and the flow of soul," yet, at the latter end, "it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Many a wretched man has shaken his chains, and cried out, in the anguish of his spirit, O, that accursed resort of social drinking! there my hands were bound and my feet put in fetters; there I went a freeman, and became a slave,—a temperate man, and became a drunkard.

In the same class of high temptation are to be ranked all convivial associations for the purpose of drinking, with or without gambling and late hours. There is nothing which young men of spirit fear less than the exhilaration of drinking on such occasions, nor anything which they are less able to resist than the charge of cowardice when challenged to drink. But there is no one form of temptation before which more young men of promise have fallen into irretrievable ruin. The connection between such beginnings and a fatal end is so manifest, and the presumptuous daring of Heaven is so great, that God, in his righteous displeasure, is accustomed to withdraw his protection, and abandon the sinner to his own

way.

Feeble health and mental depression are to be numbered among the occasions of intemperance. The vital sinking, and muscular debility, and mental darkness, are for a short time alleviated by the application of stimulants. But the cause of this momentary alleviation is applied and repeated, until the habit of excessive drinking is formed, and has become irresistible.

Medical prescriptions have no doubt contributed to increase the number of the intemperate. Ardent spirits, administered in the form of bitters, or as the medium of other medicine, have let in the destroyer; and while the patient was seeking

health at the hand of the physician, he was dealing out debility and death.

The distillation of ardent spirits fails not to raise up around the establishment a generation of drunkards. The cheapness of the article, and the ease with which families can provide themselves with large quantities, the product of their own labor, eventuate in frequent drinking and wide-spread intemperance.

The vending of ardent spirits, in places licensed or unlicensed, is a tremendous evil. Here those who have no stated employment loiter away the day for a few potations of rum, and here those who have finished the toils of the day meet to spend a vacant hour, none content to be lookers-on; all រឺ drink, and none for any length of time drink temperately. Here, too, the children of a neighborhood, drawn in by enticements, associate for social drinking, and the exhibition of courage and premature manhood. And here the iron hand of the monster is fastened upon them, at a period when they ought not to have been beyond the reach of maternal observation.

The continued habit of dealing out ardent spirits, in various forms and mixtures, leads also to frequent tasting, and tasting to drinking, and drinking to tippling, and tippling to drunkenness.

A resort to ardent spirits as an alleviation of trouble results often in habits of confirmed intemperance. The loss of friends, perplexities of business, or the wreck of property, bring upon the spirits the distractions of care and the pressure of sorrow; and instead of casting their cares upon the Lord, they resort to the exhilarating draught; but, before the occasion for it has ceased, the remedy itself has become a calamity more

intolerable than the disease. Before, the woes were temporary; now, they have multiplied, and have become eternal.

The use of ardent spirits to invigorate the intellect, or restore exhausted nature under severe study, is often a fatal experiment. Mighty men have been cast down in this manner, never to rise. The quickened circulation does, for a time, invigorate intellect, and restore exhausted nature. But, for the adventitious energy imparted, it exhausts the native energy of the soul, and induces that faintness of heart and flagging of the spirits which cry incessantly, "Give, give," and never, but with expiring breath, say "It is enough."

The use of ardent spirits, employed as an auxiliary to labor, is among the most fatal, because the most common and least suspected causes of intemperance. It is justified as innocent,—it is insisted on as necessary; but no fact is more completely established by experience than that it is utterly useless, and ultimately injurious, besides all the fearful evils of habitual intemperance to which it so often leads. THERE IS NO NUTRITION IN ARDENT SPIRIT. ALL THAT IT DOES IS, TO CONCENTRATE THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM, FOR THE TIME, BEYOND ITS CAPACITY FOR REGULAR EXERTION. It is borrowing strength for an occasion which will be needed for futurity, without any provision for payment, and with the certainty of ultimate bankruptcy.

The early settlers of New England endured more hardship, and performed more labor, and carried through life more health and vigor, than appertains to the existing generation of laboring men. And they did it without the use of ardent spirits.

Let two men of equal age and firmness of constitution labor together through the summer, the one with and the other without the excitement of ardent spirits, and the latter

will come out at the end with unimpaired vigor, while the other will be comparatively exhausted. Ships navigated as some now are, without the habitual use of ardent spirits, and manufacturing establishments carried on without, and extended agricultural operations, all move on with better industry, more peace, more health, and a better income to the employers and the employed. The workmen are cheerful and vigorous, friendly and industrious, and their families are thrifty, well fed, well clothed, and instructed; and instead of distress and poverty, and disappointment and contention, they are cheered with the full flow of social affection, and often by the sustaining power of religion. But where ardent spirit is received as a daily auxiliary to labor, it is commonly taken at stated times; the habit soon creates a vacancy in the stomach, which indicates, at length, the hour of the day, with as much accuracy as a clock. It will be taken, besides, frequently at other times, which will accelerate the destruction of nature's healthful tone, create artificial debility, and the necessity of artificial excitement to remove it; and when so much has been consumed as the economy of the employer can allow, the growing demand will be supplied by the evening and morning dram from the wages of labor, until the appetite has become insatiable, and the habit of intemperance nearly universal; until the nervous excitability has obliterated the social sensibilities, and turned the family into a scene of babbling and woe; until voracious appetite has eaten up the children's bread, and abandoned them to ignorance and crime; until conscience has become callous, and fidelity and industry have disappeared, except as the result of eye-service; and wanton wastefulness and contention, and reckless wretchedness, characterize the establishment.

LECTURE II.

THE SIGNS OF INTEMPERANCE.

"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again." PROVERBS 23: 29-35.

IN the preceding lecture I considered the nature and occasions of intemperance. In this I shall disclose some of the symptoms of this fearful malady, as they affect both the body and the mind; that every one who is in any degree addicted to the sin may be apprized of his danger, and save himself before it be too late.

In the early stages of intemperance, reformation is practicable. The calamity is, that intemperance is a sin so deceitful that most men go on to irretrievable ruin, warned, indeed, by many indications, but unavailingly, because they understand not their voice.

It is of vast importance, therefore, that the symptoms of intemperance should be universally and familiarly known.