centre of motion ;---and when the public sentiment once begins to move, its march will be as resistless as the same rock thundering down the precipice. Let no man then look upon our condition as hopeless, or feel, or think, or say, that nothing can be done. The language of heaven to our happy nation is, "be it unto thee even as thou wilt," and there is no despondency more fatal, or more wicked, than that which refuses to hope, and to act, from the apprehension that nothing can be done.

SERMON VI.

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.

Let us now take an inventory of the things which can be done to resist the progress of intemperance. I shall set down nothing which is chimerical, nothing which will not commend itself to every man's judgment, as entirely practicable.

1. It is entirely practicable to extend universal information on the subject of intemperance. Its nature, causes, evils, and remedy---may be universally made known. Every pulpit and every newspaper in the land may be put in requisition to give line upon line,

on this subject, until it is done. The National Tract Society may, with great propriety, volunteer in this glorious work, and send out its warning voice by winged messengers all over the land. And would all this accomplish nothing? It would prevent the formation of intemperate habits in millions of instances, and it would reclaim thousands in the early stages of this sin.

2. It is practicable to form an Association for the special purpose of superintending this great subject, and whose untiring energies shall be exerted in sending out agents to pass through the land, and collect information, to confer with influential individuals, and bodies of men, to deliver addresses at popular meetings, and form societies auxiliary to the parent institution. This not only may be done, but I am persuaded will be done before another year shall have passed away.* Too long have we slept. From every part of the land we hear of the doings of the destroyer, and yet the one half is not told. But when the facts are collected and published, will not the nation be moved? It will be moved. All the laws of the human mind must cease, if such disclosures as may be made, do not produce a great effect.

3. Something has been done, and more may be

These Discourses were composed and delivered at Litchfield, in the year 1826: since that time the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance has been formed, and is now in successful operation.

done, by agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing establishments, in the exclusion of ardent spirits as an auxiliary to labour. Every experiment which has been made by capitalists to exclude ardent spirits and intemperance, has succeeded, and greatly to the profit and satisfaction, both of the labourer and his employer. And what is more natural and easy than the extension of such examples by capitalists, and by voluntary associations, in cities, towns, and parishes, of mechanics and farmers, whose resolutions and success may from time to time be published, to raise the flagging tone of hope, and assure the land of her own self-preserving powers? Most assuredly it is not too late to achieve a reformation; our hands are not bound, our feet are not put in fetters---and the nation is not so fully set upon destruction, as that warning and exertion will be in vain. It is not too much to be hoped, that the entire business of the nation by land and by sea, shall yet move on without the aid of ardent spirits, and by the impulse alone of temperate freemen. This would cut off one of the most fruitful occasions of intemperance, and give to our morals and to our liberties, an earthly immortality.

The young men of our land may set glorious examples of voluntary abstinence from ardent spirits, and by associations for that purpose, may array a phalanx of opposition against the encroachments of the de