time would do well enough. And then, as they got older, they felt that
they weren't good enough, or that some of their friends might not
approve, and so they have grown up and have not yet joined, and each
year it keeps growing harder.

The two opportunities that you boys and girls ought to take "by the
forelock," as we say, are, first: in getting all the schooling you can
while you have the chance. You will never have such a good opportunity
again, and if you let it slip you may never, never catch up. And second:
in making as fine a start as you can in your Christian life by learning
all you can about the Bible and by getting Christ's example into your
hearts.




GOD IS NOW HERE


In a sermon which Dean Stanley, an English minister, preached to
children in Westminster Abbey, he told the following story: "There was a
little girl living with her grandfather. She was a good child, but he
was not a very good man; and one day, when she came back from school, he
had put in writing over her bed, 'God is nowhere,' for he did not
believe in the good God, and he tried to make the little girl believe
the same as he.

"What did the little girl do? She had no eyes to see, no ears to hear
what her grandfather tried to teach her. She was very small. She could
only read words of one syllable at a time; she rose above the bad