unded apologetic,
set it down, and recommenced:

"O Lord, I doobt there's nae houp for me, for the verra river o' the
watter o' life wadna be guid to me wantin' a drap frae the boatle
intil 't. It's the w'y wi' a' hiz 'at drinks. It's no 'at we're
drunkards, Lord--ow na! it's no that, Lord; it's only 'at we canna
dee wantin' the drink. We're sair drinkers, I maun confess, but no
jist drunkards, Lord. I'm no drunk the noo; I ken what I'm sayin',
an' it's sair trowth, but I cudna hae prayt a word to yer lordship
gien I hadna had a jooggy or twa first. O Lord, deliver me frae the
pooer o' Sawtan.--O Lord! O Lord! I canna help mysel'. Dinna sen'
me to the ill place. Ye loot the deils gang intil the swine, lat me
tee."

With this frightful petition, his utterance began to grow
indistinct. Then he fell forward upon the bed, groaning, and his
voice died gradually away. Gibbie had listened to all he said, but
the awe of hearing his father talk to one unseen, made his soul very
still, and when he ceased he fell asleep.

Alas for the human soul inhabiting a drink-fouled brain! It is a
human soul still, and wretched in the midst of all that whisky can
do for it. From the pit of hell it cries out. So long as there is
that which can sin, it is a man. And the prayer of misery carries
its own justification, when the sober petitions of the self-righteous
and the unkind are rejected. He who forgives not is not forgiven,
and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating of the
surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets the
heart-strings of love trembling. There are sins which men must
leave behind them, and sins which they must carry with them.
Society scouts the drunkard because he is loathsome, and it matters
nothing whether society be right or wrong, while it cherishes in its
very bosom vices which are, to the God-born thing we call the soul,
yet worse poisons. Drunkards and sinners, hard as it may be for
them to enter into the kingdom of heaven, must yet be easier to save
than the man whose position, reputation, money, engross his heart
and his care, who seeks the praise of men and not the praise of God.
When I am more of a Christian, I shall have learnt to be sorrier for
the man whose end is money or social standing than for the drunkard.
But now my heart, recoiling from the one, is sore for the
other--for the agony, the helplessness, the degradation, the
nightmare struggle, the wrongs an