24
in return, I believe, support the teacher's authority more carefully than they are apt to do. It is a great point in any school to enlist the sympathy and support of the parents. I strongly object to the practice of many schools in fining the parents for the non-attendance of the children, for surely the parents have a perfect right to their children's services whenever they require them; such a practice I believe to be wrong in principle, and if so, in the long run it will never pay. The eleemosynary character of our National schools should, I think, as far as possible be kept out of sight; indeed I should prefer to drop the title of "National" school, and to adopt that of "Parochial" school. Our object is not to pauperize the poor, or to lower them in their own estimation by offering their children a free education, but to raise their social condition and to give them a proper feeling of independence by teaching them, that there is nothing mean or debasing in manual toil—that hard work and the sweat of the brow is of God's appointment, and that the honest Christian labourer is worthy of our highest esteem. Do we not read, that "many that are first shall be last, and the last first?" Let us bear this in mind, and remember in all our dealings with the poor, that many of them will one day fill a higher position than ourselves. Viewed in this Christian light the children of the poor will occupy a higher place in our estimation as fellow-members in the same mystical body of Christ. For the love of Christ, for the love of souls, let us be zealous and patient in feeding the lambs of the fold, ever mindful of those touching words, which doubtless sank deep into the Apostle's heart—"Lovest thou Me? feed My lambs."
JOSEPH MASTERS AND CO., PRINTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET.
