SCHOOL ECHO.--A teacher writes: "One of my pupils who had been
teaching during the summer came to me in despair over a sum, saying:
"I can't understand _sympathizing fractions_."

(When we went to school years and years ago, "sympathizing fractions,"
meant broken candy. We understood, but the teacher didn't. Times
change, and we change with them.)



THE SAMARITAN WOMAN.

BY REV. C.J. RYDER, BOSTON.

"And they marveled that he talked with the woman."

Why? She was a sinful woman. But these disciples must even thus early
in Christ's ministry have learned that he had come to call sinners,
not the righteous, to repentance. She was a Samaritan! That was a
larger reason for their marvel. They could rise above their hatred for
sin more easily than their race prejudice; so can we. The Samaritans
were an inferior people. Degraded they were. They had been degraded
for centuries. The Jews shunned them. Socially our Lord was making a
great blunder, perhaps a fatal blunder, in talking to this Samaritan
woman. His cause was in its infancy. The hand of social prejudice
would surely throttle it. Why antagonize the existing order of
society? How much better to utilize it for the establishment and
enlargement of the great and glorious kingdom of our Lord! This cause
needed the influence of Jewish leaders. Why risk this potent influence
for the sake of one miserable Samaritan woman, or, for that matter,