the feeble swimmer, and push him back into the fiercest current of a raging appetite. The sight of such a soul, endowed with the richest gifts of intellect and all the finest feelings of our humanity, struggling against the cursed influence that has all but ruined him, and just as he has reached smooth water, and begins to exult in the prospect of a life of usefulness here and of holiness hereafter; at such an hour, to see the hand of woman proffer this temptation, and young companions urge him to accept it, and hoary heads frown upon his want of conformity to a fashionable custom, is enough to make an angel weep, and gather about the thoughtless tempters the heaviest vengeance of a just God. There is no hope for an inebriate that lies not in an entire abstinence from all that can intoxicate; and it is the utter condemnation of this social use of the intoxicating cup, that it arms society against his reformation, and not only makes it the source of his departure, but the determined foe of his return. And now, were it necessary to strengthen this argument from experience, against the use of all intoxicating drinks, it were easy to demonstrate, from existing documents, that three-fourths of all the crime, and all the pauperism, and the licentiousness, and the accidents on water and land, are due to indulgence in these poisonous stimulants. We are not mistaken here. These absurd customs of society entail upon our country and the world, evils, social, moral, and political, most enormous in the aggregate, as they are in themselves most ruinous to national advancement and happiness. Let the young man who early seeks to participate in all the excitement of partisan warfare, and at the polls labors vigorously for his candidate, remember that a true patriotism exhorts him, first of all, to purify himself and society from the evils of a custom which, as it prevails, will leave him. no liberty to guard, no country to save. Thus speak experience and history, clearly and strongly, on this important subject. If science declares the intoxicating cup contains poison, experience, in a thousand ways and with a thousand voices, affirms the declaration. The pathway of this deceiver is the path of a destroyer of the bodies and souls of men. In your ears, to-night, young men, history-the past, with all its cruel and horrible monuments of the nature and operation of alcohol- cries out, "Taste not, handle not.” Turning from these teachings of science and experience, let us enter the sacred temple where God's voice is uttered most clearly — where his will hath been revealed most fully; let us see if the voice of revelation does not harmonize with the utterances to which you have already listened. To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. We are sure that whatever the Scriptures present to us as a fact, a rule of duty, or a warning, is true, just, and important. We are sure that, in all cases where the word of God hath spoken, the doubtful at once becomes settled, the obscure is made plain. We are equally sure that there is not, and cannot be, any real contradiction between the teachings of that word. It is not one thing in one part, and another thing in another part. We may, indeed, from ignorance of the customs, and manners, and productions of that people and country among whom it was written, for a time fail to apprehend some of its allusions; but the moment our ignorance is removed, the truth shines forth as the clear light of day. (1.) It is a fact, that intemperance is denounced with great emphasis. Its existence is not only recognized, but it is recognized to be rebuked. "Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine.” In what book, by what pen or tongue, have the signs of intoxication and its effects been more graphically portrayed? "Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contention? 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.” (2.) The Bible gives the most awful sanction to these denunciations of intemperance, by closing the gates of heaven against the drunkard. "Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, shall inherit the kingdom of God." It is written on the visage of the inebriate; it is affirmed by the Infinite Jehovah; it is echoed by justice on earth: "No drunkard shall enter heaven!" By all the pain of exclusion from paradise; by all the fearful wrath of God to fall upon the wicked in perdition, does this word set before us this fearful sin and enormous curse. Intemperance, by its very nature, gives appetite the mastery, shuts out all holy influences, dethrones reason, stupefies conscience, hardens the heart against the love of God, and debauches the whole man, until the once proud mortal grovels below the brutes; and the word of God proclaims the divine abhorrence of this sin, and of the customs which inevitably lead to it, by consigning the subject of it to the world of woe. (3.) The Bible denounces the use of some kind of drinks at all as a beverage. It is not my object to discuss at large the questions on this subject, which have been, and still are, mooted among learned and reverend men; but, as a minister of Christ, I claim the right, and deem it to be my duty, to express the truth on this subject, just as no small amount of research into the original text of Scripture has opened it to my mind. No true Protestant fears discussion; nor does he apprehend that God's word will not come out brighter than ever from the keenest conflict of a well-regulated discussion. In an age and among a people where the grape grew spontaneously, yielding a large harvest yearly, and where wines of every variety and character were produced, it was the fact that liquors existed of various ages and degrees of fermentation. There were wines slightly fermented, and wines that had passed through all the degrees of fermentation. There were those, therefore, which drank, especially as it was their custom to drink them mingled with water, did not, and could not, intoxicate; and there were, also, those of such an alcoholic character, that, when drank as a beverage, possessed the power to produce incipient intoxication, to generate a violent appetite for the same stimulus, which, as it was gratified, completed the intoxication. The very same wine which for a time was innoxious, might develop this poison, or irritant, in quantities sufficient to denominate it an intoxicating beverage. Now, what should prophets and apostles do in reference to such a state of things as this? They were neither chemists nor physiologists: they did not write works on chemical analysis. Neither Solomon, with all his wisdom, nor Isaiah, with all his lofty eloquence, had a laboratory, or understood fully the pathology of the human system; and if God did not condescend to commission Moses to write a treatise on astronomy, neither did he deign to impart to them a knowledge of the science of chemistry. There was but one rule to follow. the same rule which the inspired prophet followed when he described the sun as rising and revolving around the earth-the rule of visible effects and causes. It was not the business of prophets to strike at Homœopathic doses of alcohol contained in some mild, and, in other respects, nutritious wines. Where no bad effects followed, there no denunciation was needed. They struck at something tangible; at something visible; at something which showed a positive, marked, and decidedly injurious character; at something which, when taken into the stomach, acted like a poison. They adopted the rule of common sense, to judge of things by their effects; to denounce the custom of drinking those things which, by their general operation, wrought only mischief. And will any man say that they could not do this; that it was folly for them to do this; that they had not the power to discriminate between the virulent poison and the harmless drink; or that, in so doing, the people could not understand them? Hear how Solomon discourseth on this subject: "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red; when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." Without bringing to my aid a distinction, in the original text, between words that are indifferently translated in our Bible by the same term "wine," the passage itself, to a plain reader of the English, is its own interpreter.* This liquid has all the attributes of a * In Dr. Nott's Lectures, published in the "Enquirer," I find conclusions stated on this subject to which I was led by a protracted examination of the Bible on this point, some years ago. Two of these I will here state in his own words: "Tirosh, always used by the sacred writers to denote the fruit of the vine in its natural and not in its artificial state, occurs but thirty-eight times in the Old Testament; in thirty-six of which it is used in a good sense and with approbation; once in a doubtful sense; and once, and once only, in a bad sense-and then not on account of any imputed inebriating qualities. Yayin is a generic term, and when not restricted in its meaning, by some word or circumstance, |