pe from
him to lift it again no more. Thus Jamie was conqueror still; and his
victory was one which Alexander, the conqueror of the world, could not
gain. Jamie gained a victory over himself, and he that ruleth over his
own spirit is better than he that taketh a city; but Alexander, who wept
because he had not other worlds besides his own to subdue, died as a
fool dieth, and sleeps in a drunkard's grave.

Jamie learned an important lesson in his victory, which will be of use
to him as long as he lives. Whatever bad habit, he says, has got hold
upon you, _break it of at once_. Would you pull your child out of the
fire cautiously and gradually; or would you out with him at once? So let
it be with every thing wrong. Don't prepare for ceasing from sin
to-morrow, or next year, but cease from it now. Do so yourself; go right
up to your neighbor without fear, and in love tell him to do the same,
having this assurance on your mind continually, _that what ought to be
done, can be done_.

Jamie seemed from the commencement, to have taken for his motto, Expect
great things, work for them, and you shall have them. Work as though all
depended on self; pray as knowing all to depend upon God. He knew his
place, and modestly kept it; yet when opportunity offered for dropping a
word on behalf of temperance, in the ear either of clergyman or layman,
whatever his rank, he did what conscience told him was right towards a
neighbor and a brother. Jamie's pockets and hat were filled with tracts,
which, as the most suitable plan for his shallow purse, and perhaps,
too, for securing a reading of them, he generally lent, and sometimes
gave away, to all who promised to read.

Let it not be supposed that amidst such active benevolence he neglected
his own business. No; Jamie had not learned in vain the apostle's maxim,
"Let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he
may have to give to him that needeth." It was nothing for him to start
off half a dozen miles of an evening after his work was finished, to
procure some new tracts, or attend a temperance-meeting, or read and
talk kindly to some poor drunkard, whose wife had sent him a hint that
her husband would be glad to see him; or else to procure the services of
some clergyman to address the next meeting of his Temperance Society.
Jamie is one of those who imagine that the business of a minister of the
Gospel is not finished when he has preached a couple of discourses on