If this practice is adopted, it will have a most powerful influence upon the moral condition of the school.  It must be so.  Though many will be inattentive, and many utterly unconcerned, yet it is not possible to bring children, even in form, into the presence of God every day, and to utter in their hearing the petitions which they ought to present, without bringing a powerful element of moral influence to bear upon their hearts.  The good will be made better; the conscientious more conscientious still; and the rude and savage will be subdued and softened by the daily attempt to lead them to the throne of their Creator.  To secure this effect, the devotional service must be an honest one.  There must be nothing feigned or hypocritical; no hackneyed phrases used without meaning, or intonations of assumed solemnity.  It must be honest, heartfelt, simple prayer; the plain and direct expression of such sentiments as children ought to feel, and of such petitions as they ought to offer.  We shall speak presently of the mode of avoiding some abuses to which this exercise is liable; but if these sources of abuse are avoided, and the duty is performed in that plain, simple, direct, and honest manner in which it certainly will be if it springs from the heart, it must have a great influence on the moral progress of the children, and, in fact, in all respects on the prosperity of the school.

But, then, independently of the advantages which may be expected to result from the practice of daily prayer in school, it would seem to be the imperious duty of the teacher to adopt it.  So many human minds committed thus to the guidance of one, at a period when the character receives so easily and so permanently its shape and direction, and in a world of probation like this, is an occasion which seems to demand the open recognition of the hand of God on the part of any individual to whom such a trust is committed.  The duty springs so directly out of the attitude in which the teacher and pupil stand in respect to each other, and the relation they together bear to the Supreme, that it would seem impossible for any one to hesitate to admit the duty, without denying altogether the existence of a God.

How vast the responsibility of giving form and character to the human soul! How mighty the influence of which the unformed minds of a group of children are susceptible!  How much their daily teacher must inevitably exert upon them!  If we admit the existence of God at all, and that he exerts any agency whatever in the moral world which he has produced, here seems to be one of the strongest cases in which his intervention should be sought.  And then, when we reflect upon the influence which would be exerted upon the future religious character of this nation by having the millions of children training up in the schools accustomed, through all the years of early life, to being brought daily into the presence of the Supreme, with thanksgiving, confession, and