A resort to ardent spirits as an alleviation of trouble, results often in habits of confirmed intemperance. The loss of friends, perplexities of business, or the wreck of property, bring upon the spirits the distractions of care and the pressure of sorrow; and, instead of casting their cares upon the Lord, they resort to the exhilarating draft, but, before the occasion for it has ceased, the remedy itself has become a calamity more intolerable than the disease. Before, the woes were temporary; now, they have multiplied and have become eternal.

Ardent spirits employed to invigorate the intellect, or restore exhausted nature under severe study, is often a fatal experiment. Mighty men have been cast down in this manner never to rise. The quickened circulation does for a time invigorate intellect and restore exhausted nature. But, for the adventitious energy imparted, it exhausts the native energy of the soul, and induces that faintness of heart, and flagging of the spirits, which cry incessantly "give, give," and never, but with expiring breath, say it is enough.

The use of ardent spirits, employed as an auxiliary to labour, is among the most fatal, because the most common and least suspected, causes of intemperance. It is justified as innocent, it is insisted on as necessary : but no fact is more completely established by experience than that it is utterly useless, and ultimately injurious, beside all the fearful evils of habitual intem

perance, to which it so often leads. THERE IS NO NUTRITION IN ARDENT SPIRIT. ALL THAT IT DOES IS, TO CONCENTRATE THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM FOR THE TIME, BEYOND ITS CAPACITY FOR REGULAR EXERTION. It is borrowing strength for an occasion, which will be needed for futurity, without any provision for payment, and with the certainty of ultimate bankruptcy.

The early settlers of New-England endured more hardship and performed more labour, and carried through life more health and vigour than appertains to the existing generation of labouring men. And they did it without the use of ardent spirits.

Let two men of equal age and firmness of constitution, labour together through the summer, the one with and the other without the excitement of ardent spirits, and the latter will come out at the end with unimpaired vigour, while the other will be comparatively exhausted. Ships navigated as some now are without the habitual use of ardent spirits—and manufacturing establishments carried on without-and extended agricultural operations-all move on with better industry, more peace, more health, and a better income to the employers and the employed. The workmen are cheerful and vigorous, friendly and industrious, and their families are thrifty, well fed, well clothed and instructed; and instead of distress and poverty, and disappointment and contention-they are cheered with

the full flow of social affection and often by the sustaining power of religion. But where ardent spirit is received as a daily auxiliary to labour, it is commonly taken at stated times-the habit soon creates a vacancy in the stomach, which indicates at length the hour of the day with as much accuracy as a clock. It will be taken besides, frequently, at other times, which will accelerate the destruction of nature's healthful tone, create artificial debility, and the necessity of artificial excitement to remove it; and when so much has been consumed as the economy of the employer can allow, the growing demand will be supplied by the evening and morning dram, from the wages of labour-until the appetite has become insatiable, and the habit of intemperance nearly universal-until the nervous excitability has obliterated the social sensibilities, and turned the family into a scene of babbling and wo-until voracious appetite has eaten up the children's bread, and abandoned them to ignorance and crime-until conscience has become callous, and fidelity and industry have disappeared, except as the result of eye service ; and wanton wastefulness and contention, and wreckless wretchedness characterise the establishment.

SERMON II.

THE SIGNS OF INTEMPERANCE.

PROVERBS, Xxiii. 29–35.

Who hath woe? 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. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eye shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

In the preceding discourse I considered the nature and occasions of intemperance. In this I shall disclose some of the symptoms of this fearful malady, as they affect both the body and the mind, that every one, who is in any degree addicted to the sin, may be apprised of his danger, and save himself before it be too late.

In the early stages of intemperance reformation is practicable. The calamity is, that intemperance is a sin so deceitful, that most men go on to irretrievable ruin,