How we are willing to persevere to save our friends from physical suffering and death! No night is too long to watch, no sacrifice too great to make, no burden too heavy to bear, that the life of a loved one may be saved. But should we not be just as persistent in our efforts to save from eternal death those whom we love? Perhaps we have no more illustrious example of devotion to soul-winning than evidenced in the life of Uncle John Vassar. Two incidents, related by the Rev. Walter B. Vassar, illustrate the perseverance with which he sought the perishing. A young man was noticed to come night after night to revival-meetings, but would slip away before one could grasp his hand. Mr. Vassar felt he must see this soul, and walked five miles to the farm where he lived, arriving as the family was about to eat an early dinner, of which he was urged to partake. After being seated, the face of the young man not appearing in the family group, Mr. Vassar excused himself from the table, and hunted through all the farm-buildings where a man might possibly be in hiding. At last, when about to confess himself defeated, he walked to the further end of the corn-crib, and there, in an old hogshead, he found the fellow lying low. He confessed afterward that he had taken satisfaction in looking through the bunghole of the hogshead, in believing Uncle John would not find him there. But this "winner of souls," knowing his opportunity, leaped over by the side of the runaway, and then and there turned, as Charles Spurgeon has said, "the hogshead into a Bethel," and won a soul for heaven. An Irish woman in a village was told about a strange man calling about her place, and affirmed he would not be kindly treated if he knocked at her door. Mr. Vassar, not knowing her feelings, came there in his visits, but the moment she saw he was the man--according to the description of him--she slammed the door in his face. He sat at once upon her doorstep and began to sing: "But drops of grief can ne'er repay The debt of love I owe." In a few weeks she wanted admission into the Protestant Church, and all her experience was, "Those drops of grief, those drops of grief; I could not get over them." See how men persevere to get rich or to gain political prestige! See how insurance agents, and book agents, and traveling men persevere in their efforts to convince men! They seek most favorable times, and then often go again and again. And shall we who win immortal souls be any less diligent? STUDY XIX. TENDERNESS. Memory Verse: "I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."--(John x, 12.) Scripture for Meditation: Luke xv, 3-7; John x, 1-18.