in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was
not heard,"--then with that want of charity, and tendency to think evil
which so commonly goes with peeping and prying--"Eli thought she had
been drunk." He saw what was not--drunkenness--in the weeping,
sorrowful-hearted woman, but he saw not the wickedness which was in his
disorderly sons. Here is an illustration of how habits last. Eli had
acquired this habit of sitting in the gate and watching what went on,
when he was a man in the vigour of his days, and when he was a very old
man and blind, the habit continued. He had his chair brought out into
the street that he might look up and down it, though his eyes were dim
and he could see nought.

III. Now the great advantage of a school to a child is that therein
the child is taught good habits. The child has got certain talents,
but cannot turn these talents to any good account without application.
In school he is given the habit of application; that is, of keeping his
attention fixed on one subject.

But application is not all; to that must be added perseverance. No
advance will be made in anything, unless a man first applies his mind
to his task, and then perseveres in it till he has fulfilled what he
undertook. Nothing is more common than to begin a thing and to be
disheartened at the first difficulty, and to throw it up. At school
the child is given the habit of perseverance.

That is not all. No work will be carried out thoroughly without order
and system. You see people who work all day and work hard, but never
make any way, because they work in a muddle, and with no regular plan.
At school the child is given the habit of orderliness.

I have instanced only a few of those necessary habits which we try to
impress on children at school. We endeavour to impress them on the
young, because then they are open to instruction, their characters are
soft and take impressions, as warm wax does from a seal. We train them
up in the way in which they should go, trusting that when they are old
they will not depart from it. We teach what is good, that good may
become a habit with them, and when anything has become a habit, it
sticks. It is not shaken off.

LXV.

_RELIGIOUS ZEAL._

Dedication Festival

Ps. lxix., 9.

"The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."

INTRODUCTION.--David spoke the truth. The one great desire of his
heart was the glorification of God by the erection of a temple
bef