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Here is a matchless picture of a great and beautiful human life in that grand, calm, and stately patriarchal time, which presents a refreshing contrast to these eager, rapid, rushing days, in which God has east our lot. Each age has its own form of dignity and nobleness, and its own field of Divine service. This grand old sheikh, who was the Christus consolator of his people, was not even a member of the elect line. Job saw into the heart of the great social question of all ages when he declared himself a father to the poor. It is just the father's wisdom, firmness, and tenderness which poverty and ignorance need. It is just this which law cannot proffer to them. This explains the reason why in all ages the true help of the poor comes from the life-warm hand of the Christian Church. It is a large subject, and one full of interest, the fatherly ministry of the Church to the poor and helpless. We dwell on one feature only. The foremost duty of a father is the nurture and culture of the children. Let us see how, when the father wholly or partially fails, the Church steps forward with its Divinely helpful hand in his room. Plato, in his conception of the ideal republic, makes the children the charge of the State from the first. He makes their culture its most sacred duty, seeing that on their wisdom, industry, and moral habits so much of the health and wealth of the community in successive generations inevitably depends. It is practically impossible on any scheme of government to get a full representation of the highest wisdom of the community in the governing powers; and the training of all the children of the community in one type elaborated by human wisdom, however, admirable, contradicts and does its best to frustrate the benignant purpose of God in the varied natural endow. meats of mankind. He has not made men in one type. Think of a Christian household of a lofty Christian type, where the children are trained to a noble manhood and womanhood by parents whom they both reverence and love; where the hand of authority is firm but never capricious; where God's statutes and judgments are maintained in absolute supremacy; but where the children are never suffered to question for a moment that the motive of their maintenance is love. And whence the children are sent forth at length into the theatre of life with this deepest conviction in their hearts — that the only life worth the living is a life of service and ministry to mankind. Multiply such a home by all the homes of the community, and what a millennium of peace, and joy, and wealth would they bring in. But look at it on the other side. Think of thousands of homes, in which the children from the very first grow up in an atmosphere which taints at the spring their physical, mental, and moral life; in which they never hear the name of God or of Christ but in blasphemy. Multiply such homes by all the homes of the community, and then measure the dire and deadly ruin in which they would plunge themselves and the State at last. How does Christianity solve this question of the education of the children of a generation, with due regard to freedom of individual development on the one hand, and the need of bringing to bear on it the highest wisdom on the other? The Gospel establishes on the firmest and most lasting foundations the institution of the home. It deepens parental responsibility; it enlarges parental functions; it enhances the estimate of the momentous issues which are hanging on the due and Christian fulfilment of parental duty. The home is the ultimate unit of society. God sets the parent the pattern; God helps the parent in the task; God holds forth to the parent the prize. God attends the progress of humanity with an institution in which His truth is enshrined, in which His Spirit dwells, and which is the living and ever-present organ of His counsel and influence — the Christian Church. And here comes into the field the Sunday School. It would be wrong to say that the parental institution, the home, had failed; but a great mass of human parents are utterly unequal to the task that is laid upon them. The Church steps in with her helping hand, and sends forth from her bosom a great army of earnest, loving, and self-devoted teachers, to be as fathers to the children whose souls are fatherless, and to surround the shivering, homeless outcasts with the warm atmosphere of Christian love. This word, "I was a father to the poor," is the key to the teacher's position and work. Not to supersede the parent, but in every way to stimulate and help him, are teachers sent forth by the Church and by the world. Three things he must keep constantly in sight.

1. Instruction. To impart knowledge is his first and most important work. The Christian teacher mostly confines himself to the highest knowledge.

2. The teacher is to be a shepherd, a pastor to the children. Sunday school teaching is pastoral work.

3. The teacher should follow the children to their homes, and do what he can to sweeten and purify the atmosphere of their lives. I honour the Sabbath School because —

(1) It has opened a very noble field for that passion of ministry which is the Divine endowment of the Christian Church.

(2) It maintains so nobly the Christian tradition of self-denying service, draws forth so richly and trains so effectively the self-denying, self-devoted spirit.

(3) The teacher and teaching have formed a nexus, a link of connection of incalculable strength and importance, between jealous and often hostile classes of society.

(4) The Sunday School is the nursery of the Christian Church. To train the child for Christ and for His service is the great object of the teacher.

(J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)

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KJV: I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out.

WEB: I was a father to the needy. The cause of him who I didn't know, I searched out.