Eli, as we read in the 4th chap. I Sam., when aged ninety and eight years, and his eyes were dim, that he could not see, "sat upon a seat by the wayside watching." What is the meaning of this? The old man of nearly a hundred has his chair brought outside the temple, and sits there looking up the street, and that although his eyes are so covered with a mist that he can see nothing. The sacred writer does not say that Eli sat on the seat by the wayside seeing what went on, but only straining his sightless eyeballs up the street. If we turn back to the first chapter, we shall see that this was a habit with Eli. When he was many years younger, some thirty years before, when Hannah came up to Shiloh to entreat the Lord to have mercy on her and take away her reproach, we read "Now Eli, the priest, sat upon a seat by the post of the temple of the Lord." And his eyes, then sharp and clear, were peering about and watching all that was going on, and examining the faces of the people who were coming in and going out, and were engaged in prayer. One would have thought that common decency would have kept him from watching the face of the poor woman who was engaged in prayer, but Eli had not acquired control over his eyes--indeed, his great amusement was peering into people's faces and guessing what was going on in their minds. Hannah wept as she prayed, "And it came to pass, as she continued praying to the Lord, that Eli marked her mouth. Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard,"--then with that want of charity, and tendency to think evil which so commonly goes with peeping and prying--"Eli thought she had been drunk." He saw what was not--drunkenness--in the weeping, sorrowful-hearted woman, but he saw not the wickedness which was in his disorderly sons. Here is an illustration of how habits last. Eli had acquired this habit of sitting in the gate and watching what went on, when he was a man in the vigour of his days, and when he was a very old man and blind, the habit continued. He had his chair brought out into the street that he might look up and down it, though his eyes were dim and he could see nought. III. Now the great advantage of a school to a child is that therein the child is taught good habits. The child has got certain talents, but cannot turn these talents to any good account without application. In school he is given the habit of application; that is, of keeping his attention fixed on one subject. But application is not all; to that must be added perseverance. No advance will be made in anything, unless a man first applies his mind to his task, and then perseveres in it till he has fulfilled what he undertook. Nothing is more common than to begin a thing and to be disheartened at the first difficulty, and to throw it up. At school the child is given the habit of perseverance.