er you!
Put this bottle on the table in your ain room; carry this in your hand
to your office, and stand it before your eyes upon your desk. If you
want a foe to face and to conquer, a foe that you can see and touch,
here is one mighty enough to stir the bravest soul. And, if you turn
your back on him you are a coward; a mean, poor-hearted coward, sir.
And there ne'er was a coward yet, o' the Callendar blood, nor o' the
Campbell line! Your Captain is nane less than the Son o' God. Hear
what he says to you! 'To him that overcometh! To him that overcometh!'
O Davie, you ken the rest!" and the old man was so lifted out of and
above himself, that his face shone and his keen gray eyes scintillated
with a light that no market-place ever saw in them.

David caught the holy enthusiasm; he seized the idea like a visible
hand of God for his help. The black bottle became to him the
materialization of all his crime and misery. It was a foe he could
see, and touch, and defy. It seemed to mock him, to tempt him, to beg
him just to open the cork, if only to test the strength of his
resolutions.

Thank God he never did it. He faced his enemy the first thing in the
morning and the last thing at night. He kept him in sight through the
temptations of a business day. He faced him most steadily in the
solitude of his own room. There, indeed, his most dangerous struggles
took place, and one night John heard him after two hours of restless
hurried walking up and down, throw open his window, and dash the
bottle upon the pavement beneath it. That was the last of his hard
struggles; the bottle which replaced the one flung beyond his reach
stands to-day where it has stood for nearly a quarter of a century,
and David feels now no more inclination to open it than if it
contained strychnine.

This is no fancy story. It is a fact. It is the true history of a
soul's struggle, and I write it--God knows I do--in the strong hope
that some brave fellow, who is mastered by a foe that steals upon him
in the guise of good fellowship, or pleasure, or hospitality, may
locate his enemy, and then face and conquer him in the name of Him who
delivers his people from their sins. I do not say that all natures
could do this. Some may find safety and final victory in flight, or in
hiding from their foe; but I believe that the majority of souls would
rise to a warfare in which the enemy was confronting them to face and
fight, and would conquer.

I have little mor