It was just that calm, deep, serene feeling and
manner, which was needed at the bar as well as with Willie. Arguing
with that feeling and manner, he felt, would convince irresistibly.
Pleading with that quiet, gentle spirit, he felt would melt, would
affect the hearts as with the very emotion of tears.
Unless you catch the idea, there is no describing it, reader. Leland
was a Christian. All that day he thought upon the whole matter. That
night in the privacy of his office he knelt and repeated the whole
matter before God. For his boy's sake, for his wife's sake, for his
own sake, for his usefulness' sake at the bar, he implored steady
aid to overcome the deadly, besetting sin. He pleaded that,
indulging in that disposition, he was alienating from himself his
boy and his wife; yea, that he was alienating his own better self
from himself, for he was losing his own self-respect. And here his
voice sank from a murmur into silence; he remembered that he was
thus alienating from his bosom and his side--God!
And then he remembered that just such a daily disposition as he
lacked was exactly that disposition which characterized God when God
became man. The excellence of such a disposition rose serenely
before him, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ; the young lawyer
fell forward on his face and wept in the agony of his desire and his
prayer.
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