But these men had meant to be honest—­there is no doubt about that.  They had told the young sinner of that which they believed would help him.  They knew, of course, that he would have trouble with his old habits, after a while.  Perhaps they hoped that he would get over them somehow.  Perhaps they did not think very much about it.  In either case, they said nothing.  The patient was suffering.  They gave him medicine that would afford him the quickest relief, without regard to the permanency of the apparent cure.  What an amount of such doctoring has been done through the ages.  Stand up in your graves, you armies of dead men that have thus been dealt with, and nod a “yes” with your grinning skulls!

The clouds grew thicker.  “Dodd” went to his newly formed friends and told them frankly of his condition.  The minister advised him to be much alone and in prayer.  The young man told him that there was no need of his suffering from such appetites, because, he himself—­the young man aforesaid—­could keep from such evil practices easily enough, and if he could, “Dodd” could.

Certainly!

“Dodd” acted on the advice of the minister, and went home and shut himself up alone in his room to pray.  He tried, but the words seemed to go no higher than his head.  Did you ever think that when the Master received his severest temptation it was when he was alone?  Let a man who is tempted beware of trying to win a victory shut up in a room by himself.  The devil has him in a hand to hand fight, in such case, and thereby increases several fold the probability of winning the battle.

“Dodd” tried to pray.  He strove alone, as in an agony.  He besought the power that he had been told to invoke, to take from him the horrible thirst that was gnawing within him.  He wept, he pleaded, he begged.

The gnawing kept on.

There was once one who prayed “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”  It did not pass.

Then, indeed, the clouds did grow dark.  “Dodd’s” doubts left the earth, and reached even to heaven.  He not only doubted the men who had led him to the promised relief; he doubted even the power of religious experience to save a tempted man, and the reality of religion itself.

From this point it is but a step to the supreme doubt of all!

If only the boy had expected a storm, he might have weathered it.  If, in this hour of his trial, some faithful soul could have lived with him, day and night, and never left him for an hour, till the storm was over, he might have come through.  Neither of these things happened, however.

He struggled on for several days.  He gave up finally.  He came home one night drunk, almost to the verge of insanity.  There had been a cyclone in the land of promised eternal sunshine.  “Dodd” Weaver’s bark lay upon its beam ends, and the jagged rocks of infidelity pierced its battered frame.