Part 22 (1/2)
”That will do, my woman.” Then he turned to David, and putting one bottle on the table said, ”There is your foe! Face your enemy, sir!
Sit down before him morning, noon, and night. Dare him to master 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' G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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--G.o.d 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 fellows.h.i.+p, 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 more to say of David Callendar. It was the story of his fall and his redemption I intended to write. But we cannot separate our spiritual and mortal life; they are the warp and woof which we weave together for eternity. Therefore David's struggle, though a palpable one in some respects, was, after all, an intensely spiritual one; for it was in the constant recognition of Christ as the Captain of his salvation, and in the constant use of such spiritual aids as his Bible and his minister gave him, that he was enabled to fight a good fight and to come off more than conqueror in a contest wherein so many strive and fail.
David's reformation had also a very sensible influence on his business prosperity. He has won back again now all, and far more than all, he lost, and in all good and great works for the welfare of humanity David Callendar is a willing worker and a n.o.ble giver. The new firm of John and David Callendar acquired a world-wide reputation. It is still John and David Callendar, for when the dear old deacon died he left his interest in it to David's eldest son, a pious, steady young fellow for whom n.o.body ever mixed a first gla.s.s. But G.o.d was very kind to John in allowing him to see the full harvest of his tender love, his patience, and his unselfishness. Out of his large fortune he left a n.o.ble endowment for a church and college in his native town, making only two requests concerning its management: first, that no whiskey should ever go within the college walls: second, that all the children in the town might have a holiday on the anniversary of his death; ”for,” said he, ”I have aye loved children, and I would fain connect the happiness of childhood with the peace o' the dead.”
Dr. Morrison lived long enough to a.s.sist in filling in the grave of his old friend and helper, but attained unto the beginning of peace and glory soon afterwards. And I have often pictured to myself the meeting of those two upon the hills of G.o.d. The minister antic.i.p.ated it, though upon his dying bed his great soul forgot all individualities, and thought only of the church universal, and his last glowing words were, ”For Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all.”
Robert Leslie has done well in America, and no man is a more warm and earnest advocate of ”the faith once delivered to the saints.” I read a little speech of his some time ago at the dedication of a church, and it greatly pleased me.
”Many things,” he said, ”have doubtless been improved in this age, for man's works are progressive and require improvement; but who,” he asked, ”can improve the suns.h.i.+ne and the flowers, the wheat and the corn? And who will give us anything worthy to take the place of the religion of our fathers and mothers? And what teachers have come comparable to Christ, to David, Isaiah, and Paul?”
Jenny only died a year ago. She brought up David's children admirably, and saw, to her great delight, the marriage of Flora and young Captain Callendar. For it had long been her wish to go back to Argyles.h.i.+re ”among her ain folk and die among the mountains,” and this marriage satisfied all her longings. One evening they found her sitting in her open door with her face turned towards the cloud-cleaving hills. Her knitting had fallen upon her lap, her earthly work was done for ever, and she had put on the garments of the eternal Sabbath. But there was a wonderful smile on her simple, kindly face. Soul and body had parted with a smile. Oh, how happy are those whom the Master finds waiting for him, and who, when he calls, pa.s.s gently away!
”Up to the golden citadel they fare, And as they go their limbs grow full of might; And One awaits them at the topmost stair, One whom they had not seen, but knew at sight.”
Andrew Cargill's Confession.
ANDREW CARGILL'S CONFESSION.
CHAPTER I.
Between Sinverness and Creffel lies the valley of Glenmora.
Sca Fells and Soutra Fells guard it on each hand, and the long, treacherous sweep of Solway Frith is its outlet. It is a region of hills and moors, inhabited by a people of singular gravity and simplicity of character, a pastoral people, who in its solemn high places have learned how to interpret the voices of winds and watersand to devoutly love their G.o.d.
Most of them are of the purest Saxon origin; but here and there one meets the ma.s.sive features and the blue bonnet of the Lowland Scots, descendants of those stern Covenanters who from the coasts of Galloway and Dumfries sought refuge in the strength of these lonely hills. They are easily distinguished, and are very proud of their descent from this race whom
”G.o.d anointed with his odorous oil To wrestle, not to reign.”
Thirty years ago their leader and elder was Andrew Cargill, a man of the same lineage as that famous Donald Cargill who was the Boanerges of the Covenant, and who suffered martyrdom for his faith at the town of Queensferry. Andrew never forgot this fact, and the stern, just, uncompromising spirit of the old Protester still lived in him. He was a man well-to-do in the world, and his comfortable stone house was one of the best known in the vale of Glenmora.
People who live amid grand scenery are not generally sensitive to it, but Andrew was. The adoring spirit in which he stood one autumn evening at his own door was a very common mood with him. He looked over the moors carpeted with golden brown, and the hills covered with sheep and cattle, at the towering crags, more like clouds at sunset than things of solid land, at the children among the heather picking bilberries, at the deep, clear, purple mist that filled the valley, not hindering the view, but giving everything a strangely solemn aspect, and his face relaxed into something very like a smile as he said, ”It is the wark o' my Father's hand, and praised be his name.”
He stood at his own open door looking at these things, and inside his wife Mysie was laying the supper-board with haver bread and cheese and milk. A bright fire blazed on the wide hearth, and half a dozen sheep-dogs spread out their white b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the heat. Great settles of carved oak, bedded deep with fleeces of long wool, were on the sides of the fireplace, and from every wall racks of spotless deal, filled with crockery and pewter, reflected the s.h.i.+fting blaze.
Suddenly he stepped out and looked anxiously towards the horizon on all sides. ”Mysie, woman,” said he, ”there is a storm coming up from old Solway; I maun e'en gae and fauld the ewes wi' their young lammies. Come awa', Keeper and Sandy.”