excites all the passions to fierce insurrection against God and man, but kindles a deadly civil war in the very heart of their own empire.

Who can enumerate the diseases which intemperance generates in the brain, liver, stomach, lungs, bones, muscles, nerves, fluids, and whatever else is susceptible of disease, or pain in the human system? How rudely does it shut up, one after another, all the doors of sensation, or in the caprice of its wrath throw them all wide open to every hateful intruder. How, with a refinement of cruelty almost peculiar to itself, does it fly in the face of its victims, and hold their quivering eye-balls in its fangs, till they abhor the light and swim in blood.

But to be a little more particular-mark that carbuncled, slavering, doubtful remnant of a man, retching and picking tansy, every morning before sunrise-loathing his breakfast-getting his ear bored to the door of a dram shop an hour after-disguised before ten-quarrelling by dinner time, and snoring drunk before supper.

See him next morning at his retching and his tansy again; and as the day advances, becoming noisy, cross, drivelling, and intoxicated. Think of his thus dragging out months and years of torture, till the earth refuses any longer to bear such a wretch upon its surface, and then tell me, if any Barbadian slave was ever so miserable.

But who is this that comes hobbling up, with bandaged legs, inflamed eyes, and a distorted countenance ? Every step is like the piercing of a sword, or the driving of a nail among nerves and tendons. He suffers more every day and every night than he would under the lash of the most cruel driver. And what is the cause? The humours he tells us trouble him; and though he has applied to all the doctors far and near, he can get no relief.

Ah these wicked and inveterate humours! Every body knows where they came from. But for the bottle he might have been a sound and healthy man. Now he is the most miserable of slaves and there is no hope of his emancipation. He may live as long, possibly, as he would in a sugar-house at Jamaica; but to grind more miserably in the prison which he has built at his own expense, and in manacles which his own hands have forged.

Look next at that wretched hovel, open on all sides to the rude and drenching intrusion of the elements. The panting skeleton, lying as you see, upon a little straw in the corner, a prey to consumption, was once the owner of yonder comfortable mansion, and of that farm so rich in verdure and in sheaves.

He might have owned them still, and have kept his health too, but for the love of strong drink. It is intemperance which has consumed his substance, and rioted upon his flesh and his marrow, and shortened his breath, and fixed that deep sepulchral cough in his wasting vitals. Was ever a kidnapped African more wretched in his Atlantic dungeon? But your sympathies come too late.

Perhaps you sold him the very poison which has brought him to this-or it went out sparkling from your distillery to the retailer, and thence into the jug, half concealed by the tattered garment of the victim, as he carried it home to his starving family. There is no help for him now. He must, day and night, groan and cough away the remnant of his mortal existence, without mitigation and without hope.

Does your sickened and harrowed soul turn away with horror from such a scene? Go with me then to the alms house, and tell me whether you recognize that bloated figure, sitting all day and all night in his chair, because the dropsy will not suffer him to lie down, and thus lingering from week to week under the slow torments of strangulation. How piercing are his shrieks, as if he was actually drowning, from which, indeed, he can obtain a short reprieve only, by diverting from the seat of life the accumulating waters.

He was once your neighbour, thrifty, reputable and happy-but he yielded to the blandishments of the great destroyer. He drank, first temperately, then freely, then to excess, and finally, to habitual inebriation. The consequences are before you. His daily and nightly sufferings no tongue can utter. His disease no skill can cure. The swelling flood in which he catches every precarious breath, no finite power can long assuage The veriest wretch, chained and sweltering between decks in a Portuguese Guineaman, is not half so miserable.

But here we must leave him to be cast a wreck by the angry waters upon the shore of eternity; and enter that

hut, towards which a solitary neighbour is advancing with hurried steps. Here a husband and a father, (shall I call him such ?) is supposed to be dying. The disease is delirium tremens. And Oh what a pitiable object. Every limb and muscle quivers as in the agonies of dissolution. Reason, having been so often and so rudely driven from her seat, by habitual intoxication, now refuses to return. Possibly he may once more be reprieved, to stagger ou a little further, into his ignominious grave; but in the mean time, who that is bought and sold and thrown into the sea, for the crime of being sable and sick, suffers half so much as this very slave?

I might ask you in passing the Insane Hospital, just to look through the grated window, at the maniac in his his straight-jacket-gnashing his teeth, cursing his keepers, withering your very soul by the flashes of his eye, disquieting the night with incoherent eries of distress, or more appalling fits of laughter. Here you would see what it is for the immortal mind to be laid in ruins, by the worse than volcanic belchings of the distillery; and what happens every day from these Tartarean eruptions. But I cannot detain you.

"Who hath wo? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine." Strong drink may exhilarate for a moment, but, "at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." And can any slave-torture be more excruciating than this?

Glance your eye once more at the poor African captive -trace his bloody footsteps to the ship-let your sympathies all cluster round the sufferer in the middle passage, so proverbial for its horrors-follow him thence to the plantation, and thence through years of toil and pain to his refuge in the grave. Then look again at the selfimmolated victim of intemperance-hobbling-ulcerated -bloated-cadaverous-fleshless ;-every nerve and muscle and sensative organ of his body, quivering in the deadly grasp of some merciless disease, occasioned by swallowing the fiery element.

Hear him cry out under the hand of his tormento rs. Follow him, too, through the middle passage from health and freedom and happiness, to all the woes of habitual in

toxication; and thence through scenes of the most grinding and crushing bondage that ever disgraced and tortured humanity, to his final rotting place, and tell me which of these slaves suffers most. Ah, give me, you say, the chains and stripes and toil and perpetual servitude of a West-India plantation, rather than the wo, the wounds, and the diseases of the dram-shop.

Shall I speak of shame, as prolific of mental suffering? What has the manacled and starving captive done to be ashamed of? He is in a degraded condition to be sure; but his degradation is not voluntary. He fought for liberty as long as he could, or he fled from bondage with his utmost speed. Brutal force has prevailed over right. Shame belongs to the master and not to the slave. But look at the intemperate man. No one can become a sot and a reprobate, without suffering extreme mortification, especially in the early stages of his downward course.

Indeed the veriest drunkard, not only in his sober moments, but even when half intoxicated, evidently despises himself, from the bottom of his heart. A hundred times in a year does he wish himself dead from mere selfcontempt. From the public gaze, as you have often seen, he tries to skulk away to some horse-shed or other place of concealment. For days together, after a debauch, he shuts himself up to brood over his degradation; and when at last, he ventures out, how does he shrink from the glance of every eye, and glide along by the wall, or under the fence, like a sheep-stealer.

Nay more; so intolerable is the mortification which preys upon the drunkard's heart, in his lucid intervals, that desperation often ensues, and drives him to suicide.

LESSON XXXVII.

Occasions of Intemperance.-BEECher.

It is of vast importance, that the various occasions of intemperance should be clearly described, that those whose condition is not irretrievable, may perceive their danger and escape, and that all who are free, may be warned off from these places of temptation and ruin. For

the benefit of the young, especially, I propose to lay down a map of the way to destruction, and to rear a monument of warning upon every spot where a wayfaring man has been ensnared and destroyed.

The first occasion of intemperance which I shall mention, is found in the free and frequent use of ardent spirits in the family, as an incentive to appetite, an alleviation of lassitude, or an excitement to cheerfulness. In these reiterated indulgences, children are allowed to partake, and the tender organs of their stomachs are early perverted, and predisposed to habits of intemperance.

No family, it is believed, accustomed to the daily use of ardent spirits, ever failed to plant the seeds of that dreadful disease, which sooner or later produced a harvest of wo. The material of so much temptation and mischief, ought not to be allowed a place in the family, except only as a medicine, and even then it would be safer in the hands of the apothecary, to be sent for like other medicine, when prescribed.

Ardent spirits, given as a matter of hospitality, is not unfrequently the occasion of intemperance. In this case the temptation is a stated inmate of the family. The utensils are present, and the occasions for their use are not unfrequent. And when there is no guest, the sight of the liquor, the state of the health, or even lassitude of spirits, may indicate the propriety of the "prudent use," until the prudent use becomes, by repetition, habitual use-and habitual use becomes irreclaimable intemperance. In this manner, doubtless, has many a father, and mother, and son, and daughter, been ruined forever.

Of the guests, also, who partake in this family hospitality, the number is not small, who become ensnared; especially among those whose profession calls them to visit families often, and many on the same day. Instead of being regarded, therefore, as an act of hospitality, and a token of friendship, to invite our friends fo drink, it ought to be regarded as an act of incivility, to place ourselves and them in circumstances of such high temptation.

Days of public convocation are extensively the occasions of excess which eventuate in intemperance. The means and temptations are ostentatiously multiplied, and multitudes go forth prepared and resolved to yield to temptation, while example and exhilarated feelings secure the ample