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.a THE SWANSEA SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

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.a THE SWANSEA SUNDAY SCHOOLS. WHAT THEY DO, AND WHAT THEY MIGHT DO! II. In our last week's issue we remarked upon the incal- culably great work which is being effected by the Sunday School organizations throughout the British Empire, and in every other country where the system is in operation. The Sunday School proper, with its various philanthropic offshoots, affords to all the young people who attend the meetings—religious instruction to the poor and miser- able—the warm interest and advice of kind-hearted teachers; to the neglected and rude—powerfully enforced examples of forbearance and good manners; to the leisurely—a place of profitable resort in the spare hours of Sunday afternoons and week evenings; to the teachers —an admirable outlet for philanthropic effort; to all concerned—opportunities of meeting and mixing to- gether. The result is that by these means the various classes learn more of each other's modes of life and thought; they are better able to tolerate and sympathize with each other's wants and wishes and they reap to- gether in gladness of heart those peculiar and unspeakable blessings which flow from common and cordial engagement in a noble cause. Such are some of the advantages conferred upon the younger generations of our times by the Sunday Schools, and we would gladly see these benefits increased and extended. In order to do this, their basis of opera- tions must be somewhat widened. The officers and teachers must propose to themselves, as part of the aim of their work, not only the religious instruction of the young people under their charge, but also the preparation of those children for the profitable enjoyment of the amenities of social life. If the zealous teacher has sue- ceeded in implanting in the mind of his scholars noble religious convictions, and a knowledge of the truths of Christianity, he has no doubt attained the chief aim pro- posed by the Institution of the Sunday School; but if, failing to reach that exact result, he yet manages to smooth the roughness, and soften the manners of the members of his Sunday class, and render them capable of both giving and receiving pleasure and profit in the associations of busy and leisurely life, he has accom- plished a very great task indeed, the influence of which will be neither slight nor evanescent. To fit a human being to give and take elevated pleasure in the society of his fellows, is to immensely increase his own joy; to gladden, by contagion, all who come in contact with him; and thus, by the branching out of happy influences, to raise and bless a whole nation. Surely, then, this social aspect of the work alone, is no mean one, and is not unworthy of the special attention of the Sunday School. And if the England of the next generation is to be what her admirers hope she will become, a very great deal of loving social endeavour must be put forth by the thought- ful and philanthropic of the present. Time was when the masses got through the whole of their life-manied, worked, and passed away-their minds unharnuised with a multiplicity of ideas, and their hearts steeped for the most part in profound contentment. Someone has said that the immortal Shakespeare used fifteen thousand different words to express his wealth of thought and imagination, but that the average chawbacon or clod- hopper can get through a long life comfortably with a stock cf only two or three hundred words. With such a limited range of ideas and words, the lower people were 1 not likely to feel very acutely their spiritual and sociolo- gical needs. Conversation was to them a forbidden tree of pleasant fruit and shade, unapproachable by reason of their own ignorance. They could not go beyond the rude ghost story, or the record of family ailments, or the scandal of the squire's household, clumsily told by the ingleside when winter nights were long. At morn they rose to work, at eve they went to bed, and these two great engagements, increased to three by the duty of feeding, seem to have made up the history of their daily life. Politics rarely reached them, and still more rarely were understood. Science and literature were sealed books, and religion itself was too often a dark saying, which won the same indiscriminating belief that em- braced astrology and witchcraft. Such days have passed away, we would fain hope for ever. The elementary school now gives to every free born little Briton the art, and a teeming and varied literature brings within his reach the material, wherewith to store his mind with all kinds of ideas. The masses are thus becoming "in- structed," but they need more than this; they must be educated." A little knowledge is a dangerous thing in many senses. One of its evil effects is that it "puffeth up, and makes its possessor a querulous, exacting, hypercritical, and altogether disagreeable companion. Many a well "instructed" man needs the refining influ- ence of education" tø fit him for pleasant and lJeneficial converse with his fellows and much more does the partly instructed individual stand in want of such a mellowing. The State may undertake the work of in- struction, and may carry it out pretty generally and effec- tually, but the perfecting the work will be lett to philanthropic action. And, as we have before said, the Sunday school is calculated to exercise an immensely beneficial influence upon the social life of the masses of the future, if this aim bo rightly perceived, and if the effort be properly directed. The Sunday teachers who adopt this view of their work, wlll see the wisdom of enlarging the scope of studies pursued in their classes. There should be classes for senior scholars, and classes for adults, evening lectures on popular scientific subjects, readings and discussions, entertainments and conversaziones, under the direction of men of position and influence and the openly avowed aim of the whole should be to provide for the people op- portunities of meeting and mingling together, for the purpose of reaping intellectual good and social pleasure. Were it not that the average Englishman aud Welsh- man and Scotchman are proverbially clumsy, andrepulsive rather than attractive, in their social aggregations, it would be nothing short of impudence to make such obvious suggestions as these. But the fact of the matter is, that the crowds of the people do not know how to enjoy each other's society as it might be enjoyed. Their hearts are right they desire to be happy and to make others happy but their failure is egregious. Stiffness of manner, the magnification of small grades of position, and the in- dulgence of the paltriest pride, has hindered the happi- ness of innumerable gatherings which were intended to be social" and elevating. The result is that no epithet is so frEquent as those of stiffness" and dulnets," as applied to our social undertakings. Unless there be a genial, affable individual in the company, an English railway carriage or an omnibus is apt to be an unreason- ably miserable place, the inmates of which are as gloomy as a lot of condemned criminals might be expected to ap- pear when travelling in the prison van to a place of punishment. It is said, characteristically if somewhat hyperbolically, that a Frenchman a few minutes after his arrival at an hostelry in Greenland, introduced to each other a couple of Englishmen who had lived in the house and dined and slept in the same room for a fortnight. The average Briton of the present day is a very estimable creature, but as a rule he does not manifest any very conspicuous social ability. It is necessary that he should be chaperoned. Therefore the teachers and superin- tendants of Sunday schools who labour for the social amelioration of the elder scholars and the visitors at their entertainments and conversaziones, should remember and make "Teat allowano for the taciturn and unsociable nature*of the national idiosyncracies. The person who presides over and g,ves a tone to the meetings should be of genial temperament, capable of awakening enthusiasm in the effort of pleasurable conversation. The pro- grammes of the evening's entertainment, too, should be arranged, so as to allow of frequent intervals for moving about and talk for what can be more unreasonably stiff and dull than for a number of people, who come together for social converse, to sit still the whole time listening to well-meant but stupidly directed attempts to amuse them with music and reading ? The need is not so much to hear pianoforte solos mid what-not, as to get the people to amuse and enliven each other by conversation. On the occasion of a soiree, it is easy to prevail upon philan. throphic gentleman to lend scientific and curious objects for exhibition, and these things furnish convenient texts for conversation. Then, in the summer months, the elder scholars, teachers, parents and friends, might be often and ad- vantageously asked to form picnic parties to spend a sunny afternoon at Caswell, or Bishopston, or Itesolven, &c., provision for refreshment being made either from a common fund, or by each person for himself. The annual outing of the Sunday school is long looked for- ward to! and long remembered by the little ones: but inasmuch as the provision made from them is the self- denying gift of the teachers, school treats of that kind cannot be very frequent. But the elder scholars and their friends would be able to bear their own burden of ex- pense, and they would be all the happier for frequent trips to the country under the guidance of gentlemen and ladies whom they esteem and are used to obey. If it were understood that the object of such excursions was to promote the happiness of all who might wish to join, hundreds of parents would be glad to accompany the young people in their rustications. Then there might well be unitel1 effort on the part of various local Sunday schools for tne attainment of their common objects. A few years ago such a united effort was attempted to improve the character of the children's singing. For some time, the whole of the schools as- siduously practised the same hymns and tunes in their different schoolrooms then came together periodically for rehearsal; and finally they sang in concert at the Music Hall. And scarcely has there ever been witnessed a prettier scene of its kind than that large and over- flowing congregation. Area and orchestra, and balcony and gallery, were crowded with Sunday scholars and teachers. The sea of their earnest happy faces uisplajed something of the unanimity of spirit that animated their hearts, and their neat and comely dress and decorous manners spoke unmistakably of the humanizing influ- ence of their association, and of the emulation which it called forth. Why should there not be a united Sunday school teachers' picnic now and then in the summer, and a united soiree in the winters' Jn short the possibilities of the social work of the Sunday school organization are very wide and varied, and only the large-hearted liberal- minded efforts of philanthropic persons are needed to fully develope them. The Sunday school system has done much, is doing more, and may do still more for the improvement of the sociallife of the English nation.

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.. TESTIMONIAL TO DR. MOORE.

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SWANSEA SHIPPING IN THE OLDEN…

A RUSSIAN MENACE TO ENGLAND.

ISWANSEA POLICE COURT.

Qlorrc3p0itftcn.cc.

" MORE MONDAY MUSIC 'MID THE…

BOROUGH OF LOUGHOR.

. ST. NICHOLAS' SAILORS' CHURCH.

MUMBLES KAIL WAY AND PIER.

. SAINT PATRICK'S RELIGION.—CoNCLrsioN.

-------THE CHURCHMAN'S ALMANACK.

--.---.---BIRTH OF A SEA LION.

♦ LATE CLOSING IN SWANSEA.j

" 11nigra— j MILITARISM IN…