WE give the subjoined tabular view of the months, weeks, and days,

arranged for the present year, in the hope that it will be found useful for

some of the more important purposes of a diary. Its use will be at once

apparent : for instance, the 1st of January falls on a Friday; hence the table

not only presents, in the vertical line under that head, the date of every

Friday in that and succeeding months, but also, at one glance, in other

columns, the figures corresponding with every day throughout the year.

ON THE BEST MODE OF KEEPING OUR SCHOLARS FROM HABITS OF INTEMPERANCE.

BY PHILANTHROPOs.*

SURROUNDED, as we are, by a mass of evidence bearing testimony in favour of the beneficial operations of Sabbath schools as the nurseries of the church of Christ, and as exerting a great moral influence upon society at large, it would be a reflection on a Christian public to attempt to prove the value of these institutions.

The most casual observer must have witnessed this happy tendency. They have arrested the attention, excited the admiration, and inspired the hopes of the philanthropist; and he will feel deeply interested in every plan which proposes to increase their influence, or to lessen the power of any evil which may impede their progress.

The proposed Essay, contemplating the preservation of our Sabbath scholars from habits of intemperance, has fixed upon the chief evil connected with our schools. Intemperance, in intoxicating drink, is the foul blighter of the tenderest buds of hope which have been nurtured in our schools, as well as the destroyer of those fruits which were, apparently, growing to maturity. A remedy for this master-evil would confer the greatest blessing upon those institutions. The prize offered presents no inducement to the essayist who writes for gain; still, the importance of the subject, inferior to none of recent times, claims the talents of the ablest writers.

That intemperance is the chief evil affecting our Sabbath schools, will appear by the following facts:

First.—The difficulty in obtaining the attendance of those children whose parents, through using intoxicating drink, have neither the means for clothing, nor the disposition for sending them to the school. Two facts will suffice to illustrate this point. A Lord's day visitor entering the house of a mechanic, in Manchester, found the father of some ragged children in deep mental distress: the cause of his sorrow, as he stated, arising from the

*To this Essay was awarded the Prize of a set of the Second Series of this Magazine, as adjudicated by the three gentlemen named in several of our last year's numbers.

fact, that his wife was at that time spending, in drink, the money which she had obtained by pawning the Sunday clothes of her children, and thus preventing their attending the Sabbath school. The following was stated in a large public meeting of Sabbath school friends, in Manchester:-A benevolent person supplied a little boy with a pair of shoes, to enable him to attend the school; but he was soon deprived of them by an intemperate father, who sold them for the means of procuring his favourite beverage. A short time afterwards, he met his child going to school in the clothes which the same friend had provided, and which, for safety, had been kept at a neighbour's house; the father actually stripped his child, and sent him home almost naked, while he went to sell the clothes for drink.

Secondly. The great difficulty of governing and instructing those children who are, in their daily walk, associated with habits of intemperance; through which, depravity assumes a more fearful form, and the labours of the Sabbath school teacher are generally rendered abortive. Awful evidence on this point is found in every school.

Thirdly. The sacrifice of the valuable time of visitors and teachers, demanded by the irregularities of those scholars in whom the habits of intemperance are forming, by the use of intoxicating liquors. The temptations offered, and the facilities afforded, for the formation of these habits, are of the most fearful character. The system on which a great number of public-houses are conducted, presents attractions, especially to the youth of our Sabbath schools. Rooms are tastefully decorated and set apart for young men and women; they are entertained with music, and on the Lord's day evenings with SACRED music. The following statistics will show the fearful amount of injury which may arise from such a Pandemonium:-A friend, deeply interested in the Temperance cause, counted the number of individuals entering one of these places on a single Lord's day evening. From eighteen minutes past four, to eleven o'clock, there were 252 men; 401 women; 25 boys; and 101 girls. Fourthly.-The distressing number of both male and

female scholars, yea, even teachers and superindendents, who have ultimately thrown off the restraints of Sabbath schools, and have fallen victims to intemperance.

J. R. was a teacher in Y. Sabbath school, Manchester. After being seven years a member of a Christian church, he began a course of dissipation, by (as usual) the very moderate use of intoxicating drinks; the habit of intemperance was formed, and he has been a drunkard now five years. He, with tearful eyes, lately waited upon a teetotaler, imploring to know how he might avoid intemperance, against which he had formed a thousand vain resolutions.

J. D. was brought up by religious parents; he became a teacher in a Sabbath school; afterwards he became a drunkard and a professed infidel. He has recently been reclaimed by the Total Abstinence Society, and has been restored both to the school and the church of Christ.

J. L. was a Sabbath school superintendent; by slow degrees he became a drunkard. He has been reclaimed by the same society. Thousands of such instances could be stated.

An interesting Sabbath school at S near Manchester, was broken up by the practice of intemperance in the teachers and conductor: they were in the habit of visiting a public-house on the Lord's day.

at

A Sunday school festival at B, near Mwhich intoxicating drinks were introduced, was ended by quarrelling and a fight among the teachers.

The following statement will show the proportion of crime, &c., from habits of intemperance formed in youth: -Of 169 convicts in one of the state prisons in America, 108 were intemperate; 92 left their parents under 21 years of age.

The statistics of Sabbath schools, if carefully and impartially collected, would present a most alarming per centage of drunkards, male and female, in those who had been educated in such institutions. We extract the following from the "Temperance Intelligencer:"-" Of 100 scholars admitted into a Sabbath school, the subsequent lives of 65 were ascertained; out of that number 38 were confirmed drunkards; several were occasional drunkards;