But to come back to our subject. In saying that this native impulse of the soul-love for children-can be abused and degraded, we only tell half the truth. It is likewise capable of improvement. Moral instincts differ from physical in this, that they are not fixed forces which cannot be increased nor diminished, or rather that cannot be improved nor deteriorated. Because moral they may, and do, go far up and far down in the scale of life. Free and intelligent they gather in strength and urgency with the growth of knowledge and the purity of the heart.

Christianity, as a regenerating force, here meets and helps man in his instincts and duties. From the gross and the sensual it saves and sweeps the soul of the evils that harbour there, preventing the free and righteous play of the being. It liberates the nature from the thraldom of sin, and brings all its faculties into the sphere of a righteous and right operation. More than that, it quickens and widens these powers. It comes as an educational force, deepening and broadening, enriching and ennobling the entire man. It is not merely the leaven which, when hid in the spirit, leavens the whole lump of human corruption lying therein; it is, also, the sunshine and light expanding the mind and lightening up our entire surroundings.

In the Christian, therefore, this feeling of love for children will be strong and active. Free, more or less, from the benumbing influence of sin, standing upon the mount of holiness with clarified vision, looking upon men and things in the light of the divine love, and in view of the life and labours of the Master, his being, with its instincts and tendencies, will act according to its true genius. And as he grows in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord, the feeling of love will deepen and broaden. To put the thought in other words-As the Christian grows liker his Saviour, his love and interest in the young will appear in ever-increasing devotion and self-denying labours.

Now, I propose to set before you one or two of the inducements to the increase and active maintenance of this divine feeling, without which our efforts to help the young can be of no avail. And first, we shall look at those which spring more exclusively from God's relation to the lambs.

That was a right noble answer, and natural as it was noble, which the humble Christian gave when twitted about his love of the Bible. “I prize it," he said, because it is the gift of my divine Father, who is infinitely wise and good." He looked upon the gift from the side of the gracious Giver. And while his reason for loving the Book might have little or no weight with those ignorant of God, to himself it was irresistible. God gave the book a value for him beyond that contained in its revelation of mercy. This is true of the grass which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. God clothes these things with a beauty and a significance beyond that inherent in themselves to the man who knows His name.

We prize the gift make sacrifices to We think highly

This fact holds good in every department of life. for the sake of the giver. We love the child, and advance his interests, for the love we bear his parents. of the book, and determine to possess ourselves of it, because we know the worth, the genius, the intellectual power of the author. And the fact that children are the gift of God, the creatures of His hand, formed

and fashioned in His likeness and after His image, invests them in the eyes of the Christian with a value and significance that call forth his affection in anxious, patient, and prayerful labours. To him children are great in God's greatness, lovable in His love. From the side of the Father's wondrous being, and still more wondrous heart, he regards them, until he is constrained to identify them, in some strange, mysterious, yet real way, with the God he loves. He sees God in them and them in' God, and he understands the words of Christ: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.”

(To be continued.)

Sabbath School Libraries.*

By MR. THOMAS MASON, Librarian, Stirling's and Glasgow Public

Library.

As a professional librarian I find that every day there is something additional to be learned in library administration, and therefore rejoice at every token of increasing interest in the subject among those charged with the conduct of libraries, and at the gradual disappearance of the erroneous idea, born of ignorance and carelessness, that any one could conduct a library without previous study, without special knowledge, and without experience. It is no exaggeration to say that the capacity for usefulness of many libraries, both great and small, has been rendered at least fifty per cent. less than it ought to have been, owing to the incapability and lack of interest of their custodians. It is not enough to-" Kindly be pleased to be appointed to the office of librarian," and to content oneself with a perfunctory discharge of the duties.

The charge of a library of any sort, and especially of a Sabbath school one, is, it need hardly be said, a very responsible duty, and ought not to be undertaken unless there is an honest and earnest intention of doing the work thoroughly.

I propose to lay down, to the best of my ability, the "whole duty" of the Sabbath School Librarian; and I am sure no librarian need fall short of the efficient, but very modest standard which I shall endeavour to present. I might occupy much time enlarging on the many fine features and lasting benefits of libraries; but your presence is an assurance that all these may be taken for granted; and the invitation of the Council of the Sabbath School Union will be best interpreted by dealing practically with the difficulties which present themselves in the everyday management of libraries. To begin at the very beginning, we will suppose that there is no library, nor any place to put one. The first duty is to form a fund with which to purchase books.

With the many ingenious ways of extracting money for charitable and philanthropic objects you, as church officials, will be perfectly familiar; therefore I need not say more than to counsel you to be careful as to what you use of the donations of books.

* An address delivered at a recent Conference of Librarians and other Sabbath School officials of the Glasgow Union.

A gift of money is in every way preferable to a gift of books; but either or both are, of course, very acceptable. There are many considerate donors whose uppermost thought in giving books is to benefit the school library; but there is a strong temptation on such occasions to weed out your own library, and at the same time get credit for liberality, which is not always resisted.

But assuming that a goodly sum has been collected, and that twenty pounds remain with which to buy books, the question presents itself— How can the sum be spent to the best advantage?

For twenty pounds about 200 volumes may be had, that is an average cost of 2/ per volume. An injudicious buyer will, of course, pay the full price. But the judicious purchaser will be able to get a discount of 25 per cent. on the published price, and that with as little trouble as his neighbour who pays more.

I need not advertise any particular firm of booksellers by mentioning them here; and lest I should seem to be pointing out certain shops, I may say that, besides the booksellers who are known to give these terms, almost every bookseller in the city will give them if asked.

In calculating that the average price per volume will be 2/, I have assumed that the above terms have been obtained.

The kind of books to buy is a very important matter, and there is at present extremely little to help to a selection. The Established Church of Scotland has, at much labour, compiled a catalogue of books for Sabbath schools, which it will be useful to have. An American lady-librarian, Miss Hewins, has contributed to the Library Journal "Lists of the Literature for the Young," with annotations. At the end of "The Best Reading," by Perkins & Jones, a list of books suitable for young folks is given; and the Newcastle, Nottingham, and other Free Libraries, issue catalogues of their Juvenile Departments at a very low price. The Religious Tract Society, and other religious societies and bodies, issue lists of books very suitable for the young.

But with all these there is ample room and pressing need for something more; and the Glasgow Sabbath School Union would perform a very desirable and excellent piece of work if it drew up a useful guide to school committees engaged in forming or augmenting their libraries. The plan adopted by the Committee of the Established Church of Scotland in compiling their list, is perhaps the best, although it has several grave faults.

Every individual of a reading turn remembers the affection and estimation in which he or she held the books of their father's library at home. The collection would not, in most cases, be large; and when you come to think of it, not many of the books were bought directly for the library. A considerable proportion of them found their way in as prizes and presents. And thus it happened that your father possessed, say, such a book as the "Essays on a Variety of Subjects," written by, let us say, John Thompson-a very worthy man doubtless, but not an Addison. The book attracts your youthful fancy; and because there are so few other books at hand, you read it over and over again, and in your limited world the work occupies a position out of all proportion to its merits, and honest John Thompson becomes a great author.

When you grow up you still retain a kindly feeling towards the "Essays," and doubtless would not hesitate to recommend them, perhaps to the exclusion of a better book. In a somewhat similar way inferior books find their way into public libraries, and, in the absence of others, are read eagerly.

An inquiry as to which are the popular books, results in this perhaps worse than mediocre book being included in the list, and therefore recommended to all the Sabbath schools in which the list circulates. This is exactly what has happened in every catalogue got up in this cooperative way. Books are recommended that are not worthy of recommendation, and on the other hand there is little, if any, compensation from deserving but unknown books getting attention in this accidental way. The law of the survival of the fittest operates in the world of literature as in the physical world, and there is little fear of a meritorious work not getting the attention it deserves. I cannot, in the limits of this paper, mention the names of individual books, but the selection to be good should include a fair proportion of good healthy fiction. There are many biographical and religious works, histories, works of travel, and elementary scientific works, which will be read with interest and profit by Sabbath school scholars. I would recommend that new books be bought; they are bright, clean, and attractive; whereas second-hand books have usually lost all their freshness, are maybe loose in the backs, and dim and worn-looking.

When the utmost sum to be spent on any book does not exceed 5/, there is really nothing to be gained by buying out of the surplus stock of circulating libraries, or at the ordinary second-hand bookshops, unless the work sought for be out of print.

When possible, one-volume editions should be taken in preference to larger ones. The objections to the larger editions are many. They are dearer, take up more room, cost more to bind, are heavier to carry, and there is great danger of the work being rendered incomplete by the loss or destruction of a volume. While they increase the number of volumes in the library, they do not correspondingly increase the number of works, and so you may get only 200 volume service out of a 300 volume library. The number of volumes with which to start a library will, of course, be ruled by the amount of money available; but if there be less than twice as many volumes as there are readers, the library incurs a danger of bankruptcy.

Sabbath scholars are perhaps unlike grown-up readers, and content to take what they can get; certainly they would have little chance of getting what they wanted if the number of volumes did not exceed the number of readers. If shelving has to be erected, I would suggest a bookcase with doors-glass doors, if possible—and locks.

The books would thus be kept free from dust, and secure from meddling scholars. The shelves should not be more than a yard in length; if longer they are apt to bend; and they should be movable. With movable shelves you can often have a shelf more in a press, by careful sizing of the books.

Presses, I think, should not be higher than can be reached by a person of average height without a ladder, say six shelves high. Each of these

shelves would hold about 33 volumes, so that a six-shelf press would accommodate about 200 volumes.

Now that we have got the books and a home for them, how are we to arrange them? Large libraries are sometimes arranged in classes on the shelves; sometimes a mere arrangement into the first letters of the authors' names is made; and in other places no arrangement at all is attempted, the books are just popped in where they seem to fit. I do not think it advisable to classify a Sabbath school or any small library on the shelves. The chief advantage of such a classification is, that in one place you get all the works relating to one subject; but where you have almost within arm's length any book in the library this feature is of little advantage; besides, in classifying you must leave space for probable additions, which means your using a larger number of shelves than you at present require. Still I do not like the unsystematic plan of putting the books in higgledy-piggledy, and I would therefore submit the following arrangement :-Take all your books and put them out into piles of A, B, C, &c., according to the first letters of the authors' surnames, or the first leading word of the titles of anonymous books. Then take each pile and arrange the books in strict alphabetical order. After all the piles have been so arranged, set the whole of the books up on their ends, and you will have them all in one row and in alphabetical order. Your shelves ought to be of different heights-the larger at the bottom and the smaller at the top. Take the first book, and, judging by its height, put it on the shelf which most nearly fits it in size; take the next book and do likewise; it is perhaps smaller than the first, and will therefore go higher, and continue in this way until you have all the books shelved. You will then have them all neatly arranged by size and in alphabetical order, each shelf beginning an alphabet. A good point about this scheme is that it brings all the works of an author together; for if not on the same shelf by reason of disparity of size, they will all be found in a more or less vertical line up and down the shelves. If the library were to exceed 200 volumes, and required more than one press, it would be necessary to divide the alphabet into as many portions as there were presses. For instance, if there were two presses, the first one might be set aside for books whose authors' names fell within A to L, and the second press for the remainder. This would prevent the awkwardness of having books of the same letter in different presses. books will now present a very neat appearance.

(To be continued.)

Teachers' Local Examinations.

SCHEME OF THE GLASGOW SABBATH SCHOOL UNION.

The

FOLLOWING the example set last year, and, we think, with good results, -we append, for the information and encouragement of intending candidates, some of the questions, with specimens of the answers to the same, given by candidates in Branch A at the Examination held in