On the way, Tuesday, he stops in a few moments to see a teacher who appeared quite perplexed and disheartened on the Sabbath by the restlessness, inattention, or indifference of her class. He noticed last Sabbath that that teacher could only interest the class for a few minutes. On looking over the next week's lesson he is reminded of that teacher and one of her scholars. The next morning he calls for a moment upon her on his way to business, and says: "Miss S——, there is one verse of the lesson that I think can be used with advantage with one of your scholars—Frank Jones." He explains it to the teacher, and gives her an illustration or two. What has he done? He has given that teacher the first real idea she ever had of teaching Bible truth aright, and she goes to her class the next Sabbath a new teacher, and never loses the influence in future life. He soon succeeds in dispelling the cloud, and causing a cheerful light to shine on her path of duty.
On Wednesday evening he steps over to consult the pastor about the best way of turning the hearts of parents to their children, and to arouse the church in sympathetic efforts on behalf of the lambs of the flock.
On Thursday morning he takes an hour before, or an interval of business, to explore a desperate neighborhood, and succeeds beyond his expectations in exciting interest and enlisting recruits for the Sunday-school from among the juvenile portion of the disorderly gang. He also takes occasion to call on little Pat Lawless's mother, and is successful in getting her pledge to co-operate with him in the attempt to rescue her boy from untold depravity and almost certain ruin. Pat is notoriously the ringleader in the worst gang of boys in the neighborhood, and every body was surprised to see little Harry Page leading him into the Sunday-school for the first time on the last Sabbath morning.
On his way back from business, Friday evening, he calls for a few minutes on an intelligent young Christian who recently came into the place, in order to seek his Christian acquaintance, and invite him to look up for himself a class of scholars from the neglected neighborhood he visited the day before, and he succeeds in inducing him to bring into the school and teach a fine class of street-boys the way of life; he takes a hint from the conversation with his young friend, and concludes to get up a neat printed certificate of reward to the pupils for bringing in new scholars. In the weekly prayer-meeting he has a word about the school, just enough to enlist their sympathies and their prayers.
Saturday morning, on opening the daily paper or a book, he sees a striking providence, an interesting fact or incident of life, which, he remembers at once, will aptly illustrate or enforce an important truth in the lesson for the next Sabbath, and carefully notes it down and thinks it over, and in the evening we find him full of hope and interest at the teachers' meeting. Thus closes his labors for the week. It is only a week! but how valuable is that life of which this is but a week!
Now, all this is no mere fancy sketch. We have had living superintendents—not one but all together—sitting for the portrait here drawn, and whose lives have supplied all the illustrations, and who pursue a somewhat similar course every week, and on every returning Sabbath-day. Thus, without scarcely an hour's interference with his duties to his family, his business, or the public, the good superintendent has found time, and has been enabled every day during the week, to do something for the Sunday-school, simply because he loves it; his heart is on it, and he loves constantly to devise ways of doing good by it. He never expects to be, and he never will be, satisfied with the school as it is; but, however great the progress, he will keep his mind actively at work to plan improvements in the arrangement, the order, the discipline, the enterprise, or the teaching, and thus, Upward and Onward, will be his perpetual motto.
A stagnant business, he knows, will soon droop and die.
