We might almost rouse up a crusade to cross the deep, to stop by force such inhumanity. But, alas! we should leave behind us, on our own shores, more wives in the fire than we should find of widows thus sacrificed in all the East; a fire, too, which, besides its action upon the body, tortures the soul, by lost affections, and ruined hopes, and prospective wretched

ness.

It is high time to enter upon the business of collecting facts on this subject. The statistics of intemperance should be published; for no man has comprehended, as yet, the height and depth and length and breadth of this mighty evil.

We execrate the cruelties of the slave-trade: the husband torn from his wife; the son from his father; brothers and sisters separated forever; whole families in a moment ruined! But are there no similar enormities to be witnessed in the United States? None, indeed, perpetrated by the bayonet, but many, very many, perpetrated by intemperance.

Every year, thousands of families are robbed of fathers, brothers, husbands, friends. Every year, widows and orphans are multiplied, and gray hairs are brought with sorrow to the grave. No disease makes such inroads upon families, blasts so many hopes, destroys so many lives, and causes so many mourners to go about the streets because man goeth to his long home.

We have heard of the horrors of the middle passage, the transportation of slaves,-the chains, the darkness, the stench, the mortality, and living madness of woe, and it is dreadful. But bring together the victims of intemperance, and crowd them into one vast lazar-house, and sights of woe quite as appalling would meet your eyes.

Yes, in this nation there is a "middle passage" of slavery,

and darkness, and chains, and disease, and death. But it is a middle passage, not from Africa to America, but from time to eternity; and not of slaves whom death will release from suffering, but of those whose sufferings at death do but just begin. Could all the sighs of these captives be wafted on one breeze, it would be loud as thunder. Could all their tears be assembled, they would be like the sea.

The health of a nation is a matter of vast importance, and none may directly and avowedly sport with it. The importation and dissemination of fevers for filthy lucre's sake would not be endured; and he who should import and plant the seed of trees which, like the fabled Upas, poisoned the atmosphere, and paved the earth around with bones, would meet with universal execration. The construction of morasses and stagnant lakes, sending out poisonous exhalations, and depopulating the country around, would soon be stopped by the interposition of law. And should a foreign army land upon our shores, to levy such a tax upon us as intemperance levies, and to threaten our liberties as intemperance threatens them, and to inflict such enormous sufferings as intemperance inflicts, no mortal power could resist the tide of indignation that would overwhelm it.

It is only in the form of ardent spirit, in the way of a lawful trade extended over the entire land, that fevers may be imported and disseminated; that trees of death may be planted; that extensive morasses may be opened, and a moral miasma spread over the nation; and that an armed host may land, to levy upon us enormous taxations, to undermine our liberties, bind our hands, and put our feet in fetters. This dreadful work is going on, and yet the nation sleeps. Say not that all these evils result from the abuse of ardent spirit; for, as human nature is constituted, the abuse is as

certain as any of the laws of human nature.

The commerce, therefore, in ardent spirit, which produces no good, and produces a certain and an immense amount of evil, must be regarded as an unlawful commerce, and ought, upon every principle of humanity, and patriotism, and conscience, and religion, to be abandoned and proscribed.

LECTURE V.

THE REMEDY OF INTEMPERANCE.

"Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.

"Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory." HABAKKUK 2: 9-11, 15, 16.

WE have endeavored to show that commerce in ardent spirit is unlawful,

1. Inasmuch as it is useless; and,

2. As it is eminently pernicious.

We now proceed to adduce further evidence of its unlawfulness; and observe,

3. That it seems to be a manifest violation of the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and of various other evangelical precepts.

No man can act in the spirit of impartial love to his neighbor, who, for his own personal emolument, inflicts on him great and irreparable evil; for "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor." Love will not burn a neighbor's house, or poison his food, or blast his reputation, or destroy his soul. But

the commerce in ardent spirit does all this inevitably and often. Property, reputation, health, life, and salvation, fall before it.

The direct infliction of what is done indirectly would subject a man to the ignominy of a public execution. Is it not forbidden, then, by the command which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves? "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Be willing to do for others whatever you may demand of them, and inflict nothing upon them which you would not be willing to receive. But who is willing to be made a drunkard, and to have his property squandered and his family ruined, for his neighbor's emolument? Good were it for the members of a family if they had never been born, rather than to have all the evils visited upon them which are occasioned by the sale of ardent spirit.

It is scarcely a palliation of this evil that no man is destroyed maliciously, or with any direct intent to kill; for the certainty of evil is as great as if waters were poisoned which some persons would surely drink, or as if a man should fire, in the dark, upon masses of human beings, where it must be certain that death would be the consequence to

some.

Those who engage in this traffic are exposed to temptations to intemperance which no man will needlessly encounter who has that regard to the preservation of his own life and virtue which the law of God requires. All who are employed in vending ardent spirit in small quantities do not, of course, become intemperate. But the company in whose presence they pass so much of their time, and the constant habit of mixing and tasting, have been the means of casting down many strong men wounded. It is also a part of the