They trust to some imaginary change, long since passed by, and which has proved to be spurious by its failing of its fruits.

The best way--in fact, the only way--to guard against this danger, especially with the young, is to show, by your manner of speaking and acting on this subject at all times, that you regard a truly religious life as the only evidence of piety, and that, consequently, however much interest your pupils may apparently take in religious instruction, they can not know, and you can not know, whether Christian principle reigns within them in any other way than by following them through life, and observing how, and with what spirit, the various duties which devolve upon them are performed.
There are very many fallacious indications of piety, so fallacious and so plausible that there are very few, even among intelligent Christians, who are not often greatly deceived.

"By their fruits ye shall know them," said the Savior; a direction sufficiently plain, one would think, and pointing to a test sufficiently easy to be applied.

But it is slow and tedious work to wait for fruits, and we accordingly seek a criterion which will help us quicker to a result.

You see your pupil serious and thoughtful.