"It seems to me," said Miss B., "that this view of the subject will reduce us to silence almost as much as the other. How is one ever to estimate the consequences of their words?--people are affected in so many different ways by the same thing." "I suppose," said her uncle, "we are only responsible for such results as by carefulness and reflection we might have foreseen. It is not for ill-judged words, but for idle words, that we are to be judged--words uttered without any consideration at all, and producing bad results. If a person really anxious to do right misjudges as to the probable effect of what he is about to say on others, it is quite another thing." "But, uncle, will not such carefulness destroy all freedom in conversation?" said Helen. "If you are talking with a beloved friend, Helen, do you not use an instinctive care to avoid all that might pain that friend?" "Certainly." "And do you find this effort a restraint on your enjoyment?" "Certainly not." "And you, from your own feelings, avoid what is indelicate and impure in conversation, and yet feel it no restraint?" "Certainly." "Well, I suppose the object of Christian effort should be so to realize the character of our Saviour, and conform our tastes and sympathies to his, that we shall instinctively avoid all in our conversation that would be displeasing to him. A person habitually indulging jealous, angry, or revengeful feeling, a person habitually worldly in his spirit, a person allowing himself in skeptical and unsettled habits of thought, _cannot_ talk without doing harm. This is our Saviour's account of the matter in the verses immediately before the passage we were speaking of--'How _can_ ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things.' The highest flow of animal spirits would never hurry a pure-minded person to say anything indelicate or gross; and in the same manner, if a person is habitually Christian in all his habits of thought and feeling, he will be able without irksome watchfulness to avoid what may be injurious even in the most unrestrained conversation." HOW DO WE KNOW It was a splendid room. Rich curtains swept down to the floor in graceful folds, half excluding the light, and shedding it in soft hues over the fine old paintings on the walls, and over the broad mirrors that reflect all that taste can accomplish by the hand of wealth. Books, the rarest and most costly, were around, in every form of gorgeous binding and gilding, and among them, glittering in ornament, lay a magnificent Bible--a Bible too beautiful in its appointments, too showy, too ornamental, ever to have been meant to be read--a Bible which every visitor should take up and exclaim, "What a beautiful edition! what superb bindings!" and then lay it down again.