IDIOSYNCRASY AND ALCOHOL.

HEY who oppose total abstinence say that abstainers have an idiosyncrasy for keeping up their strength under abstinence. I

am constantly told this, and am adduced as a man who won't see that, although I can keep strong on water-that is the way it is put-other people cannot. Well, but I have observed the late Cardinal Manning, and the Bishop of London, and Dr. Nathan Davis, of Chicago-who remembers that great city as a small village-and numbers more of active men all keeping up their strength on the same system; I also see nationalities of strongest men keeping up their strength under the same system; and if I turn from our own earth-mates to those of the lower creation, what are the wonders I behold? How poor is human strength to that of an elephant ! A whale by one movement could cast twenty men stronger than Samson himself into the air; a pigeon would easily go ten miles to one accomplished by a man on foot; and the racehorse; but I need not push the point further, except to intimate that these competitors in physical powers are all working on the total abstinence system, and that if we wished to hurry them down in physical power it would be by initiating them all into the moderate use of wine, spirits, or malt liquor.

Is there an idiosyncrasy in this matter of alcohol and its effects on animal life? Certainly. An idiosyncrasy is a peculiar condition of constitution by which one animal body is specially influenced by a certain thing or by certain things which do not affect the natural organisations of life and living action. Drinkers of alchohol, moderate or immoderate, are affected by a special idiosyncrasy in that they have a liking for one particular thing which gives to them a particular organisation, under which, like Oliver Twist, they "ask for more," and getting more, stand sometimes at peril, except always on guard, and then even in danger. We have heard it said recently that alcohol is no more a source of danger than fire. The analogy would be good, excellent, if we could swallow fire, and if, having swallowed it, the swallower cried for more until he were slowly or quickly consumed. But here is the difference. A man cannot swallow fire, and he can swallow alcohol, which latter being swallowed, he does cry for more, until he is slowly or quickly consumed. So the ancient fable compared the alcoholic fire to something that slowly burned the vital organs. This is all the difference in the world. The burned child dreads the fire; the burned alcoholic courts the slower alcoholic burning.

This simile of fire, although physiologically it is but a simile, how true it is. If we could divide all living things into two sections, the infinitesimal section in the world of life that takes in alcohol and the mighty section that takes in none of it, and if we could see through the two as transparencies, how striking and instructive the picture would be. The alcoholic section would indeed be seen to burn most freely, until we came to those who, overwhelmed by the excess they

have consumed, were all but extinguished and burnt out. The moderates, they who assume to pity and despise the intemperate, would shine out with a light peculiar to themselves, yet showing by flickering intervals how near their temperance edged on intemperance, and how imperceptibly to them the phenomena of temperate intemperance might be displayed. Practically they would all have taken the alcoholic fire. One would show how the alcohol brightened him up when he had "run down"; another how it warmed him; a third, a little too hazardous for once, how it gave him "hot coppers"; while a fourth would illustrate the fixed glow of the fire on his visage. Yet they might all be moderate men, distinct entirely from the dark, leaden, helpless collection who, through the moderate path, land themselves into the living death. If we watched them minutely, we should see, too, under the brilliancy of their superior fire, that their pulses were quicker than those of their fellows who let their watery bodies, made by nature to work on water, depend for motion on that neutral and potent agent alone; we should observe that their brilliant light day by day went somewhat quickly and quietly down, unless the sustainer of it were more and more frequently renewed; we should observe how for a season they were blithe and gay, rejoicing in the renewal of their youth in each cup they consumed we should hear them boasting of their strength of mind and limb, and should not wonder at their contemptuous raillery on ourselves, our tenets, and our practices. Let us, moreover, be fair to them; let us admit that if they are not such steady lights as we are they surpass us in temporary brilliancy. I, for one, am quite ready to admit my own dulness by the side of

them; let us all admit the same, and allow the truth of what they contend for. They speak as they feel, and what else can they do? Let us believe them, for they on their side speak truly. The question with us is why we do not follow in their brilliancy. Why not set up their idiosyncrasy; why not become imbued with their fanaticism; why not leave the lower and grovelling ranks of the creation at large, acknowledge that "wine's the soul of man below," and from our common mortality be made "half divine "? What fools we must be to grovel as we do! What cowards we must be not to feel that, raised to such brilliancy, we can reach whatever height of brilliancy we like, and without danger stop there!

Well, we have a reason for our obduracy, nay many reasons, which, dull as they may be, possess us. Let us examine a few of them. (1) We have trust in nature, and belief that we are not wiser than she is in regard to her designs; if she has made all the phenomena of animal life to work by water power, and has supplied all the conditions and appliances for such work, we cannot help it; it is the divine will, and let that will be done. (2) We admit that man can change the order of nature by an agent in which there is a new and strong power; we admit that he can by the persistent use of this agent introduce a new kind of life, and, if he knew how, might extend that new life to all life, to fish of the sea, to fowls of the air, to beasts of the field, to creeping things, as well as to mankind, male and female, through all phases from the cradle to the grave-truly a wonderful art! But follow it up. What if all living things were transformed by it into moderate drinkers, with the usual contingent of drunkards from amongst the weaker of them? What

if all creation were made half divine instead of a few men and women specially blessed? What if the elephant were endowed by it with more strength and vitality and brightness of intellect? It is a sagacious creature and powerful; it might restrain itself to what was good for itself even better than some men. How much more sagacious and powerful would it be if it were made "half divine?" How useful would it be so superendowed? We admit the effects of alcohol; but, in our judgment, all creation works better without it, and as man merely belongs to all creation, he too comes under the rule of creation, and is in like manner better without it. All creation does well without it; why should man be an exception? (3) Looking carefully at the brilliant human brotherhood that supports the "diffusion of useful alcohol" and picks up its delightful inspiration from that power, we are not entirely satisfied with the results. With the debris of that brotherhood, with its murderers, madmen, paupers, paralysed and otherwise death-stricken, we are so profoundly dissatisfied that we would be led to close up the sources of such gigantic evils, even if some considerable good came out of the same sources; but we are not convinced about any good. "The diffusion of useful alcohol" is, we think, not proved, diffuse it ever so lightly. The quickened throb of life which changes the brilliant and exceptional community of temperate men can only be sustained by repeating the cause, and repetition is a fearful and sure degenerator. Repetition soon becomes automatic, and becomes rhythmical, and to automatism and rhythm working abnormally together there is only one end, unnatural death. automatic rhythm we succumb easily enough without alcohol. The heart of man continues to beat from

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