your fellow-citizens shall delight to honor; if you would enjoy the serene pleasures of domestic life, and plant no sting in the bosoms of those who love you most dearly, then dare to resist this tempter whatever form he may assume, whatever disguise he may wear! If the highest in station in the land should seek to draw you off from this high position; yea, if she, who seems to you the fairest and purest of her sex, commends this poisoned chalice to your lips, then in all the confidence of rectitude and intelligent principle, refuse the offer, and prove yourself truly brave as free.

Around us intemperance is working out the ruin of hundreds of the young and the noble. In the wineparty and the club-room, it begins to throw around multitudes the silken net of its enchantment; in restaurants and elegant saloons these cords are transmuted into chains of brass; and ere they or their friends are aware, they have lost the confidence of employers, they are marked as men to be shunned by an eagle-eyed public; they are fast descending to the gross sensuality of the doomed and lost inebriate. If any of you have begun to form this terrible habit, and feel a thirst for this poisonous stimulus; if you find growing the fondness for this fatal indulgence, and your feet at stated times seeking the haunts of intemperance, and you begin to comfort yourself with the deceptive argument that you are only a moderate drinker, to you I say, with the deepest solemnity, "turn! turn!! TURN!!! mad swimmer! already thou art in the frightful vortex; round and round it has borne thee, till intoxicated with the pleasure, thou seest not how the circle narrows and stealthily moves thee nearer the liquid sides of the foaming abyss. Look up to the heavens above thee, and the friends who have

gone there, and the Savior who sits there, and prepare to bid them an eternal farewell! Look down to that horrible abode where the drunkards dwell-where inebriates expiate the crime of debasing the image of God and all the high powers of an immortal, and prepare to enter it! You look incredulous! you laugh in confident security! alas! it is this very assurance of safety, which the dying sometimes feel when sensibility is departing, and their hour is near at hand, that shows the power this dread monster has gained over your soul.

There is but one hope for you, young men; one ground of confidence on which you can build securely; one position in which you can be fully prepared to resist the temptations of time, and the terrors of the grave. It is not the confidence of pride, nor the hope of a stoical philosophy, nor the power of your own resolution. It is the hope of religion, the cross of Jesus, the strength of God vouchsafed to our weakness, and the truth of God revealed to guide us. Look up to Him who hath resisted all the power of temptation, who hath borne the brunt of the fiercest assaults of the great adversary; who hath withstood the flattering enticement of the world when it caressed Him, and braved its wrath when its "hosannas were changed into "crucify him, crucify him." Escape to this refuge, and sure as the throne of God is firm, you will find Him a power stronger than the strong man armed to deliver thee, and a heart of infinite love to pity and bless thee. What but Christianity-a humble faith in Jesus, will keep a young man pure in such a city, amidst foes so watchful, amidst friends so treacherous, amidst the powers of evil, which in all forms of light and joy address the unsuspecting and the ardent? Come then, in penitence and faith, to Jesus,

renouncing not only this use of the intoxicating cup, but the sins of thy heart, and you shall not only safely pass this troubled sea of time, not only amidst the night of affliction will you hear the songs of angels, but in the hour of death you will win the victory, and at the bar of God find a joyful acceptance.

THE CARD-TABLE.
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ESTHER iii, 7. In the first month-that is, the month Nisan-in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur-that is, the lotbefore Haman, from day to day, and from month to month, to the twelfth month-that is, the month Adar.

HAMAN, the proud and ambitious prime minister of Ahasuerus, could not endure the cold and silent contempt of Mordecai, the Jew. Disdaining to take vengeance on him alone, he resolved to vent his fury, and give full sweep to his revenge, in the utter destruction of the whole Jewish nation. To fix upon the proper time for this abominable atrocity was no easy matter. Haman, with all his wickedness, is yet superstitions, and thinks his plans may miscarry, unless he can fix upon a lucky day for their execution. To effect this, he summons the diviners, and they cast the lot before him; and he makes his appeal to the idol gods of the Persian to assist him in his impious purpose. Now mark the issue. The God of Israel so overrules the decision of the lot as to place the day for this universal butchery of the kindred of Mordecai nearly twelve months ahead; and thus gave ample time for him and Esther to counterwork and defeat the whole project. Haman's plan failed; the Jews were delivered; and he and his sons perished ignominiously on the gallows. He was a gambler on a large scale, in a high position; the stakes were the life of a

nation and his own. He had the heart of a gamblera heart, foul, passionate, eager for that which should cost him nothing, but which brought to others suffering and woe inexpressible. He had the principles and practice of a gambler; for while he wished to receive without cost, he was ready, in order to win all, to stake all on the cast of a die. In this great game he lost — lost all: his name, and fame, and property, and family, and life, all perished. For there was a God above him, whose people and laws he outraged, who would not suffer the wretch to prosper—who was intent on maintaining a higher law than Haman recognized, and obliging him to stand forth, in all coming time, as a warning to the despisers of his sovereignty and providence.

In discoursing to you, young men, on gambling as one of the chief temptations that address you in this city, I have selected this case, both for its atrocity and its end, as an illustration of that even-handed justice, which, soon or late, commends the poisoned chalice to the lips of the poisoner, and the absolute certainty that he who trifles with the great principles of justice on which society and the throne of God repose, will, in time, feel the weight of these principles in the infliction of the terrible sanction which ever attends them. The fundamental and vitiating principle of all gambling is injustice. To attempt to gain that for which you render no equivalent to possess yourself of the money of another without bestowing any valuable consideration in return is the evil principle that renders gambling rotten in the heart. There are some things which, good in themselves, are yet rendered the source of infinite mischief by their abuse. But the gambler starts on a vicious principle, and, from the beginning, arrays himself against the very principles which are essential to the