as a parent, under similar circumstances, would do with his children.  All the children thus addressed will be pleased with the gentleness and affability of the teacher.  Even a rough and ill-natured boy, who has perhaps come to the school with the express determination of attempting to make mischief, will be completely disarmed by being asked politely to help the teacher arrange the fire, or alter the position of his desk.  Thus, by means of the half hour during which the scholars are coming together, and of the visits made in the preceding evening, as described under the last head, the teacher will find, when he calls upon the children to take their seats, that he has made a very large number of them his personal friends.  Many of these will have communicated their first impressions to the others, so that he will find himself possessed, at the outset, of that which is of vital consequence in the opening of any administration—­a strong party in his favor.

4.  The time for calling the school to order and commencing exercises of some sort will at length arrive, though if the work of making personal acquaintances is going on prosperously, it may perhaps be delayed a little beyond the usual hour.  When, however, the time arrives, we would strongly recommend that the first service by which the regular duties of the school are commenced should be an act of religious worship.  There are many reasons why the exercises of the school should every day be thus commenced, and there are special reasons for it on the first day.

There are very few districts where parents would have any objection to this.  They might, indeed, in some cases, if the subject were to be brought up formally before them as a matter of doubt, anticipate some difficulties, or create imaginary ones, growing out of the supposed sensitiveness of contending sects; but if the teacher were, of his own accord, to commence the plain, faithful, and honest discharge of this duty as a matter of course, very few would think of making any objection to it, and almost all would be satisfied and pleased with its actual operation.  If, however, the teacher should, in any case, have reason to believe that such a practice would be contrary to the wishes of his employers, it would, according to views we have presented in another chapter, be wrong for him to attempt to introduce it.  He might, if he should see fit, make such an objection a reason for declining to take the school; but he ought not, if he takes it, to act counter to the known wishes of his employers in so important a point.  But if, on the other hand, no such objections are made known to him, he need not raise the question himself at all, but take it for granted that in a Christian land there will be no objection to imploring the Divine protection and blessing at the opening of a daily school.