up in the way in which he should not go, when he is old, he is not likely to depart from it!  So that by the prevention of Sabbath-breaking, and its consequent train of evils, you actually lessen the amount of crime in riper years.  Children will be educated; and if the people of God do not educate them for their Master, and train them for heaven, the servants of the devil will not be slow in educating them for theirs, and in training them for hell!  I conceive that none, save the Tractarians of Oxford, and their party, will deny the beneficial moral influence which such Sabbath instruction has exerted upon our teeming population.  Go to the gloomy prisons, and search in the lonely cells for those wretched beings who through crime have become their inhabitants, and make the inquiry as to who are the tenants of those places; and the result of that inquiry will be, an overwhelming majority stands on the side of the ignorant—­of those who never had the benefits of Sabbath-school instruction.  Search into the history of those poor wretches who people our “Union Houses,” and you will find that but few of them enjoyed the benefits of Sabbath-school instruction.  And it may be relied on as a fact, that in the black catalogue of the annals of crime comparatively few are to be found who were instructed in Sabbath-schools.  Let Sabbath-schools become universal, let proper teachers be provided for the children, and let religious instruction of an orthodox character be instilled into their minds, and next to the preaching of the gospel, it will do more towards the establishment of the reign of grace—­towards the universal reign of Christ—­than any one thing besides.

Thirdly:  let it be known that the immediate, positive results of Sabbath-school instruction, are incalculable!  Scores, yea hundreds, have, during their connection with them, been soundly converted to God.  Hundreds and thousands date their conversion from the instructions and admonitions received at those noble institutions; and not a few of the most devoted missionaries, illustrious divines, laborious commentators, and translators of the Bible, and most popular preachers of the age, have been among those very persons who owed—­and have rejoiced to own that they owed—­their conversion to Sabbath-school instrumentality.

I cannot take leave of the reader, without adverting for a moment to an objection which may be raised with reference to the subjects of the preceding narrative.

Some persons, perhaps, may be ready to say, that in all probability these brothers would have become what they are, had they never seen a Sabbath-school.  To this objection I answer:  That such a position would prove fatal to all instrumental means of salvation.  God could, undoubtedly, save man without any instrumentality whatever.  He could, we say, do this; but such is not God’s method of procedure; and we are therefore justified in believing, that to the various instrumentalities in operation is the salvation of man attributable:  and if so, why should we deny that God can and does bless the labors of Sabbath-school teachers, and, through their instrumentality, render Sabbath-schools channels of salvation to many?