Under date of February, 1875, Mrs. Knowles writes that she has been successful, during the past two months, in bringing many persons to attend church, and a number of children to the Sabbath-schools; and she adds:
"I am much encouraged by the attention paid to the reading of the Scriptures. I have also made many hearts glad by supplying their families with food and clothing, and at some places where I have not given anything, and have referred to it, I have been answered with:
"'You have done a great deal for us by teaching us to trust in the Lord.'"
Thought ought to operate between two limits—the one of time, the other of eternity.
The Sabbath-school and the Church are inseparably linked with earth and heaven. "Train up a child in the way it should go, and when it is old it will not depart from it." The first book put into my hand when a boy, in the public school of my native land, was the Bible. And the first book I had to study in the Sabbath-school was the Shorter Catechism. These two books have exerted a benign and salutary influence on my whole life. Now, what the study of mathematics is to the intellect by disciplining and imparting the power to reason consecutively, thus tranquillizing the judgment by furnishing demonstrative knowledge, even so the sermons heard in the House of God, and the lessons taught in the Sabbath-school, and all the outward spiritual truth conveyed to the heart of the hearer, quickens the soul into newness of life; hence the injunction of the Apostle:
"Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for He is faithful that promised;)
"And let us consider one another, to provoke unto love, and to good works:
"Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
"For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.
"But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.