After proper consideration of the matter, it was decided upon and a missionary obtained through the American Board. It was determined that he should go out and occupy the place made vacant by that of the lamented Lowrie. The gentleman selected is Reverend H.A. Rankin.
The amount which this Sabbath school raises for their missionary support is $600 per year. And the means by which some of the scholars procure their portion may not be uninteresting. Especially to your juvenile readers. One little girl, during some of her leisure hours, made-up a lot of little sewing and gathered together a few adult friends with the family, made known her object and then disposed of her handiwork at auction. Her first payment I think was $15. One also raised and sold a few Canary birds. Others, for a stipulated amount per week, have been doing without coffee, sugar, butter, et cetera. Thus their contributions cost them something, and to their heavenly parent are doubtless doubly acceptable. May not scholars, teachers, and superintendents elsewhere do likewise. There is an immense amount of good that can be done in the world if there is but the will. Must not heaven be a more blissful place to those who have made self denying efforts in the cause of Christ?
The observer.
We copy the above short article from an exchange paper to show our readers what the advocates of Sabbath schools claim as coming within the compass of Sabbath school abilities. But the writer has not informed us what Sabbath schools cannot do. Perhaps he has left that for the opponents of those modern institutions to show. Taking the school at Saint Louis for an example. It's wonderful resources have been fairly developed by actual experiment and found capable of subserving other schemes of priestcraft.
A Sabbath school in a populous, wealthy city, may, with a little aid from the clergy, be resolved into a missionary establishment by persuading the children to make up fancy articles and sell them at auction and pay the amount over to the missionaries. As also by denying themselves the comforts and necessaries of life such as coffee, sugar, butter. And paying over what they may thus save for the same purpose. Thus by hook and by crook. A school. May make up the purchase of $600 to be appropriated in the purchase of coffee and sugar and butter for the poor self denying missionaries? This is what Sabbath schools can do.
Now let us examine the moral tendency of these doings. The mental and physical powers of the juvenile pupil of the Sabbath school are monopolized and swallowed up by the insatiable receptacle of missionary funds. Their pride and vanity are pressed into the missionary service. They are made to believe that their labor in making doll babies and pin cushions for the missionaries, and their abstaining from "meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth" constitute a righteousness doubly acceptable to God. That is, in the divine estimation, these works of supererogation are worth twice as much as the righteousness of obedience to God in the things which he has commanded. And they are further taught to expect that heaven will not only be the reward of their works and abstinence; and that heaven will be a more blissful place to those who have made self denying efforts in the cause of Christ, for such they dare to call their own inventions. The children are thus taught in the Sabbath schools of the United States that heaven may be purchased by works of supererogation. And that those who so purchase it will enjoy it with a much better relish from the consideration that they have obtained it by human merit, instead of being dependent on the sovereign grace of God to the chief of sinners. How great must also be the corrupting influence of Sabbath schools on the social relations of families! When parents can be influenced to buy up the rights of their little children to coffee and sugar and butter, and in its place give them the price of these articles of food to fatten the already well fed hireling missionaries. But these are the things which Sabbath schools can do. Would that we were able to refute the boasting statement of the writer that Sabbath schools can do these things or that they have done these things. Alas. They can. They have. But there are some things which Sabha schools cannot do.
They cannot secure to their deluded thousands any of those heavenly privileges or spiritual blessings which they promise. For the scriptures assure us that while they promised them liberty, they are themselves to servants of lust. Blind leaders of the blind. Sabbath schools may observe the covetous propensities of the lovers of filthy lucre. But they cannot give a knowledge of the true God and Eternal Life. For this is life eternal, that "they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent". So long as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise. Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world? So long as descriptors declare that the natural mind receives not the things of the spirit of God. And that man by searching cannot find it out God. So long will Sabbath schools remain utterly unable to communicate a knowledge of spiritual and divine things to their unregenerate pupils.
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