and utter uselessness than to watch, as I am often compelled to
watch, the deplorable results of the determined choice made by
certain human beings to go backward and downward rather than forward
and upward,--a choice in which no outside advice can be of any avail
because they will not take it even if it is offered. It is a life-
and-death matter for their own wills to determine,--and no power,
human or divine, can alter the course they elect to adopt. As well
expect that God would revert His law of gravitation to save the
silly suicide who leaps to destruction from tower or steeple, as
that He would change the eternal working of His higher Spiritual Law
to rescue the resolved Soul which, knowing the difference between
good and evil, deliberately prefers evil. If an angel of light, a
veritable 'Son of the Morning' rebels, he must fall from Heaven.
There is no alternative; until of his own free-will he chooses to
rise again.

My friend and I had often talked together on these knotty points
which tangled up what should be the straightness of many a life's
career, and as we mutually knew each other's opinions we did not
discuss them at the moment.

Time passed quickly,--the train rushed farther and farther north,
and by six o'clock on that warm, sunshiny afternoon we were in the
grimy city of Glasgow, from whence we went on to a still grimier
quarter, Greenock, where we put up for the night. The 'best' hotel
was a sorry affair, but we were too tired to mind either a bad
dinner or uncomfortable rooms, and went to bed glad of any place
wherein to sleep. Next morning we woke up very early, refreshed and
joyous, in time to see the sun rise in a warm mist of gold over a
huge man-o'-war outside Greenock harbour,--a sight which, in its