served, would not be a hypocritical exhibition of interest where none
was felt, but an honest attempt to snub self by deliberately putting
your friends' interests before your own.

It is probable that we are not sufficiently alive to the influence of
comparatively insignificant matters on success in life. Illegible
handwriting, for instance, may go far to retard or arrest a youth's
success. It sometimes interferes with friendly intercourse. I once had
a friend whose writing was so illegible, and the cause of so much worry
in mere decipherment, that I was constrained to give up epistolary
correspondence with him altogether. There can be little doubt that many
a would-be author fails of success because of the illegibility of his
penmanship, for it is impossible that an editor or publisher can form a
fair estimate of the character or value of a manuscript which he has
much difficulty in reading.

There is one thing which men are prone to do, and which it would be well
that they should not do, and that is, "nail their colours to the mast"
in early youth. The world is a school. We are ever learning--or ought
to be--and, in some cases, "never coming to a knowledge of the truth!"
Is not this partly owing to that fatal habit of nailing the colours? I
do not for a moment advocate the holding of opinions loosely. On the
contrary, whether a man be young or old, whenever he gets hold of what
he believes to be true, he ought to grasp it tenaciously and with a firm
grip, but he should never "nail" it. Being fallible, man is liable to
more or less of error; and, therefore, ought to hold himself open to
correction--ay, even to conversion. New or stronger light may convince
him that he has been wrong--and if a man will not change when he is
convinced, or "fully persuaded in his own mind," he has no chance of
finding out how to make the best of life, either from a young, or
middle-aged, or old man's standpoint. Why, new or stronger light--if he
would let it illumine him--might even convince him that his opinion was
not only true, but involved much greater and grander truths than he
supposed. It is difficult to go more minutely into details, even if it
were advisable to do so. I may fittingly conclude by saying that the
sum of all that might be written is comprehended in the statement that
obedience to God in all things is the sure and only road to success.

Of all the bright and glorious truths with which our fallen world i