OUR YOUNG PEOPLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1665, 27 January 1904, Page 19

OUR YOUNG PEOPLE.

(Bl UNCLE TOBY.) [Little folks gre invited to send letters to “line. 4 Toby” on any subject; and notes about their gardens and household pets will be very acceptable.]

SUNDAY SCHOOL CHILDREN.

Dean Pigou has much to say of Sunday school ohildron, and their quaint answers to the catechist. Is it right to laugh when a child defines a cherub as “an immoral being cf uncertain shape”? The dean gravely declares that questions likely to “excite merriment” should not be put, and then he goes mirthfully on with samples of Sunday school drollery. Wo wonder respectfully how he reconciles this with ills precept, and how be imagines that the mysteries which children are expected to understand: can have any effect in an examination except that of exciting merriment. Who knows what a cherub is? Does the Dean of Bristol know? He relate® with obvious enjoyment the well known story of the little girl who was much upset by a maiden and posted in a hole in the garden, a'tetter in these terms:—

Dear Mr Satan, —Will you kindly come and take array Aunt Jane? She is »a very fussy person, and does worry me so.—Yarns affectionately, Alice. We have laughed over that exquisite child for many years, and now cornea the Dean of Bristol to impress upon us, as soon as ho can keep a grave countenance, “how careful parents and teachers should be in their instructions about prayer." And then lie is off again with another familiar yarn of the same kind. Does he think this method of exhortar tion is good for parents and teach ere? Does he suppose that children would be ohildron if they could be turned into solemn little dictionaries of divinity? The dean laments the growing indifference of the laity to .sermons, and is indignant with'church-goers who want the sermon to bo short —fifteen minutes at the outside. But in one of his Sunday school tales there is a sermon which, for brevity and significance, is not often surpassed. A boy was asked. “What are the heathen?” and he answered, “Heathens are people who don’t quarrel about religion.” The dean misses an opportunity here for a useful commentary on the wisdom whioh sometime® proceeds from babes and sucklings. But. he reports with melancholy a characteristic of the garrison at Dover, who always look at their watches during the sermon: — 1

A gun i» fired precisely at twelve o’clock. It fired when I was preaching, and everyone who possessed a watch produced it to see if his or her watch were right with “Greenwich time.” Except at a watchmaker’s shop, I have never anywhere seen so many watches as I saw produced in the chapel of Dover garr'so n. Almost as sad is this recollection: —

Attending a village church a short time ago, someone, as he approached, said to me, “I see, dean, that there is no collection to-day.” I asked him how he knew, and he pointed to the pillar box let into the wall of -the churchyard. There was this notice : “No collection to-day.” I can only suppose he was short sighted, and mistook the pillar box for a notice board.

That. the right explanation, no doubt; for it is inconceivable that anyone would have the presumption to take a rise out of a dean. We hope there was a collection, and that tho dean kept his sense of humour severely under control when he saw the misguided parishioner flushing with indignant surprise over the plate. _____