Another example points in the same direction, and may deepen the impression of that of Dr. Dodd. At a recent period, a preacher of great popularity gathered crowds around him in London; thousands heard the truth at his lips; and he filled a large place in the public eye. Accomplished as a scholar, eloquent as a preacher, and graceful as a man, he wielded no limited power within a considerable sphere. To his influence as a minister of religion he added that of an author; and what he published was read by thousands. Not a little originality of thought, and vigorous powers rendered him, in short, an able advocate of the truth. Here, then, is another man who seems to be fenced off from the world by much that should have been constraining; that in this case also, we may see how futile every subordinate influence proves against the wayward heart of man. A FELON. THE GAMBLER'S END. The divine referred to, elated perhaps by his success, began to frequent the haunts of wit, and to associate with the literary, merely as literary men. He laid aside, or he merged for the time, those truths of God which alone can elevate, and went down to the level of those who think they can find something to make them blessed apart from the truth, and the favour of their God. From the excitement of wit there is scarcely a transition to the excitement of wine, and that followed next. By a gradual descent, that man, at one time so ascendant, became a felon in his own eyes; he fled from the pulpit which he had begun to desecrate, and sought an asylum in Paris, where theatres--saloons of fashion-- "The midnight revel and the public show," became his haunts. For years his friends could find no trace of him; and when he was discovered, it was as one who lived by gambling--a degraded, wretched outcast. While he lived in that self-outlawed condition, a friend who had learned the truth from the fallen man's lips, actually resorted to a /hell/, to make sure of the sad change which had come over his former teacher, and to his horror he found what he sought. He saw that minister of Christ taking part in the orgies of a Parisian pandemonium, and hastened with an aching heart, from that last retreat of the infatuated. That victim of his own heart was at length taken ill at Bordeaux; a surgical operation was declared to be necessary, and to escape from the pain, he blew out his brains with a pistol. Need anything be said to enforce the moral of such a case? Everything but the Word of God controlling[*12] the heart is feeble against passion, as a spider's web against a storm. Everything else is fleeting as the sand of the desert, or veering as the mimic figures which tell the changes of the wind. The Word of the Lord alone endureth for ever, both in itself and its moral ascendency. BLIND LEADERS.