SERMON III. THE EVILS OF INTEMPERANCE. HABAKKUK, ii. 9—11, 15, 16. Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory. In the preceding discourses we have illustrated THE NATURE, THE OCCASIONS, AND THE SYMPTOMS OF INTEMPERANCE. In this discourse we propose to illustrate THE EVILS OF INTEMPERANCE. The physical and moral influence of this sin upon its victims, has of necessity been disclosed in giving an account of the causes and symptoms of this criminal disease. We shall therefore take a more comprehensive view of the subject, and consider the effect of intemperance upon national prosperity. To this view of the subject the text leads us. It announces the general principle, that communities which rise by a violation of the laws of humanity and equity, shall not prosper, and especially that wealth amassed by promoting intemperance, will bring upon the community intemperance, and poverty, and shame, as a providential retribution. 1. The effects of intemperance upon the health and physical energies of a nation, are not to be overlooked, or lightly esteemed. No fact is more certain than the transmission of temperament and of physical constitution, according to the predominant moral condition of society, from age to age. Luxury produces effeminacy, and transmits to other generations imbecility and disease. Bring up the generation of the Romans who carried victory over the world, and place them beside the effeminate Italians of the present day, and the effect of crime upon constitution will be sufficiently apparent. Excesses unmake the man. The stature dwindles, the joints are loosely compacted, and the muscular fibre has lost its elastic tone. No giant's bones will be found in the cemeteries of a nation, over whom for centuries the waves of intemperance have rolled; and no unwieldy iron armour, the annoyance and defence of other days, will be dug up as memorials of departed glory. The duration of human life, and the relative amount of health or disease will manifestly vary, according to the amount of ardent spirits consumed in the land. Even now, no small proportion of the deaths which annually make up our national bills of mortality, are cases of those who have been brought to an untimely end, and who have, directly or indirectly, fallen victims to the deleterious influence of ardent spirits; fulfilling with fearful accuracy the prediction, "the wicked shall not live out half their days." As the jackall follows the lion to prey upon the slain, so do disease and death wait on the footsteps of inebriation. The free and universal use of intoxicating liquors for a few centuries cannot fail to bring down our race from the majestic, athletic forms of our Fathers, to the similitude of a despicable and puny race of men. Already the commencement of the decline is manifest, and the consummation of it, should the causes continue, will not linger. 2. The injurious influence of general intemperance upon national intellect, is equally certain, and not less to be deprecated. To the action of a powerful mind, a vigorous muscular frame is, as a general rule, indispensable. Like heavy ordnance, the mind in its efforts recoils on the body, and will soon shake down a puny frame. The mental action and physical reaction must be equal-or finding her energies unsustained, the mind itself becomes discouraged, and falls into despondency and imbecility. The flow of animal spirits, the fire and vigour of the imagination, the fulness and power of feeling, the comprehension and grasp of thought, the fire of the eye, the tones of the voice, and the electrical energy of utterance, all depend upon the healthful and vigorous tone of the animal system, and by whatever means the body is unstrung, the spirit languishes. Cæsar--when he had a fever once and cried "give me some drink Titinius," was not that god who afterwards overturned the republic, and reigned without a rival— and Bonaparte, it has been said, lost the Russian campaign by a fever. The greatest poets and orators who stand on the records of immortality, flourished in the iron age, before the habits of effeminacy had unharnessed the body and unstrung the mind. This is true of Homer, and Demosthenes, and Milton; and if Virgil and Cicero are to be classed with them, it is not without a manifest abatement of vigour for beauty, produced by the progress of voluptuousness in the age in which they lived. The giant writers of Scotland are some of them men of threescore and ten, who still go forth to the athletic sports of their youthful days, with undiminished elasticity. The taper fingers of modern effeminacy never wielded such a pen as these men wield, and never will. The taste may be cultivated in alliance with effeminacy, and music may flourish, while all that is manly is upon the decline, and there may be some fitful flashes of imagination in poetry, which are the offspring of a capricious nervous excitability--and perhaps there may be sometimes an unimpassioned stillness of soul in a feeble body, which shall capacitate for simple intellectual discrimination. But that fulness of soul, and diversified energy of mind, which is indispensable to national talent in all its diversified application, can be found only in alliance with an undebased and vigorous muscular system. The history of the world confirms this conclusion. Egypt, once at the head of nations, has under the weight of her own effeminacy gone down to the dust. The victories of Greece let in upon her the luxuries of the east, and covered her glory with a night of ages. And Rome, whose iron foot trode down the nations, and shook the earth, witnessed in her latter days—faintness of heart-and the shield of the mighty vilely cast away. 3. The effect of intemperance upon the military prowess of a nation, cannot but be great and evil. The mortality in the seasoning of recruits, already half destroyed by intemperance, will be double to that experienced among hardy and temperate men. If in the early wars of our country the mortality of the camp had been as great as it has been since intemperance has facilitated the raising of recruits, New England would have been depopulated. Philip had remained lord of his wilderness, or the French |