His college-course finished, my young friend returned to California, and in one of its beautiful valley-towns he entered a law-office, with a view to prepare himself for the legal profession.  Here he was thrown into daily association with a little knot of skeptical lawyers.  As is often the case, their moral obliquities ran parallel with their errors in opinion.  They swore, gambled genteelly, and drank.  It is not strange that in this icy atmosphere the growth of any young friend in the Christian life was stunted.  Such influences are like the dreaded north wind that at times sweeps over the valleys of California in the spring and early summer, blighting and withering the vegetation it does not kill.  The brightness of his hope was dimmed, and his soul knew the torture of doubt—­a torture that is always keenest to him who allows himself to sink in the region of fogs after he has once stood upon the sunlit summit of faith.  Just at this crisis, a thing little in itself deepened the shadow that was falling upon his life.  A personal misunderstanding with the pastor kept him from attending church.  Thus he lost the most effectual defense against the assaults that were being made upon his faith and hope, in being separated from the fellowship and cut off from the activities of the Church of God.  Have you not noted these malign coincidences in life?  There are times when it seems that the tide of events sets against us when, like the princely sufferer of the land of Uz, every messenger that crosses the threshold brings fresh tidings of ill, and our whole destiny seems to be rushing to a predoomed perdition.  The worldly call it bad luck; the superstitious call it fate; the believer in God calls it by another name.  Always of a delicate constitution, my friend now exhibited symptoms of serious pulmonary disease.  It was at that time the fashion in California to prescribe whisky as a specific for that class of ailments.  It is possible that there is virtue in the prescription, but I am sure of one thing, namely, that if consumption diminished, drunkenness increased; if fewer died of phthisis, more died of delirium tremens.  The physicians of California have sent a host of victims raving and gibbering in drunken frenzy or idiocy down to death and hell!  I have reason to believe that my friend inherited a constitutional weakness at this point.  As flame to tinder, was the medicinal whisky to him.  It grew upon him rapidly, and soon this cloud overshadowed all his life.  He struggled hard to break the serpent-folds that were tightening around him; but the fire that had been kindled seemed to be quenchless.  An uncontrolled evil passion is hellfire.  He writhed in its burnings in an agony that could be understood only by such as knew how almost morbidly sensitive was his nature, and how vital was his conscience.  I became a pastor in the town where he lived, and renewed my association with him as far as I could.  But there was a constraint unlike the old times.