion his life will be. understanding of man, as the light of troubles that others look on with pity, the sun is to our eyes, the first and as if he had takeu up a kind of piety the plainest, and the most glorious more perilous and burdensome than object of it. He fills heaven and was necessary, will be his fields of earth; and every thing in them doth victory, and his course of life will be represent him to us. Which way just as much happier as it is more soever we turn ourselves, we are consciously heroic. He has something encountered with clear evidences and great to live for, nay, something worsensible demonstrations of a Deity.thy even to die for, if he must,-that Tillotson. which makes it glorious to live and not less glorious to die.-Dr. Bushnell.

ANTICIPATION.

England is now a rich, victorious, Now polite, and scientific nation. therefore is the time that we ought to keep a more than ordinary watchful eye over our manners; and establish

a few needful restraints, to preserve, as long as we can, some degree of industry, frugality, and fortitude, alive among us, that the day may be late in which we are to sink; for sink we certainly shall, under our prosperity, as the nations of past ages have

done before us.

THE RIVER OF GOD.

The river of God is full of water; but there is not one drop of it that takes its rise in earthly springs. God will have no strength used in his own battles but the strength which he himself imparts; and I would not have you that are now distresse the least discouraged by it. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled; and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.-Spurgeon,

in

SIR ISAAC NEWTON. Sir Isaac Newton, universally acknowledged to be the ablest philosopher and mathematician that this, or perhaps any other nation has produced,

is also well known to have been a firm believer and a serious Christian. His discoveries concerning the frame and system of the universe were applied by him to demonstrate the being of a God, and to illustrate his power and wisdom in the creation. This great man applied himself likewise with the utmost attention to the study of the holy scriptures, and considered the several parts of them with uncommon exactness, particularly as to the order of time, and the series of prophecies and events relating to

the Messiah.