are obliged to resort in efforts to recover them? None but blind and maddened dupes of the devil would thus go on, heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.

Let Christian philanthropists be active in resisting the evils of intemperance. Remember, especially, that no denunciation is so eloquent as the silent influence of a spotless example. "Take the censer of fire in your hands, and go forth into the camp, and stand between the living and the dead, and stay this plague which rages among the people." With the manufacturer and vender of “liquid fire and distilled damnation," to use Robert Hall's definition, deal kindly and honorably, but firmly. We must speak out without equivocation or fear, with constantly increased pungency and force.

"If we have whispered truth,

Whisper no longer;

But speak as the thunder doth,
Sterner and stronger."

Let each one do his, her duty. Gentle entreaties and judicious zeal are never lost even on the most abandoned. Tender recollections of purer days will recur to the erring, and motives to reform will arise in the heart that is kindly drawn by the cords of a man. Under the process of prayerful benevolence,

"Each virtuous mind will wake
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, kindred, neighbor, first it will embrace,
His country next, and next all human race."

We have referred to the effects produced by intemperance in food and inflammatory drinks. We proceed, thirdly, to note some of the disastrous indulgences which are almost always connected with these. Whatever is added to violent pleasure through sensual gratification, must either become food for the worm that never dies, or be torn from the intemperate votary with acutest pain. The shortest life of a debauchee is long

enough to outlast his character, his constitution, and his peace. The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue; but the end of the guilty is shrouded in frightful gloom, and their renown is as transient as it is full of ignominy and contempt. God has written the law, and verified it in all the history of mankind, that the name of the wicked shall rot.

The great Anti-trinity that opposes Heaven and destroys our race, is stated in John as the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Vices grow and flourish most luxuriantly in clusters; they strengthen and impel each other. One carnal indulgence excites and aggravates a kindred vice, until the unhappy victim, lost to all shame and incapable of all self-control, sinks into stupid slumber amid dangers the most imminent; to use the language of Solomon, he is like one lying down in the midst of the sea, or upon the top of a mast. No man can reasonably pray for a pure soul and a chaste body, if he lives in the practice of intemperate habits, making provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. That which enters his mouth will defile him with more loathsomeness than his disgusting invocations steeped in the rank vapors of animalism can purge away.

All intemperate indulgences, especially narcotics and distilled liquors, destroy self-possession, undermine health, exasperate brutal desires, and render men not only quarrelsome but disgusting. While they excite the physical organs and set them in violent motion, they annihilate the sovereignty of reason, leaving the body to be fitfully impelled by demoniac impulse, and the soul, crushed in its loathsome chains, to contemplate with horror its rapid descent to hell.

"What rein can hold licentious wickedness,

When down the hill he drives his fierce career?"

Narcotics are diversified in kind and act on different organs with especial force, but they all have the same pernicious effects. Some act on the sympathetic system of nerves, others

on the spinal chord; opium acts on the brain, and tobacco excites and powerfully vitiates the system generally. Several kinds of the most common and fashionable beverage participate strongly of pernicious tendencies. It is hard to find anywhere, aside from the pure fountains of nature, "the cup that cheers, but not inebriates." All narcotic substances clog the blood with carbon, and thus arrest the healthy action of the nervous system. Every kind of intoxication disturbs the legitimate action of the mind by poisoning the brain, and thus cripples the will whenever it would control the nerves of sense and emotion.

"Inflaming juice, pernicious to mankind,

Unnerves the limbs, and dulls the noblest mind."

Liebig declares that all artificial stimuli, since they contain more carbon than hydrogen, not only hinder the blood from being properly vitalized in the lungs, but actually combine with the substance of the brain and nerves, so as to alter their character. It is therefore easy to see how that the habitual use of such agents must prove injurious both to body and soul. If their action is long permitted to derange the system, and break up physiological laws,-a code solemn and immutable, like those given on Sinai,-then will a morbid reäction soon follow, full of retribution dreadful to the offender.

The worst habits are always the most imperious; and those appetites which are at the same time the most degraded and the most voracious, are those which are entirely artificial. "Thanks be to the God of nature," exclaimed Epicurus, "that he hath made that which is necessary to be ready at hand, and easy to be had; whilst that which cannot be easily obtained is not necessary at all."

Immense harm results to all sorts of sufferers from the want of pure water and fresh air. Rapid and deadly suffocation sometimes occurs, as in the Black-hole of Calcutta; but the same process in a milder degree frequently goes forward un

noticed in churches and ball-rooms. Lisping young ladies and masculine drones lounge about on sofas and divans, in close apartments and dignified laziness, oppressed with ennui and patronizing doctors to their hearts' content, little dreaming that they are sinking precisely under the same influences which in unventilated ships and in the unwashed apartments of crowded human dens generate putrid fevers of the most frightful and malignant type.

Diogenes, seated at the luxurious table of his monarch, once said, as he surveyed the dainties before him, "Behold how many things there are that Diogenes does not want." This is true independence; and the highest happiness is possessed by him who can say, with Augustine, "How pleasant it is to be without these pleasures." Intemperance in eating, drinking, and other vicious indulgences, produces results directly opposite to what the epicure foolishly desires; he professes to seek pleasure, but that is a boon vouchsafed to the pure only, and not to the voluptuous. God has declared that they who serve the beast shall have no rest day nor night. The sweetness of the honey never can compensate for the bitterness of the sting. Intemperate festivity is one of those sins which Paul affirms to be manifest, leading before unto judgment. The motto of the sensualist would most correctly read, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we must die. Such men suffer the most protracted death in view of the most fearful doom; in life they are lacerated with remorse, as long as conscience can speak, and their death-pillow is lurid with terrific reflections from the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. It is an old story and soon told: the votaries of distilled drinks and voluptuous dishes, saturated with alcohol, bloated with gluttony, and filthy with tobacco, inflame their debauchery to the greatest degree until nature is exhausted, and then, down the gloomy gulf of suicide or the fiery one of delirium tremens, they plunge to eternal death.

CHAPTER V.

FRUGALITY;

OR, THE BEAUTY OF OLD AGE.

We have contemplated the glory of young men, and we now come to consider the beauty of old age. "The beauty of old men is the gray head," says Solomon, Prov. 20: 29. Each period of life has its peculiar honor, the advancing eras growing more and more dignified, until the most majestic beauty of nature stands out to the admiring world crowned with the charms of a venerable and virtuous gray head. Says the same wise preacher, in another proverb, "The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness." The relation of the proverb now under consideration to the one recently discussed, together with the one just quoted, shows that Solomon designed to teach that the beauty of the gray head is found only in the persons of those who consecrated the strength and glory of youth to the practice of virtue and the glory of God. To develop and illustrate this doctrine, we will consider the three following propositions.

Advanced years are necessarily accompanied by oppressive infirmities; the greatest evils of old age are strongly mitigated, if not absolutely foreclosed, by virtuous habits in youth; and when, from the outset, purity has marked the progress of an old man's life, the greatest glory will crown its end.

In the first place, advanced years are necessarily accompanied by oppressive infirmities. This is matter of common observation, and requires no proof. The following prophetic lines, which Milton placed in the lips of the angel Michael, in his