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are eminent divines, and yet all of them attest the importance of our principles by reducing them to practice. And if in the State of New York alone there are so many who have adopted entire abstinence, the number in the whole of the United States must be very great indeed. The following sentiments of Dr. Beecher, of America, may give us some idea of the holy intensity with which the subject is viewed and advocated in that interesting country. "And now," says he, "could my voice be extended through the land, to all orders and descriptions of men, I would cry aloud and spare not. To the watchmen upon Zion's walls, appointed to announce the approach of danger, and to say unto the wicked man Thou shalt surely die,' I would say, can we withhold the influence of our example in such an emergency as this, and be guiltless of our brother's blood? Are we not called upon to set examples of entire abstinence? How otherwise shall we be able to preach against intemperance, and reprove, rebuke, and exhort Talk not of habit' and of · 'prudent use,' and a little for the stomach's sake;' this is the way in which men become drunkards.

Our security and our influence demand immediate and entire abstinence. If nature would receive a shock by such a reformation, it proves that it has already been too long delayed, and can safely be deferred no longer. To the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he hath purchased with his own blood, that he might redeem them from iniquity and purify them to himself a peculiar people, I would say,-Beloved in the Lord, the world hath need of your purified example; for who will make a stand against the encroachments of intemperance, if professors will not? Will you not, then, abstain from the use of it entirely, and exile it from your families? Will you not watch over one another with keener vigilance, and lift up an earlier note of admonition, and draw tighter the bands of brotherly discipline and with a more determined fidelity cut off those whom admonition cannot reclaim? Separate, brethren, between the precious and the vile, the living and the dead, and burn incense between them, that the plague may be stayed."

But I will quote no further: the testimonies adduced in this chapter are sufficient to prove that intoxicating drinks are not in the least needed for health, labour, strength, mental cheer, or longevity. We have seen that millions upon millions of the human family have been cheerful, healthy, robust, happy, and moral without them; and we have also seen that their moderate use has led to intemperance, and been the ruin of millions. Not a single people upon the face of the earth is there, or has ever been, to whom these poisons have been introduced, but they have either destroyed them, or

threatened them with destruction.

We are, as a people, through the infatuation produced by these liquors, on the high road to ruin, but God, in his mercy, has warned us in time, and should the voice of Total Abstinence be heard, we may yet be a saved, a powerful, a prosperous, a moral and a happy people.

CHAPTER VIII.

Our Duty and Consequent Prospects-We ought to abstain ourselves, and oppose the Drinking Habits of the Day-Pothouse Clubs and Drinking at Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Funerals-Not give Drink for Wages-Toasts discountenanced or drank in Water-Not tempt our FriendsWine at the Lord's Table-Our Prospects cheering-Total Abstinence not substituted for the Gospel-Natural Health-Prison-Bankruptcies, Crime at Elections lessened-Prostitution - Increase of Trade Education Attendance on Divine Worship-Increase of Members to Christian Churches-Domestic Comfort-Effects on Benevolent Institutions and on the Missionary Enterprize.

AFTER What has been said concerning the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks, the duty of every patriot and of every christian to abstain cannot be a matter of doubt or hesitation. We have proved that, as articles of food, instead of being nutritious they are poisonous, and that, as medicines, they might immediately be dispensed with. We have seen that disease, crime, pauperism, and death are their invariable attendants, and that their baneful influence neutralises and counteracts a very large proportion of our efforts to enlighten and moralise the people. It has been shown that the strongest, most handsome, athletic, and powerful of the nations have been those who have drunk nothing stronger than water. Never was there a period when any people had such facilities for obtaining strong drinks as are at present possessed by the mass of the British population, and yet among us there are thousands who are never permitted to taste these inebriating liquors; it is neither conscience nor principle, for we are not now speaking of the noble band of voluntary tee-totallers, but of those whose circumstances compel them to abstain; it is neither conscience, principle, nor science, nor brotherly love, but want and poverty, or inability to procure these liquors, that keeps these from drinking intoxicating beverages, and still these very involuntary tee-totallers enjoy better health, and have more strength than their tippling neighbours. The most unquestionable evidence has demonstrated, that when they abstain from these drinks, our countrymen can brave any climate, breathe the air of almost every land, and endure the most arduous labours without any detriment. There is no doubt that the

late expedition up the Niger owed its failure in a great measure to the intoxicating drinks, which the unphilosophical voyagers drank as an antidote for fever! As long as we continue to carry alcoholic drinks with us to Africa, India, or Jamaica, we shall export fevers and miasmata of every description from our own stills and wine vaults. Poisoned and heated by these liquid fires, many of our countrymen expire almost as soon as they touch a foreign coast, and at home the case is little better, for here the ploughman complains of indigestion, the huntsman and the carpenter must carry about with them their box of antibilious pills; large bodied men tremble like criminals and must have gin, a smelling bottle or Eau de Cologne, to keep them from fainting. Our tradesmen, mechanics, senators, and ministers of religion are, almost to a man, suffering from nervousness, or some other complaint which alcohol has engendered; and our wives and daughters, smitten by this pest, are often unfitted for the common duties of domestic life, or drop into the grave in the very flower of their age. In a moral and religious aspect the affair is too dark for us to look upon. The book that told all the crimes of drinking would be too vile to be read. Since I have been writing this Essay, I have been doomed, in consequence of having arrived in a town by the mail early in the morning, to pass two hours, from four until six, in the kitchen of a respectable inn. The proprietor was there all the time, being up betimes to attend to his many customers, whom the early coaches brought to his house. He seemed a respectable man, and had you met him in the street would have passed for a gentleman. Some of the coachmen that lodged there, and took their early breakfast before starting, would, on the box, have passed for polite respectable men. But the inn-kitchen was liberty-hall; here there was no restraint; and what I heard that morning, during two short hours, must not be repeated. Here were the proprietor, coachmen, guards, horsekeepers, porters, &c., all blended together, and the blasphemy, the filthy conversation and obscenity that formed the whole burden of their conversation would not have been exceeded in a pandæmonium. This was the kitchen of a respectable inn, and in the morning between the hours of four and six, and consequently before their passions were but little, if at all, excited by drink; let any one then imagine what must be the language, the thoughts, the passions, and the deeds that form the character of the thousands of gin-shops, pot-houses and taverns, that infest our country. Talk of pagan India; talk of Tyre or Sidon, or Sodom or Gomorrah; these were all chaste and holy compared with the drunkeries of

our day. And yet these alehouses, &c. are said to be essential to the comfort of the people! and christian people, by drinking, commending and dispensing home-brewed beer, wine and spirits, are directly or indirectly contributing their influence and drinking example to keep open these hells. Sure I am that, as stated above, the book that repeated but a thousandth part of what passes daily, and especially on the sacred Sabbath, in these pot-houses and taverns, could not be read. The waste of health, life, talent, intellect, time, character, property and comfort cannot be told. Drunkenness and moderate drinking present to us the blackest catalogue that ever polluted the light, and if we have any purity that crime can disgust, or any pity that misery can move, then ought we to use all our energies to stay this widely spreading desolation. Now as long as intoxicating drinks are in use, all kinds of iniquity will abound. fiery stimulating poison is the only quality in these liquors that obtains for them the favour of the public; and as long as they are drunk, the stimulus they give will be followed by depression, the heat they impart will be followed with thirst, and these two sensations, like "the two daughters of the horse leech," will constantly be crying, "give, give." In every instance, intemperance is the child of that indefinite, undefinable monster called moderation. When we drink these destructive beverages, though it be ever so moderately, we partake of a poison which can do us no good, which in the end may inflict on us an immensity of harm; and at the same time encourage others to use a bowl which to them may be death in both worlds.

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Our first duty, then, is abstinence. We are responsible to God for our example. We may by our "meat or drink destroy him for whom Christ died." And we may rest assured that when God maketh inquisition for blood, he will not hold that man guiltless whose example was the ruin of a neighbour or brother. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, caused Israel to sin; and heavy indeed was the punishment that followed him and his house. The impression has long been deep on my own mind, that one reason why the Holy Spirit is not poured out upon us is, that our needless and reckless indulgence in these liquors has grieved and offended that Divine Comforter. The money wasted on these drinks brands us with the crime of sacrilege; our spending it unnecessarily shows that we can spare it; and if we can spare, we ought to bestow it on the missionary treasury for the conversion of the world, and thus make "to ourselves friends out of the unrighteous Mammon, who, when we die, may receive us into everlasting habitations." Thus, to spend on a vitiated taste what would supply

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our perishing brethren with the means of salvation, is to render us guilty of their blood. If we 66 warn not the wicked man, or send not to warn him, when we have it in our power to do so, his blood will be required at our hands." But we not only destroy by withholding the Gospel, but our example in using a poison beguiles others to death. We walk on the verge of a precipice; others that have not our nerve, follow us to the same summit, and are dashed to atoms, and yet, instead of receding, we continue to regale ourselves with all the sang froid of a Cain, who said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Surely it is time to amend our ways, and abstain from the fatal cup. Were the juice nectar, or the fruit of paradise, yet if its use is the occasion of crime, misery, and death, to others, it would be our duty, both as patriots, philanthropists, and Christians, to spurn with the deepest dismay, so disastrous a bowl. And imperative as this duty, viewed under such an aspect, appears, its obligation is increased a thousand fold, when it is remembered, that the drink in question, so far from being ambrosia, is a most deleterious poison. Wherever there is alcohol, it may be said that "there is death in the pot ;" and while we sip it ourselves and commend the cup to others, we are, in many instances, guilty of murder and suicide; we betray our friends with a kiss, and at the same time effectually shorten and terminate our own existence.

But beside abstaining ourselves, we must set our faces against the present drinking habits of society, which are associated with almost every engagement and relation in life, whether commercial or political, domestic, or religious.

Pot-house clubs, and the paying of wages at public-houses, bowling-greens at the drunkery, and other amusements intended to allure men to drink these accursed liquors, should have our most energetic opposition. We are not against rational exercise nor rational amusement, either for the poor or the rich; but let it be exercise, and let the exercise be rational and innocent, that it may neither reflect on our intellect, nor lessen our cheer by infixing a sting on the conscience; and therefore let every amusement be far removed from the alehouse, let the poor also be encouraged to lay up for sickness and old age, but let them not be mocked with the provision of the pot-house club. In how many instances, alas! have these falsely named benefit societies proved the greatest bane and scourge. Thither the youth of much promise has gone to deposit a portion of his earnings for a time of need, but he has returned another man; the publican's bowl has bewitched him, and the provident young man has died a reckless spendthrift, who,

before he himself sunk into the grave, broke the heart of her whom he tenderly loved, until the hour that the poison of the beer-shop changed the heart of the man into that of a monster. What a robbery, too, is committed upon the wages, and a greater still upon the character, of the labourer, by paying him at the publichouse, and, indeed, by paying him on the Saturday night! Why send him to the drunkard's school to receive his wages? Why tax him to the amount of a pot of beer before he is permitted to touch the fruit of his toil? Why expose his morals to the contaminated breath of the drunkery. The dead are there. Though whitened, still it is a sepulchre full of dead men's bones, haunted with the groans of broken-hearted, starving children and mothers, and execrated by the curses of the damned! Why send him where the harp, and the viol, and the tabouret, and the pipe are played to beguile the unwary, and to make the simple forget that the house is none other than the house of demons and the gate of hell. Surely, also, the workman ought to have his pay in time for the market, that his wife may lay it out to the best advantage, and that the week's stock being laid in, the husband and wife may escape the temptations of a Saturday evening's debauch.

The practices also of drinking at baptisms, marriages, and funerals, should be abandoned. To be unable to rejoice at the birth of a child, or at its consecration to the Redeemer, unless we have the tankard, or the wine bottle, is to show, that far from being christians, we are sunk below the brute creation. To need any other cheer than that which natural affection begets, or religion inspires, is to prove that we are heartless and Christless. The vulture without gin, exults in her offspring; and the tigress, without wine, fondles over her young; and shall bosoms warmed with the nobler feelings of humanity; understandings enlightened by the Spirit of the Almighty; hearts glowing with divine love, and hopes throbbing with the inspirations of celestial prospects, need the accursed fire of alcohol poison to cheer them and enable them to rejoice? God forbid, that we should blaspheme humanity, and blaspheme our Maker by such an intimation! And again we ask, must youthful love be inspired and consecrated, and connubial love cherished and kept alive, by the fires of alcohol? The very suggestion of such a thought intimates that we are "without natural affection" and ought never to marry. The love, or the cheer, or joy, that must be drawn from the wine vessel, are unnatural, artificial, inhuman, and neither fit for the bosoms of human beings, brutes nor demons. And can we expect that God will baptize that child with

these very mourners begin to

Reel over the full bowl, and when 'tis drained
Fill up another to the brim, and laugh
At the poor bugbear Death;

his spirit whose parents are polluting them- | mourning than to the house of mirth : ". selves with strange fire; or that those nuptials can be blessed, or that union happy, which was stained with the foamings of the drunkard's bowl? History and fact answer, No. Drinking at births, weddings, and baptisms, are among the fruitful sources of drunkenness in all our large towns; and we all know the thousand miseries attendant upon this most desolating sin. I may be told that the Saviour wrought a miracle, that wine might not be wanting at the marrage of Cana. So he did. But I have before shown, from the character of the wines which in that country were called "Good;" and from the wisdom, love and compassion which regulated every action of the Redeemer, that the wine was neither alcoholic nor inebriating. I would not for the wealth of the Indies insinuate that the Son of God produced a beverage which he knew would poison the stomach, inflame the passions, and corrupt the morals of the guests. He wrought that miracle to show or "manifest forth his glory, that his disciples might believe on him;" but no one except an infidel or a drunkard would say, that his "glory was manifested" in producing a drink which poisoned his friends; and the knowledge that he did so, instead of awaking or confirming our faith in him, would be calculated to beget unbelief. Let our drinks at weddings and baptisms, if we cannot be happy without them, be such as shall manifest the "glory of Christ," and such as shall neither reflect on our prudence and kindness, nor endanger our health and morals. And let us remember, that the sooner we obtain the custom of deriving our cheer from the proper exercise of human affections; from benevolent, intellectual, and moral sources; rather than from the merely animal and brutish gratifications of eating and drinking "meats and drinks," the sooner we shall prove that our minds and affections have arrived at maturity.

The baneful custom of drinking at funerals must be abolished. At such a time, generally speaking, the "heart is soft." Most men if sober are serious and disposed to reflection at a funeral. The corpse, the shroud, the coffin, and the grave, and the tolling bell, strike the tongue of the swearer and obscene talker dumb; paralyse the unchaste; clothe the face of the jester with melancholy; and make the infidel tremble and half forswear his belief in chance and annihilation; but let the cup pass round a little, and how the scene changes! These very mourners, who came to mourn, and actually felt seriously and morally for a while; and felt too, that it was good to have the finer sensibilities of our nature called into exercise; that it was proper and profitable to "weep with those that weep; ' that it was "better to go to the house of

and yet the very drink, that excites that demon grin, and jest at the ruin of a temple which Divine power guilt and sin demolished, is tinctured with a poison which, at the very moment that the scorner laughs, is impregnating his vitals, polluting his soul, and hurrying him to the pangs of the "second death." How dreadful also is the havoc which this accursed liquor commits upon the feelings of the bereaved! Alcohol murders the infant at the breast, and the broken-hearted mother throws herself into the arms of the assassin to have her sorrows assuaged and her heart comforted. He slays the youth that was the only stay of his father's house, and the parents, while shedding tears of blood for their loss, cling more closely than ever to the fiend that has blasted all their hopes and written them "childless." How often have we seen the hoary-headed relative, or friend, — that came to weep-and actually did weep and pray, and resolve to be a christian as long as the cup was kept from him-drink himself drunk and stagger home from the grave of the friend that he loved, not, alas! more serious, but more hardened and brutish from the visitation. All the tears of sympathy have been dried up by this fiery stimulant; all the solemnities of the grave chased away; and all the suitable exhortations of the minister neutralised, by the demoralising influence of that vile drink so copiously supplied at funerals. Volumes would not suffice to tell the mischiefs that arise from the practice of pushing round the venomous cup, on these solemn occasions; but surely, as christians, we ought, by our total abstinence, and benevolent admonitions, to prevent death and the grave from being incentives to vice, immorality and hardness of heart.

We ought also to abolish the practice of rewarding men for their labour or their kindness by promising them, or paying them with these pernicious drinks. What a shame to administer to the labourer a cup of poison instead of wages; or to reward the kind-hearted neighbour, who did us a service, with a stimulating draught which made him thirst for more, and sent him to the pot-house to perfect himself in drunkenness! Give him bread, give him clothes, give him a book, or give him money, but endanger not his morals, his health and soul, by giving him an inebriating drink. Often in this proceeding there is as much knavery and craft as there is recklessness of the character of the hapless recipient. Labour, worth ten times the amount of the value of the beer or gin which is given, is

wrung, or inveigled out of the poor dupe for a paltry pot or glass of poison, and yet the self-styled christian that does this, has the impudence to thank God that he is not a sharper! "The hire thus kept back," and for which a worthless demoralising poison was substituted, "crieth, and its cry entereth into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth." By such deeds "treasure is heaped together for the last days."

The custom of toasting every thing by drinking strong drinks, must be abandoned. Never, perhaps, was there a more irrational and absurd practice. As though we could not express our loyalty to the Queen, our good wishes to the bishops, clergy and church, or our affection to our friends and country, without swallowing a portion of poison!! If there is any real connexion between drinking and loyalty, why not use an innocent beverage? In thousands of instances the love of drink and not love to the Monarch, is the origin of the toast, and those who are most noisy with their "three times three" are swallowing all their money, all their morality, all their loyalty and patriotism at the same time.

Some of these

would curse God and the king for a pot of beer; and others, ruined by drinking and toasting, are just ready for anything that would mend their affairs and get them some drink. The most disloyal and disaffected of our countrymen are those who have beggared themselves by drinking. It is impossible to tell the crime and the misery which drinking of toasts has originated. Lewis the XIV. of France is said to have foreseen the consequences, and to have prohibited the drinking of toasts. But if after all we must express our feelings of loyalty and affection in this manner, why not use a liquor that is perfectly harmless? The writer has been at several public dinners, and drunk all the toasts in water, and done so without any annoyance from others, and with the greatest advantage to his own health and enjoyment both at the meeting and after its excitement was over. Water drinking kept him from the evil of over excitement, and therefore was alike beneficial to health and to feeling.

We ought not to tempt our friends by placing these drinks before them. You would not offer them digitalis or prussic acid, and why give them what is quite as much a poison, and may be more destructive? Give your friend prussic acid and he will die at once; the suffering will be short, the tale soon told; but give him alcohol and you may cherish, or call forth a taste, which will torment him with indigestion, unnerve and paralyse his powers, excruciate him with gout, and bring him slowly to the grave; but not perhaps until he has sacrificed his property, his character, his friends, and his soul;-and thus a murder will be per

petrated which the language of mortals wants words to describe. If he must have strong drink, act like the sons of prophets of old. Cry, "alas!" and tell him, there is "death in the pot."

Finally. We ought to substitute an innocent beverage for the poison which is now so generally used at the Lord's table. I have before shown that at the first sacrament our Lord drank an unfermented wine; we therefore sin against his blessed example by the use of any other; and we place in the hands of the members of the church a beverage which may cherish or call forth a vitiated taste, injurious, and perhaps, fatal to their piety. Not long ago a reformed drunkard and apparently a converted man, approached the Lord's table of a church which I could name; he ate the bread, and drank the wine, but mark the result; the taste of a drunkard for alcohol is like that of the blood-hound for blood, a single sip makes him thirst for more; so here; the wine tasted at the sacred communion, revived the old passion, and he, who seemed a saint, was corrupted by the sacramental wine, went home, got drunk and died a drunkard! Surely we ought not to change "the cup of the Lord into the cup of devils."

Viewed in whatever light they may, the benefits that must follow the adoption of total abstinence are incalculable. I am persuaded that very few persons are at all alive to the importance of the subject, or have any idea of the glorious prospects of happiness and prosperity, both to the world and the church, that must be consequent on the abandonment of the use of inebriating drinks, And, in giving this opinion, it is not intended to intimate, as some affirm, that total abstinence will be, in any sense whatever, a substitute for the gospel or the grace of God. Let us suppose that every island in the Pacific was surrounded with a great wall, like that of China, which prohibited every Christian from entering, and preaching the gospel; and let us suppose, further, that a number of persons had banded themselves together for the purpose of persuading the people to throw down these walls, and remove such obstacles entirely out of the way; would any one say that these pioneers were substituting their "wall-razing" for the gospel of Christ? Or let us imagine that, in our own country, there was a large deep pit, and that hundreds of our countrymen were so infatuated that they threw everything into this pit; if you gave them money, instantly it was thrown into this pit; if you gave them clothes, instead of clothing themselves with them, away all were thrown into the pit; if you gave them Bibles, or good books, very soon the word of life would be thrown into the pit; in fact, the pit mania has at length proceeded

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