ich may be quoted here. "The devil,"
he says, "held a great anniversary, at which his emissaries were
convened to report the results of their several missions. 'I let loose
the wild beasts of the desert,' said one, 'on a caravan of Christians,
and their bones are now bleaching on the sands.' 'What of that?' said
the devil; 'their souls were all saved.' 'I drove the east wind,' said
another, 'against a ship freighted with Christians, and they were all
drowned.' 'What of that?' said the devil; 'their souls were all
saved.' 'For ten years I tried to get a single Christian asleep,' said
a third, 'and I succeeded, and left him so.' Then the devil shouted,
and the night stars of hell sang for joy."

There are three spheres of religious life in which earnestness should
be specially shown.

1. _In prayer_.--This is specially inculcated in the two parables of
our Lord, the "unjust judge" and "the friend at midnight," and in His
own words, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you." One, it is said, came to
Demosthenes, the great orator, and asked him to plead his cause. He
heard him without attention while he told his story without
earnestness. The man saw this, and cried out anxiously that it was all
true. "Ah!" said Demosthenes, "I believe you _now_." The earnest
prayer is the prevailing prayer.

2. _In sacrifice_.--This is in all life the test of earnestness. The
student giving up time for the acquisition of knowledge; the merchant
giving up his hours to the pursuit of business; the explorer braving
the heat of the tropics and the cold of the arctic regions in his zeal
for discovery. It is the same in religion. We must count all things,
with St. Paul, "as loss, that we may win Christ, and be found in Him."

3. _In impressing others_.--It is "out of the heart that the mouth
speaketh," and power to impress others is given only to those who do so
with a full heart, and who are consumed with a burning zeal for the
salvation of souls. These are they whom God has, in all ages, blessed
in the conversion of men.

CHAPTER X.

MANNERS.

The word manners comes from the Latin _manus_, the hand, and literally
means the mode in which a thing is handled--behavior, deportment.
Manners may be defined as the pleasing or unpleasing expression of our
thoughts and intentions, whether in word or action. We may say or do a
thing in an agreeable or a disagreeabl