irreligion as the intemperate? Who like these violate the Sabbath, and set their mouth against the heavens -neglecting the education of their families—and corrupting their morals? Almost the entire amount of national ignorance and crime is the offspring of intemperance. Throughout the land, the intemperate are hewing down the pillars, and undermining the foundations of our national edifice. Legions have besieged it, and upon every gate the battle-ax rings; and still the sentinels sleep.

Should the evil advance as it has done, the day is not far distant when the great body of the labouring classes of the community, the bones and sinews of the nation, will be contaminated; and when this is accomplished, the right of suffrage becomes the engine of self-destruction. For the labouring classes constitute an immense majority, and when these are perverted by intemperance, ambition needs no better implements with which to dig the grave of our liberties, and entomb our glory.

Such is the influence of interest, ambition, fear, and indolence, that one violent partizan, with a handful of disciplined troops, may overrule the influence of five hundred temperate men, who act without concert. Already is the disposition to temporize, to tolerate, and even to court the intemperate, too apparent, on account of the apprehended retribution of their perverted suffrage. The whole power of law, through the nation,

sleeps in the statute book, and until public sentiment is roused and concentrated, it may be doubted whether its execution is possible.

Where is the city, town, or village, in which the laws are not openly violated, and where is the magistracy that dares to carry into effect the laws against the vending or drinking of ardent spirits? Here then an aristocracy of bad influence has already risen up, which bids defiance to law, and threatens the extirpation of civil liberty. As intemperance increases, the power of taxation will come more and more into the hands of men of intemperate habits and desperate fortunes; of course the laws gradually will become subservient to the debtor, and less efficacious in protecting the rights of property. This will be a vital stab to liberty-to the security of which property is indispensable. For money is the sinew of war-and when those who hold the property of a nation cannot be protected in their rights, they will change the form of government, peaceably if they may, by violence if they must.

In proportion to the numbers who have no right in the soil, and no capital at stake, and no moral principle, will the nation be exposed to violence and revolution. In Europe, the physical power is bereft of the right of suffrage, and by the bayonet is kept down. But in this nation, the power which may be wielded by the intemperate and ignorant is tremendous. These are the troops of the future Cæsars, by whose

perverted suffrages our future elections may be swayed, and ultimately our liberties destroyed. They are the corps of irreligious and desperate men, who have something to hope, and nothing to fear, from revolution and blood. Of such materials was the army of Cataline composed, who conspired against the liberties of Rome. And in the French revolution, such men as Lafayette were soon swept from the helm, by mobs composed of the dregs of creation, to give place to the revolutionary furies which followed.

We boast of our liberties, and rejoice in our prospective instrumentality in disenthralling the world. But our own foundations rest on the heaving sides of a burning mountain, through which, in thousands of places, the fire has burst out, and is blazing around us. If they cannot be extinguished, we are undone. Our sun is fast setting, and the darkness of an endless night is closing in upon us.

SERMON IV.

THE REMEDY 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.

WE now come to the inquiry, BY WHAT MEANS CAN THE EVIL OF INTEMPERANCE BE STAYED? and the answer is, not by any one thing, but by every thing which can be put in requisition to hem in the army of the destroyer, and impede his march, and turn him back, and redeem the land.

Intemperance is a national sin, carrying destruction from the centre to every extremity of the empire, and calling upon the nation to array itself, en masse, against it.