Sustain the Sabbath-School.
By James F. Chalfant
If the Sabbath-school had no reference to the ultimate conversion of the children—if it did not look at all to the future connection of the scholars with the visible church—I would still say to every parent, and every citizen, and every well-wisher of society, Sustain it! Sustain it by your money, counsel, and presence. Why? Because, of all the conservative influences brought to bear on society in the nineteenth century, I know of none greater than the Sabbath-school. It is a well-established fact that man's physical and intellectual nature demands cessation from ordinary labor one-seventh of his time; that he can and will do more in six days, one week with another, for years, than if he were to work regularly the seventh day. It is just as fully established that what man needs for recuperation is not so much entire freedom from physical or mental exercise as a change to that kind that will meet a felt want of his nature not met in ordinary work. The Sabbath-school does this precisely. It combines, at once, pleasant mental discipline with social and moral influences which have a strengthening and purifying effect on both body and mind. But, besides this, leaving out of view the religious element, proper Sabbath-school instruction imbeds in the youthful heart a system of morals which is acknowledged by all, even infidels, as being purer and more elevating than any ever given to man—a system which, accepted and acted upon, always throws a charm around the domestic circle, vitalizes and strengthens all the better impulses of our nature, restrains and controls our passions, removing strife and discord, making better husbands, wives, parents, children, and citizens; and, because they do, they conserve, in a pre-eminent degree, the interests of society, and ought, therefore, to be sustained from considerations entirely outside of their religious bearings.—Rev. James F. Chalfant.