and the terrible necessity it generates for the continuance and increase of this element of evil. It is as if you should tear asunder the gases which, in combination, form the healthful atmosphere and the sparkling water, and daily inhale a portion of nitrogen and hydrogen. It is as if, descending from the salubrious position where the elements were held in happy equipoise, you should occasionally plunge your head into a diluted bath of carbonic acid gas, less concentrated than nature sometimes gathers it together in wells and sinks of corruption. The very fact that, in its operation, the poison is so taken as to act slowly, constitutes the very secret of its terrible success. Were it more sudden and violent in its action; or were it at first taken in such quantities as to test its ruinous effects and develop at once its deadly influence, then it would be suffered to remain quietly on the druggists' shelves with upium and arsenic. But when, by a process of dilution, it is at first taken in such quantities as to secure the stimulus without subjecting the victim to any immediate evil, then secretly it excites the appetite, and creates the necessity for its presence, until he is its veriest slave, and ruin begins to stare him in the face for time and eternity. Write out, then, on every decanter of the intoxicating beverage, whether distilled or fermented: Poison to the body-derangement to the mind-ruin to the soul! Such is the calm, clear, impartial testimony that science brings to warn you against the arts of this chief tempter, and forearm you against his assaults.*

* Dr. Nott, in the "Enquirer," thus speaks of diffusive stimulants, such as brandy, alcoholic wine, beer, etc.: "Diffusive stimulants also act injuriously on the parts with which they come in contact, but differ from the former class (local stimulants) in their influence being extended over the whole system. If an individual swallow a small proportion of pure spirit on an empty stomach, a sensation of burning or irritation ensues. Other and more distant organs, however, shortly afterward par

But leaving this position, permit me to conduct you to another, from which, with equal distinctness, you may discern the true nature of the evil before us and the legitimate results of the use of the intoxicating cup. If science lifts its voice against it as suicidal, so with greater emphasis do all history and experience. The history of the deeds of this arch-tempter no man can read without

ticipate. The brain, in particular, exhibits marks of disorder, and a species of temporary delirium or mental excitement follows, in addition to general physical disturbance. All of these symptoms indicate some peculiar influence by which diffusive stimulants expand and operate over the whole of the animal functions.

"For these reasons it will easily be perceived how incomparably more dangerous is the class of diffusive stimulants, than those designated as 'simple stimulants.' The latter exercise their injurious powers on a limited scale only; while the former possess the power of injuring one or more of the vital functions at the same time. The brain, for example, may be silently undergoing destructive changes, while at the same period the stomach and its functions may be so disordered as to hinder digestion and nutrition; and thus the two grand sources of life and energy suffer, either simultaneously or successively, from the same pernicious cause.

"The peculiar powers of the nervous system bear an important relation in regard to the present inquiry. In relation to diet, one of nature's sentinels consists in the distinct sensation which is experienced when the stomach is loaded with food, either improper in its quantity or injurious in its quality. The class of diffusive stimulants, however, when taken in moderate quantities, produce more or less injury without exciting conscious sensation in the stomach. General exhilaration usually follows moderate vinous indulgence, but the stomach itself, when in a state of health, may or may not display conscious gratification or dislike.

"In this consists the great danger of moderate drinking. Individuals commonly do not feel any uneasy sensations consequent on moderate indulgence in wine; they cannot, therefore, for a moment, suspect the slightest possibility of injurious consequences arising from a cause apparently so innocent and devoid of danger. Experiment and extended observation, however, lead us to a contrary conclusion. The healthy relations of the system may, for some time, be almost imperceptibly undermined, and its harmonious operations disturbed, and not the slightest suspicion be entertained that these changes have originated in some injurious, though silent, action on the digestive organs."

unutterable loathing and horror. That which is written forms the saddest and darkest chapter in the records of a fallen humanity. Yet that which is unwritten, which the memory of God and the unhappy victims alone retain, will, erelong, startle assembled millions and darken the vault of heaven with horror, when these scenes of woe, and riot, and worse than brutal indulgence shall be revealed at the last great day. The pathway of this deceiver has ever been strewn with blasted hopes; thronged with a haggard, emaciated, filthy, riotous multitude, vocal with obscenity and blasphemy, with the ravings of despair and the songs of the delirious; bedewed with the tears of heart-broken wives and parents: beside him I see half-starved childhood, weeping womanhood pleading with him to spare the father and the husband; I hear all cries of rage and horror, and see all forms of disease and wickedness escorting his progress. I look back far into the past and trace his footsteps in sin, and shame, and blood. He debauched Noah; he cursed Canaan; he brought down the divine malediction again and again upon Israel. Profane history is full of his deeds of death. Read the life of Bacchus, the god of the winecup. Behold the images sculptured to represent his character and influence! There is beauty in Venus; majesty in Jupiter; stern manliness in Mars; rugged, brute power in Vulcan; chaste freedom in Diana; elasticity in Mercury; but Bacchus is the very picture of an effeminate, lecherous, idiotic young profligate, chanting his obscene songs as he reels from side to side, amid a crew of noisy and riotous bacchanals. He is the god of rowdyism and revel, and he marches through the land like a babbling inebriate, with an escort of drunken fools dancing and shouting by his side. Sometimes, indeed, he is seen naked, riding on the shoulders of Pan; and

then again, as a miserable, dropsical, trembling old man; as if to represent how quickly the intoxicating cup could transform beautiful and vigorous youth into the decrepitude, and helplessness, and hopelessness of a forlorn old age. Associated with him and his image were other things most infamous and abominable. "What shall we say," says the younger Pliny, "to the infamous representations upon the drinking-cups and vessels for wine, which would seem as though drunkenness alone were insufficient to excite men to lewdness." Fit god, this, for the mad and suicidal worshipers, whose highest joy is in the intoxicating cup and whose noblest service is the prostitution of their immortal nature to the most debasing sensuality! fit deity for the tavern and the grogshop! fit president for the midnight revel and stale debauch! fit usher to the haunts of infamy and the gates of her whose guests are in hell! But God forbid, that he, who has thus befooled the race; he, who gave to Circe her wand of power to change the proud followers of Ulysses into swine; he, whose footsteps have beggared millions, and whose presence has turned the Eden of our households into scenes of horror not unlike that which the pen of Dante has so vividly described in the final dwelling-place of the inebriate; that he should preside at our festive boards; that our sons and daughters should weave garlands for his idiot brow, or that his image should be installed in our city-hall or state capitol. And so whenever along the past you trace the history of this deceiver, you behold the wrecks of humanity, society debased and corrupted, while vice in every form, grown rank and tall, attends his progress.

Now it is a matter of vast importance that, in taking this review and deepening in your souls a just impression of the evils which follow the use of the intoxicating cup,

you should understand precisely the source of all this misery, and the cause which has led on to such fearful results. There must be something clear, marked, and decisive in any habit or custom, which shall issue in such streams of suffering; there must be something here on which you can lay your hand and say, this is the radical principle which has given birth to these frightful products. It is perfectly demonstrable in this case, that the habit of drinking alcoholic liquors in any quantity, or in any such quantity as is deemed safe and prudent by those who use them, is not only the prime, but almost the sole cause of intemperance. And here I wish to distinguish between what, for distinction, may be termed a generic and a specific cause; between those general customs which may, now and then, effect certain results, and those special customs which always tend to produce them, and which, but for some peculiar counteracting influences, always would produce them. The habit of eating may result in rare cases of gluttony; but these are exceptions to the rule and by no means. mark it as a specific cause; but the habit of quaffing the intoxicating cup is not so much a general or an occasional, as it is a specific and constant, cause of excess in drinking. Unlike healthful food, it is of the very nature of this poison, wherever it exists in quantities sufficient to produce a perceptible effect, to induce a thirst for itself, which, as it is gratified, in time ripens into a morbid craving for increased potations, until there is created the burning appetite of the confirmed inebriate, which only the fiery liquid, that has produced it, can for a moment gratify, and which begins its horrible demands the moment the excitement of the stimulant has passed away. It is of the very nature of all intoxicating liquids so to corrupt and destroy the vital powers of the body,