NEW SERIES.

Shall It Succeed?

WE ask this question concerning Our Youth, the new weekly for young people and their teachers.

Docs Our Youth deserve to succeed? As to price, it is the cheapest paper in America. Sixteen pages a week; original matter; new type; thick paper; in shape adapted to binding for preservation in annual volumes.

The class Our Youth is designed to reach is not composed of children of the primary or intermediate grades, but young people, between the ages of twelve and twenty-five, "and their teachers" in Sunday-school, day-school, and the family. The thoughtful young folks who like substantial, entertaining, and instructive reading, and who intend very soon to be men and women, are the class aimed at in Our Youth. As to the subjects to be discussed on these sixteen pages every week, we may promise a wide variety. What do young people like, and what do they need? The answer to this question, after months of preparatory thought and of consultation with those who ought to know, will be found in the first and succeeding numbers of the new weekly. Send for a specimen copy.

The success of Our Youth will depend upon the manner in which its claims are presented to our families and Sunday-schools. We offer no "Barlow knives," no "toy printing presses," nor any other prize to subscribers. We offer no discounts to agents, ministers, or superintendents. We make a VOL. XVIII.-1

VOL. XVIII, No. 1.

good paper, full of useful and delightful reading on general, religious, and Methodistic topics, and ask our pastors, teachers, and superintendents, "for the love of the cause," and of our young people, and of our Church, to stand by us. We do give discounts, but it is to every subscriber-who, at club rates, receives a two-dollar paper for one dollar. Shall the efforts of Book Agents and Editor succeed?

Pastor: You can help if you will. We want 25,000 subscribers.

Superintendent: It is in your power to roll up the list. We want 50,000 names on our subscription roll.

Teachers: How much you can do if you determine to help! We must have 100,000 subscribers to Our Youth!

The back numbers are electrotyped. Send your orders at once.

The New Year Chimes. HARK! Through the silver glory of the moonlight, across the sparkling snow-crystals, under the stars that glisten like icicles of the winter along the blue eaves of the sky, echo the chimes that usher in the New Year. Below, in the church, there is a listening congregation who have watched the old year out, and now with songs that echo to the bells swinging in the clear, frosty air, they welcome the New Year in. But standing at the portals of this another year, what is it we welcome? Let not watch-night, with its greetings, be a meaningless procession of sounds. Let us welcome to our hearts more of the spirit of Jesus, making an atmosphere of charity and love, of forgiving and peace-making.

ZICA

ing his self-surrender and sacrifices. Let us welcome more of the presence and person of Jesus. Thus in our very lives will be an echo to the tuneful notes pealing from the belfry.

How Long to Last?

A SCULPTOR will spend hours in shaping a feature of the face. Like a magician's hand, his chisel will stroke some bud of snowy marble until he has evoked a marvelous copy of nature. With like patience a painter will labor to give expression to the eye or form to the hand. Their work is not for a day. It is not to stand as an image or flaunt as a banner in the hasty pageantry of some procession. It will have a history in the long annals of art, and survives to-day. Haydn is said to have spent three years amid.the harmonies of "The Creation," that musical masterpiece. When asked for the reason, he said, "Because I intend it to last a long time."

You, in your work for others, are shaping substance more imperishable than canvas or marble. As a result it will outlast Haydn's "Creation." You work upon the soul that stains the canvas, carves the marble, and gives wings of song to its sweet conceptions. You are striving to educate into all Christ-likeness a human soul whose heritage is immortality. You can afford to be a patient workman and wait long for results, as you will have cternity in which to watch their development.

6

"In our school and many others the Word of God is in the school as much as, and perhaps more than, if we did not use the leaves. What matter where, so we read the Word of God understandingly? One special advantage in the use of the leaves is the inducement to search the Scriptures.' No one can follow the directions given in your lesson helps and not become a close Bible student. We have had more Bible reading during the last year from their use than we ever had before. Our teachers' meetings are held on Friday evening of each week. The different teachers are appointed to give an explanation of the home readings, and since we have several that will take part in our meetings, we select from the

they are influenced to read the Bible. Many valuable thoughts and suggestions on the lessons are presented. There is another plea for the Lesson Leaf-or, better, your valuable Question Book-in the uniformity of lessons. Travelers, visitorsnone can say they did not know what the lesson would be. Any person that wishes to be informed, may know the subject, memory verses, Golden Text, even the very questions that he will be requested to answer."

Fac

If some Tract Society should issue leaflets containing short selections of choice passages from the Word of God, and scat them broadcast over the country, how loud would be the praises of all who love the old book! Yet just that work is done by Leaf. Our own leaves circulate nearly two million every publishing house which circulates a Lesson copies every week,not to be thrown under door-steps,

but to be read and studied and talked about in Sunday-schools. And every one of those lesson leaves, counting nearly a hundred million in a year, is a leaf from the tree of life.

The Epworth Hymnal.

THIS book has become very popular in our Sunday-schools, as we supposed it would. To aid in its use we propose to point out, in connection with every lesson, hymns suitable for use. These hymns are selected with great care, and their use will, we trust, help to make an impression in unison with the subject of the lesson. It is not designed to do away with the "lesson hymn," but simply to supplement it. Any one or more of the hymns indicated may be sung to advantage, and it might be well where time permits to sing them all. But of this every superintendent must be the judge.

THE value of system and order in all great enterprises, and, where many hands are engaged, of thorough supervision, is well understood. In Lesson I is an example of successful organized labor under men who "had the oversight." (See 2 Chron. xxxiv, 8-13.) A large part of what Methodism has done and become is to be ascribed to its system of orderly and thorough supervision. In the beginning, it was simply a revival, with no plan and no purpose of organization. Whitefield never attempted it. Wesley was providentially led to organize his work and then supervise it. He, thus perpetuated it, and increased its power as well. When appealed to for counsel by his American societies, he advised the formation of an Episcopal Church, with complete organization and thorough supervision. This plan, at once scriptural and sensible, was adopted, and the grand re

seen.

sults of its first hundred years we have recently The General Conference is supreme in authority and oversight, making all rules and regulations for the Church. There are two lines of supervision-organized bodies and individual men. Through the Annual, District, and Quarterly Conferences it reaches every interest of the obscurest local society, while through Bishops, presiding elders, pastors, class-leaders, superintendents, and teachers, each in his own sphere, it extends to every member of the Church and every child in the Sunday-school and the family. The system is a grand one. It intends to keep every thing compact and in order, and to see that every body is doing his proper work for Christ and his Church. The great need of to-day is to work the system.

On the drink question (Lesson III) Methodism is at the front. It condemned the traffic in and use of ardent spirits nearly half a century before Dr. Rush wrote his celebrated " Inquiry" into their effects. The General Rules, framed in 1739, forbade "Drunkenness, buying or selling spirituous [distilled] liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity." Had Mr. Wesley lived fifty years longer he would have prohibited the use of malt and fermented liquors also. The light of total abstinence had not then dawned. When it came, the Methodist Episcopal Church was prompt to embrace it and to place in the class of punishable offenses "the buying, selling, or using intoxicating liquors as a beverage." Its latest utterance, in the General Conference of 1884, is in these words: "We proclaim as our motto, Voluntary total abstinence from all intoxicants as the true ground of personal temperance, and complete legal prohibition of the traffic in alcoholic drinks as the duty of civil government."

The Hebrews of Daniel's time (Lesson VI) understood the duty of obedience to rulers and its limits better than did the Pharisees of Christ's time. Methodism teaches that Christians are "as it respects civil affairs. . . to be subject to the supreme authority of the country where they may reside." (Note to Article XXIII.) The rule is, obedience; the exception is, when obedience is sin. Obey the laws except when they require what God forbids. Then disobey and take the penalty. Suffer wrong, but never do wrong. So did the Hebrews in the lesson. So did the apostles. So did men yet living who refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Lesson VII shows us God as Sovereign and Judge of both nations and men. His law of righteousness is the same for both. Neither politics nor business can be divorced from religion. Iniquity, whether in a nation or a man, draws after it God's curse, and salvation for either is only through repentance and obedience. The difference is that nations are judged and punished in this world, while the individual is reserved until Christ's coming again" at the end of the world to judge the quick and the dead."-Ritual.

In the same line of national judgment is Lesson

XII. It predicts, first, the Messiah coming to save, if possible, the Jewish people, and, second, their fearful destruction if they would not repent. Jeitsalem is vividly pictured as a fiercely burning oven in which the wicked would be consumed as if they were stubble." Its terrible fulfillment and the nation's downfall we know. There is no prediction here of the second advent, or of the final conflagration, or of an annihilation of the wicked, as some teach. Christ will, indeed, come again, and, after the final judgment and the removal of mankind to heaven or to hell, the earth will be "burned up." But Methodism believes in no burning up of an immortal resurrection body, and no annihilation of a human spirit.

Providence, R. I.

Opening and Closing Services for First Quarter of 1886. OPENING SERVICE.

I. SILENCE.

II. THE DOXOLOGY.

III. RESPONSIVE SENTENCES.
SUPT.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from
whence cometh my help.

SCHOOL. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

SUPT. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved he that keepeth thee will not slumber. SCHOOL. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

SUPT. SCHOOL. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

SUPT.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil : he shall preserve thy soul.

SCHOOL. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

V.

THE SUPPLEMENTAL LESSON.*

ANNOUNCEMENTS (especially of the Church serv. ice and week-evening prayer-meeting).

I. SINGING.

CLOSING SERVICE.