1. Who was Zerubabel? 2. Where were the Jews coming back from? 3. What had Zerubabel's fathers been? 4. Why was not Zerubabel a king? 5. Who was the father of the kings of the Jews? 6. What had David been before he was a king? 7. Where did he keep his sheep? 8. What was the place Zerubabel cared to have again? 9. Why did Zerubabel care for Bethlehem? 10. Who was to be born there? 11. Who had said so? 12. What did Zerubabel believe? 13. How many people went back to Bethlehem? 14. Did Zerubabel despise it for being small? 15. What did he think of? 16. Why did God bless him? 17. What did God say he should build up? 18. What did God say difficulties should be to him? 19. Do not things we have to do sometimes seem like great mountains to get over? 20. But who can make them easy to us? 21. Only what must we do ourselves? 22. And what is the way to do great things well? 23. What must we never despise? THIRD READING. "Thy God whom thou servest continually, He will deliver thee."--_Dan. 6:16._ THERE was another king of Babylon, and his name was Darius. It was the strange, foolish way of his people to treat him as if he was a sort of a god, and more than man; and one day his people came to him and begged him to make a law that for thirty whole days nobody should say their prayers to any god, or ask anything of any man, except of Darius the king; or if they did, they should be thrown to the lions, to be eaten up. Darius thought this was all to do him honor, so he made the law that thus it should be. Now when a law had once been made by the king of that people, it could not be changed. So nobody was to say their prayers to anyone but the king for all that time. But by-and-by the king's people came and told him that there was one old man who did not attend to his law, but that they had watched him in his own room, and there he said his prayers three times a-day, just as if the king had made no law at all. The king was very sorry when he heard who it was, for this man who would not leave off saying his prayers was the man he trusted most in all the kingdom. It was Daniel, one of the captive Jews, son or brother to one of the last kings of Jerusalem. He had been taken to Babylon when he was a very little boy, and now he was quite an old man, but he had never ceased praying to the great God of Heaven, and he was not going to leave off now. He was a prophet of the Lord, and very wise, and he was one of the king's very best advisers, so Darius was greatly grieved when he was accused. But Darius could not help himself; the law that had once been made could not be broken, and these spiteful people declared that Daniel must be thrown to the lions. All day long the king tried to get his wise good counsellor saved from this dreadful fate, but he could not succeed; and at evening Daniel's enemies came to take him and throw him to the lions in their den. [Illustration: THE JEWISH CAPTIVES CONDUCTED BEFORE DARIUS.]