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which drinking occasions. Far is it from uncommon in pious, not to say impious families, for the best beer, or wine, to be handed round and especially commended on the Sabbath; and thus children and servants are taught by their parents and masters, to attach a very high value to intoxicating liquors on a Sunday, more than any other day!

We are all, to a very great extent, the creatures of education. We came into the world without an idea in our heads; our esteem and disapprobation are, for the most part, communicated by others. The Kamschatdale, the Indian, and Frenchman, if brought up together, would, in the main, have agreed in their national taste, although now, different kinds of training have made them so unlike one another, that some have doubted the identity of their origin.

It is well known that the relish of the English for strong drinks is greater than that of any other people under Heaven, but this appetite is not natural. None except the children of drunkards are born with a thirst for these poisons. The taste and the smell is at first repulsive, but after many a temptation, perhaps a drenching, and many a commendation from our parents or guardians, our resistance gives way, and we drink them in the course of time with a zest, and it may be to our ruin. The youth that was hung yesterday, was brought to the gallows by drinking. The first drop of intoxicating liquor he ever tasted was given him by his pious mother. He always had a glass of the best beer given him on a Sunday as a treat; and while he was at home, his father's cask kept him from the ale-house. But he was apprenticed at a distance, and willing to keep up the family custom, and gratify the appetite his mother created, he goes to the tavern every Sunday, to obtain something as good as what he used to have at home. There he falls in with bad company, money gets short, he robs his master, loses his character, becomes a vagabond, and at length commits the crime which has cost him his life, and broken the heart of his mother.

Yonder wretched woman, who prowls about the streets in search of her prey, was the other day an interesting little girl in the Sabbath school, the joy alike of her teachers and parents;

but she always was treated on Sundays, when she had learnt her catechism well, with a drop of good beer. Her seducer knew the power of the draught which her parents had so often so highly recommended; he persuaded her to drink, accomplished his purpose, and doomed her to a life of infamy: deserted by her friends, and frowned upon by all, she has left home, and now infests the town, and hastens to fill up the measure of her iniquity, and bring herself to the miserable end and unwept grave of the prostitute. These representations are not fictitious nor solitary. Hundreds are wanderers from home, are transports in a foreign land never to return again, are the inmates of the workhouse, or lunatic asylum, or are just entering a premature grave, in consequence of that appetite which sprung from early tuition, and which has grown out of moderate drinking. Youths, when they become their own masters, having, in numberless instances, neither their parents' beer nor wine cellars, nor moderation, spend their Sabbaths in a tavern or pot-house.

Nothing is more common, as the families of beer, wine, or spirit-drinkers grow up, than for as many to go to the temple of Bacchus, as to the sanctuary of Jehovah; and thus the idolatry of our Christian country is quite as heinous and debauched as the orgies of Greece or Rome. And what prospect have we that things will be better, so long as godly parents and ministers recommend the Circean bowl? You, as a Christian, declare that poisons which rob men of their reason and health, are necessary for food, and are "the good creatures of God;" the drunkard cordially agrees with every word, and you drink in moderation, and he drinks himself drunk. He knew it was wrong to get drunk, but it greatly mitigated his remorse, to think that the cup which sunk him beneath a brute had been recommended— perhaps, the first cup had been given him, by a person renowned for godliness. Only imagine how things would have been altered, if, instead of commending the pernicious liquors, you had told him the plain truth—that these drinks are poisons,—that they generate disease, crime, and death,-that they are the device of man, and not the work of God,—that they have destroyed myriads in the present world, and in the world to come, and that therefore you were determined never to taste again.

What if you had added, that a million of your own countrymen and countrywomen had already abandoned them, and done so with infinite advantage to their health, their comfort, their morals, and their souls. Had you thus, by precept, persuasion, and practice, condemned the intoxicating bowl, the drunkard would not have taken the draught again, with the feeling that men, eminent in the church, encouraged him to drink, or recommended the liquor that threatened "to drown him in destruction and perdition." “It is good,” saith the Apostle, “neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, is offended, or made weak." And he adds again, for the purpose of warning those who partook of meat offered to idols, and who could do so without injury to themselves, but nevertheless, by their example, grieved others, made them stumble, offend, and become morally weak,—“Now,” says he, “walkest thou not charitably," or according to love, the universal love of the Gospel. "Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died." Could there have been a more moving appeal? Christ died for that brother; he not merely gave up a morsel of meat, or a cup of wine, but he gave his blood for that brother; and, Christians! can you lay claim to the spirit of Christ, if, for the pleasure, the momentary pleasure, of eating meat, or drinking what is admitted by all scientific men to be poison, and therefore unnecessary to a person in health, you continue to use those meats or drinks, which others cannot use with moderation, but are destroyed and ruined for ever by their influence?

Had the drink been nectar, had every pleasure resulted from its use, and every inconvenience from its disuse, the Apostles would have dashed the cup from their lips, and publicly have pledged themselves neither "to touch, taste nor handle" it again, if they had perceived that their liberty had led others into sin. "They walked charitably," Kara ayarny, in charity, or according to the dictates of that love of which the Son of God, in shedding his blood for us, has given so illustrious an example. None of them lived to himself. In eating and drinking they were guided by love to God, and love to man, and whether they ate or drank, they did all to the glory of God." They felt that they were "debtors to all men, to the Jew and the Greek, the

bond and the free," and that they owed men, not only the Gospel, but the advantage of a good example, and of a life of love. Could they have seen murders, thefts, unchastity, Sabbath-breaking as the consequences of wine-drinking, and have known that their own use of that beverage ruined thousands, would they have drunk again? We know they would not. They knew that he who sets an example which leads others into sin, is as guilty of the blood of his brother, as he who neglects to warn him, or by false doctrine leads him to ruin. "We must walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us." We must not only lay down our cups, but even our lives, if necessary, for the brethren.

David longed for the water of the well of Bethlehem, and yet when his three mighty men brought him a cup of it, he would not drink it; and why? The water was the sweetest he ever drank it was that of which he first drank; every sweet remembrance of youth and home was associated with it, and yet he could not drink it now. The thought that three of his friends might have lost their lives in procuring it, made him dread to touch it, he called it the "blood of these men," and he poured it out as a libation before the Lord. Here no one had been killed by the cup, only some one might have been killed, and David could not drink even water, if it endangered the life of one of his subjects.

Things are different with us; we have not the mere possibility of death, our drinks have already slain thousands, and therefore we ought to abstain; while we drink these drinks we are drinkers of blood! Murders in every calendar, thefts in every part of the country, prostitution with its attendant diseases and ruin, Sabbath-breaking with all its awful consequences in both worlds, stare us in the face and tell us to abstain. The Sabbath, the day which Jehovah himself has blessed, and pronounced holy, is made one of the most unhallowed days of the seven. Better let men labor, than leave their own workshops and enter the pothouse. The want of leisure on other days prevents hundreds from running to excess; but on the Sabbath we compel them to play, and we baptize them with the spirit of a fiend, which dethrones their reason and fits them for every vice. By using and commending these drinks, we encourage the violation of the

Lord's-day, and the spread of sensuality. Is it any wonder that God is offended, that the Spirit is withheld, and that we teach, and pray, and preach to so little advantage? If the church cannot part with a cup of poison for the good of others, is it any wonder if God refuse to impart the Holy Ghost? "Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit," is his command. We should get our inspirations from Heaven, and not from the tap or the wine-bottle; for, although some drink with moderation, yet our example is an incentive to others who have not our control, and therefore are led into sin.

Tell us not that the grace of God will counteract the evil, and that consequently we may drink. There is no text that tells us that divine influence will extract a poison which has been wantonly introduced into the body, and which has the malignant power to infect the mind. We must not "tempt the Lord our God," or make unnecessary experiments upon omnipotent power and goodness. We must not "sin that grace may abound." "All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient." We must not give "an occasion of offence" to any; he that causes but "one little one to offend,” to stumble, or fall into sin, "good had it been for that man, if a millstone had been tied round his neck, and he had been cast into the sea." We call on you, then, Christian reader, before you taste these drinks again, to consider the awful violation of the Lord's-day, with its demoralizing consequences, and which you know is originated and connected with the use of these poiWe shall hereafter show the poisonous nature of these drinks, and shall enter into their history, sacred and profane, and thereby prove that they are not intended for man; but for the present, we will not use the argument for total abstinence derived from that source; we here urge the great Christian duty of self-denial, and universal love, as a reason why all should abstain.

sons.

5. If we consider the injury that in various forms is inflicted upon families, we have another dreadful catalogue of crime presented to our view. The husband, who has solemnly vowed at the altar of God, to nourish and cherish the woman to whom he gives his hand, if he neglect to fulfil his promise, is guilty of per

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