THE Forty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Union will be held in the Christian Institute 70 Bothwell Street, on Thursday, 23rd April, 1885. The Business Meeting will be held at 1 o'clock, p.m., when the Reports for the pas year will be submitted, and Office-Bearers elected for the ensuing year. The Conve sazione will be held from 6.45 till 7.45 p.m., and the Public Meeting will take place in th Large Hall at 8 o'clock. SIR WILLIAM COLLINS, President of the Union, will preside at both Day and Evenin Meetings. Full particulars will be given in next month's Magazine. A CONCERT UNION'S WILL BE GIVEN BY THE MUSIC CLASSES IN THE LARGE HALL OF THE CHRISTIAN INSTITUTE, 70 BOTHWELL ST. On Friday Evening, 6th March, 1885, at Eight o'clock. MR. D. S. ALLAN, Conductor. JAMES SMITH, Esq., Convener of Committee on Music, will preside. TICKETS, 6d. each, may be had at No. 7 Room, Christian Institute, 70 Bothwell Street J. M'CALLUM & Co., 181 Buchanan Street; and BAYLEY & FERGUSON, 54 Queen Street. TEACHERS' LOCAL EXAMINATIONS. THE Examinations will take place in the High School, Elmbank Street, and will be held as follows: Branch A.- "SCRIPTURE HISTORY AND DOCTRINE," on Friday, 6th March, at 8 p.m. Branch B.-"EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY," on Friday, 13th March, at 8 p.m. Branch C.- "PRINCIPLES AND ART OF TEACHING," on Friday, 21st March, at 8 p.m. Teachers who have not yet intimated their intention to come forward as Candidates will please do so immediately, to MR. THOMAS GRAY, No. 7 Room, Christian Institute, 70 Bothwell Street, and at the same time state the subject or subjects upon which examination is desired. TRAINING CLASS FOR TEACHERS. THIS Class meets on Saturday Afternoons, in the Lesser Hall of the CHRISTIAN INSTITUTE, 70 Bothwell Street, from Five till Six o'Clock. The Lessons of the Union's Scheme will be taken up as under : DAILY BIBLE READING UNION. A FIVE years' Course of Readings for Young People, comprising suitable passages throughout the whole Bible, was commenced on 1st January, 1885. Membership Cards, containing the list of daily portions for 1885, can be obtained at 10d. per 100, (postage 2d. extra,) on application to MR. ANDREW CRAWFORD, Sabbath School Union Rooms, 70 Bothwell Street, Glasgow. Volumes of Glasgow Sabbath School Union Magazine (bound WANTED, or unbound) for the following years:-viz., 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856. Also, the Annual Reports of Glasgow Sabbath School Union for any or all of the following years:-viz., 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844. Parties having copies of the above, and willing to dispose of them, will please communicate with the Secretaries of the Union, 70 Bothwell Street, Glasgow. 2 TEACHERS accustomed to visit the homes of the poor, and those who are familiar with the circumstances of the most neglected young, are among the foremost to approve of the very practical way in which Mr. Quarrier, Dr. Barnardo, and other like-minded men, express their philanthropy. There are individuals, however, who have doubts as to the wisdom of some of their schemes. We can assure such persons that they have only to be properly informed of the history and wretched condition of the children dealt with, in order to be convinced of the utter hopelessness of saving them so long as they are permitted to remain under the contaminating influences to which they are generally exposed. The view of the subject which chiefly concerns us, is the distressing fact, that notwithstanding all that is being done for the benefit of the destitute young, their numbers do not seem to be reduced, and that year after year our streets and alleys teem with new cases. A good deal can be said in support of Mr. Quarrier's recent appeal to the Magistrates that they should acquire certain powers in the new Police Bill to enable them to deal with such children; but whatever may be our desire in this direction, and whatever may be our opinion as to the proper sphere of the Magistrate, let us, as Christian workers, redouble our efforts in the way of extirpating what may be called the bitter roots from which certainly spring this and many other of our social evils. The following notes have been sent us by a worker in the Evangelistic Hall, James Morrison Street, where many hundreds of poor children are served free every Sabbath afternoon with an excellent dinner. We cannot attach too much importance to the reference made to the smallness of the houses occupied by many of the poor. Nearly every home mission worker knows that it is this and the misconduct of parents that often drive children to the street. Even houses of two apartments (one room and kitchen) we have frequently found occupied by two families. C We cannot expect to find moral purity and domestic comfort where this is the case: The street life of our neglected children, which is causing such anxiety, is only the outward sore indicating a deep-rooted disease in the family life of our poorer population. The one-room houses for which our city is notorious, and even the two-roomed ones, make family life in them a grave problem. When a large family has to live and move and have its being in such circumstances, it needs all the sweetness of parental love and fraternal forbearance to keep things smooth. When a cruel stepfather or stepmother, or drunkenness or ill-temper, or poverty, or all combined, step in to cause friction and mar the light and love within, there too often comes a disruption. "Dosser" and to "doss it" are words coined to denote a phase of young life produced by the condition of the homes above described. Lads, and girls too, in their teens find the family hearth made too hot for them. The bad conduct of parents drives them from the house; or the love of freedom, bad company, and restlessness under restraint, lead them to fancy that they can find away from home and in a street life a state of things more congenial to their taste than their home worries, and so they "doss it," as they say. They take literally to the streets for their home. They earn a copper wherever they can. Now they are to be found on the street selling matches, newspapers, &c. Again they are to be seen hanging about railway stations, the fish or cattle market, watching, it is to be feared, chances not always straight or honest. You can recognise them by the glaze on their clothes, their unwashed skin, their uncombed hair, and their Ishmaelitish suspicious look when you scan them or speak to them, for the truth about the life they are living is the last thing they wish to reveal. One of the cheapest lodging-houses, when they have what will pay for it, or when their credit is good, or a cellar or stair on the beat of an indulgent policeman, is where they are to be found at night. Often they are more sinned against than sinning-objects more for pity than blame. They are not easy of approach. It takes the warmest of hearts to get near them, and the keenest of wits to get their story out of them. We have known one to leave his home (such as it was), pick up a very meagre living of crusts, &c., and yet attend his day school, and say his lessons as if he had a bed of down instead of a stair to lie on. In the Children's Sabbath dinner in James Morrison Street Hall the "dossers" know they can calculate on a free dinner once a-week; and should inconvenient questions be asked of them, they trust to their wits to parry these. Those amongst them who may have left comfortable homes, and desire to have the way opened up for their return, more readily respond to the invitation to meet with those who are willing to accompany them home, or to communicate with their parents, should they reside out of Glasgow. Seldom a Sabbath passes without this taking place, or without some parents coming to the hall in search of wanderers. We have to confess that we are inclined often to side with the boy who has his version of the story to tell, frequently with tears; and few can listen to these revelations of family life unmoved. A week or two ago, a dinner worker was waited upon by a mother from Edinburgh in search of her runaway boy, a lad of 151. He had left his work in Edinburgh. All the trace of him was two letters from him, each bearing the Glasgow |