PARENTS are the divinely appointed guardians of their children. There is no shrinking from their responsibility except by unfaithfulness, and no evading it without guilt. In a few short, fleeting hours parents hold a position of honor and responsibility unparalleled in the duties of any human being.

In the case of Christian parents we believe that God has given them the power to paralyze the influence of the best Sabbath-school teacher or pastor in the land. If they give the cold shoulder to the Sabbath-school, they ought to understand that they will generally destroy its entire influence for good upon their children. Therefore they ought actively and heartily to co-operate with the Sabbath-school teacher and pastor in this work with the young. Parents who are not Christians cannot present so mighty a barrier; but every parent holds an important relation to the teachers and the school.

Parents should watch over the school, often visit it, and manifest a deep interest in it. They should also notice and kindly check any tendency to error in doctrine or practice. They may counsel and suggest in every appropriate way whatever will advance its best interests, and they should personally know and kindly recognize the teacher as the friend of their children, and welcome and aid him in his visits to their homes. They should also contribute liberally and cheerfully to the support of the school, and particularly to the library. They should see that their children punctually attend school, commit their lessons to memory, and thus co-operate with the voluntary unpaid teacher, in giving their children the best and most valuable of all knowledge, and by God's blessing leading them to Christ for salvation.

Parents, accept the teachers to supplement and aid your efforts to save your offspring, but never, in any case, allow anything to supersede or lessen your obligations or spiritual labors for your own children.

Pastors.

We are fully convinced that our Sabbath-schools will never rise to what they ought to be until our pastors become the well-instructed leaders in this great work. We laymen are not in all cases sufficiently reliable nor fitted to be the leaders. We should take the place assigned to us by the Rev. Dr. Kirk, of Boston, in the State Sunday-School Convention of Massachusetts, when he said he "loved to recognize Sabbath-school teachers as lieutenants in the great army in which Christ Jesus has made him one of the captains."

Our Sabbath-schools, churches and ministers must all rise together. They should always keep closely together. It is here that Christians find a good working field under the training of the pastor, who is the pastor of the Sunday-school as well as of the church. It is here that the Church finds a great field of labor and her largest additions. Some pastors simply give their Sunday-schools their patronage and approbation. This is not sufficient. Much more is needed. Active co-operative service and direction are wanted. Sometimes pastors must needs act as superintendent of their own Sabbath-schools, and conduct their own teachers' meeting for a time, until they can train brethren and fit them to be superintendents. It is not lecturing, or preaching to, on the subject that we so much need as how to superintend, how to prepare the lesson, how to visit, what to teach, how to teach and lead to Christ, and how to conduct teachers' meetings.

The Sabbath-school enfolds the lambs of the flock. The pastor should, of course, watch over it very carefully and very tenderly. Every Sabbath he should at least walk through the school to encourage, by his presence, the weary teachers and scholars in their work of faith and labor of love. Many of the best pastors in our land make this an invariable rule. The teachers need their pastor's counsels and assistance in the school, the teachers' meetings and concerts of prayer, as well as in the pulpit. Here he will find his true working men and women, and if any of the church have especial claims upon him, they surely do have.

We need our pastors' presence and counsel in all our conventions and gatherings of teachers. They are ex-officio members of all. We also need their help in calling out the membership of the churches; in model sermons and model scriptural addresses, and teachings to children for instruction and for example. In fact, we feel that we must rely upon our ministers to raise up and make our Sunday-schools what they ought to be—the great training-schools of the Church, and the fitting field of labor for her large membership. As a matter of necessity, and as a matter of propriety, we throw ourselves as Sabbath-school workers upon the pastors, and call earnestly upon them for personal aid and comfort, in the strong assurance that our appeal will receive a warm and favorable response.

The Church.

The Church of Christ is the grand centre and radiating point of all our Christian efforts. The Sabbath-school is simply the Church of Christ itself putting forth its legitimate action. Says Dr. Baldwin: "It is the workshop of the Church for all working Christians." Here she trains her members for personal service and leads the lambs into the true fold. The nearer in sympathy our Sunday-schools are kept to the churches the better it will be for all; and if superintendents and teachers wish to give their labors a permanently successful character, they cannot make too short work in leading their pupils to the Church of Christ; at first, perhaps, as only attending, hearing members, then believing, obeying members. The outer, or mission-schools, are stepping-stones to churches. If mission-churches are established with those schools, as is often the case, the Church will be on convenient ground. Sunday-schools, Bible, and tract mission efforts should be superintended and sustained by the churches. Especially should the churches stand by the Sunday-schools—the nurseries of the Church—and see that they want no good thing. Rooms, seats, books, and all appliances, should be freely provided for the school; for the future hopes of Zion are there. By far the greater number of her additions from the world come through the Sabbath-school.

Not one-half of the children of our land, or scarcely of any State in our land, can be found on the Lord's day in any of our Sabbath-schools.

The churches ought, without delay, to supply this lack. Surely we can ask no less of them. The churches are abundantly able to do this. They have never trained and sent forth as Sabbath-school teachers as many as fifteen per cent. of their great membership, and not half the children are yet taught. Let the churches train and send forth thirty per cent. of their members, and the neglected are all reached and the work is done. Therefore the question is one of disposition, will—not ability.

The Community.

The community has a deep personal interest in the Sunday-school, and has corresponding duties. Thousands of youth are every year saved from prison and from crime by this institution. The three hundred and fifty or four hundred thousand voluntary Sunday-school teachers of our land comprise a moral police, to which the community are immensely indebted, whether they are sensible of it or not. It recently cost New York city more than twenty-five thousand dollars to convict one murderer, who had been neglected from a child. That sum of money would have paid his board for sixty years, or sustained twenty thousand children in mission-schools for a whole year. The Sabbath-school is a cheap and simple agency to give the gospel to the millions. It is the cheapest civilizer extant.

Thousands of the best patriots, statesmen, and Christians of our own and other lands love to acknowledge their immense obligations to the Sabbath-school, for what they are, and what they hope to be. Said the Bishop of London: "The Sunday-school has saved the manufacturing districts." And the Earl of Shaftesbury declared: "To you, Sunday-school teachers, is entrusted the future of the British empire."

Many thousands of parents in our land, who are entirely neglecting the religious instruction of their children, can bring them to the Sabbath-schools, where four hundred thousand voluntary teachers stand cheerfully ready to teach them, without money and without price. Like the waters of the river of life, this stream runs free. Let parents see to it that their children are regularly there. The community should do all they can to help forward this beneficent voluntary scheme of public education, acknowledge their real obligation to the teachers, offer them rooms in their public school buildings, and by the pressure of a sound public sentiment, increase the uniform attendance, particularly from the ignorant and neglected classes.