chool Anniversary_.]

This is a children's question. God does not wish the boy to be snubbed
when he wants to know. There is a kind of curiosity which is like the
scent in a hound--a Divine instinct--and must not be checked, for that is
waste. If you chill your child when he comes to ask, you may break the
link which binds him to you, and never be able to weld it again. There
will be a time come when you will long to have the lad come to your side,
but it will be too late. "When your children shall ask their fathers . .
. Then ye shall let your children know" (21-22.)

OBEDIENCE TO GOD'S COMMANDMENTS WILL CAUSE OUR
CHILDREN TO ASK QUESTIONS WHICH WILL BE A
BLESSING TO THEIR LIFE.

This is very different to what is called "questionable conduct." We
don't want your son to say "I cannot understand how my father makes his
ledger square with the Bible;" or the girl to say, "How does mother make
this love of display harmonise with the class-meeting?" No, no! this is
not it; but, "What mean these stones?" As the little girl said to her
sister, "What is it makes mother's face shine so after she has been in
her chamber so long?" That mother had been praying to her Father which
seeth in secret, and He had rewarded her openly. If we live lives of
cheerful obedience, the children will say, "What is the Sacrament? What
do you do at the Class-meeting? &c. Why cannot I go with you?"

These stones are very suggestive. There are sermons in them. Some
lessons which will occur to every one; others that need to be thought
over again and again. For instance, there are twelve,

A STONE FOR EACH TRIBE.

They all came out of the bed of Jordan, and yet, there are no two alike!
Judah's is not like Napthali's, and yet both came from the same place,
and are in the same heap. We are not alike, though we be the children of
the same Father. You and I are very different, yet it is "Our Father."
Yours as much as mine. John Bunyan knew this, for he makes his pilgrim
band to consist of very great contrasts. Mr. Valiant for-the-truth, as
well as Mr. Despondency. And they all get across the stream.

It has been a favourite dream, in all ages, to have a church of one
pattern. Uniformity, that is, all of one shape. God does not make the
trees which bear the same kind of fruit of one shape. You can make
artificial flowers by the shipload, all one tint, but the bees won't come
round your ship when you unload it! In a town where