upon us. And yet these, for years on years, have been the entailments of intemperance. Under its prevalence, crime has trod on crime and blood touched blood. At a low calculation, in the last fifty years, as many million years of human probation have, in this land, been cut off; more than 1,500,000 persons have sunk into drunkards' graves; five thousand million dollars have been uselessly expended; ten thousand murders, with conflagrations and shipwrecks unnumbered, have been caused, and procession after procession has gone to the poor-house, the jail, the madhouse, and the orphan's home. In Great Britain it appears, from statistics published by the British Parliament, that while the annual expense for bread was 130,000,000 of dollars, the immediate cost of the liquor consumed was 250,000,000; resulting in an amount of squalid poverty, vice, profligacy, and crime, of which no mind but the mind of God can have adequate conceptions, and sending sixty thousand human beings, in a land of the very brightest gospel light, to the drunkard's grave and the drunkard's eternity. You ask of those who cause this evil, what intemperance is, and you are told it is only a slight irregularity; a little undue excitement of the nervous system, through a pleasant, though, perhaps, a dangerous beverage; a habit of social life which had perhaps better not be formed, but, being formed, must be indulged; and all indicative of good rather than vicious and evil feelings, and to be pitied rather than condemned. No; No. That is not intemperance. That is the language of the father of lies. Intemperance is this broad stream of woe, and wounds, and madness, and deaths, bearing onward to eternal despair the brightest hopes and joys of earth; inflicting its curse, not now and then, after interludes, like war, and famine, and pestilence; but never ceasing; never softening; ever crying, give, give; consuming the world, and laughing at its ruins. No! Intemperance admits not of exaggeration. What worse can you say of a man, than to call him a drunkard? To say nothing of his physical condition, loathsome to a proverb, go over the whole catalogue of vices enumerated in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and find one, if you can, that does not belong to him"filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, haters of God, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." What curse like this can come into a family? What evil like a drunken father or a drunken mother? What will so bring down a parent's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave as a drunken son? And what will so shut out the light of truth, the light of heaven, and seal up the soul in eternal right, as strong drink? The drunkard curses God, burns his Bible, and damns his own soul. Eternity, eternity alone, reveals his end! And yet, this plague of plagues; this fountain of blasphemy, poverty, and crime; this poison corroding and destroying the life-blood of the nation, has been staunched till we have hope for ourselves and our children. About thirty years ago, a war of extermination commenced against it. It was like David with his sling and stone; but, as we now see the giant in the convulsive agonies of death, we exclaim, What hath God wrought! We raise a song of thanksgiving and praise, saying: "The Lord hath done great things for us! The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad."

Before I speak of recent occurrences promising to be the crowning ele

ment of our great enterprise, permit me to turn your thoughts back to one or two divine interpositions to which we owe much of what we enjoy.

The first was, the awakening of the country to the existence and enormity of the evil, and leading men, who feared God and loved righteousness, to breast it, be the sacrifice what it might.

It has ever been one of the peculiarities of Intemperance that it sinks men in Lethean slumbers. They who are the guilty cause, and they who are the victims, alike feel that they are innocent in the matter, and that nothing can be done to remedy the evil. If it be an evil, it is an evil of but small extent; and connected with so much necessary to the wellbeing of man, that to attempt its eradication would be like the cutting off a diseased limb which should result in the death of the whole body. Accordingly, in the early part of this century, intemperance sat, as one well expressed it, as a great nightmare upon the breast of the nation. There were horrid sufferings, but every limb was spell-bound. All moral power was broken. Men preferred their sufferings to any disturbance of their delusion. They denied the extent of the evil, and made sport of every attempt at reformation. He who preached on temperance was not merely the song of the drunkard, but of his own church and of every moderate drinker throughout the land. The distillery and the brewery were the fair handmaids of agriculture, and the licensed traffic was the hope of the public treasury. The excise, it was believed, supported the poor, and paid the expenses of the common jail and the lunatic asylum. Neither the farmer could gather his harvest, nor the mechanic endure his toil, nor the physician visit his patient, nor the minister leave his pulpit, nor the traveller prosecute his journey, nor the mariner plough the deep, nor the slightest hospitality be shown, without the intoxicating cup. As well might a man attack, or ridicule, or reason down the whole system of respiration, as the use of intoxicating liquors. But there was a power higher than man. It was the mighty power of God. That awakened the conscience; that broke the delusive charm; that arrayed before a suffering world the horrid demon; that lifted up the veil that blinded the eyes of the nation, and caused them to start back affrighted and lift up their hands to Heaven for deliverance. Never may it be forgotten, how, as the first pioneers of Temperance went forth, clad in the panoply of truth, there was a stirring among all the dry bones of the valley; bone came to his bone; life was infused where there was nothing but death and putrefaction, and the convicted and converted stood upon their feet an exceeding great army. In 1832, more than 4,000 temperance societies had been formed in the United States; more than 1,500,000 persons abstained from the use of ardent spirits; 1,500 distilleries had been stopped; 4,000 merchants had abandoned the traffic, and 4,500 intemperate men had abandoned their cups. It was hailed as one of the most wonderful and glorious triumphs of virtue over vice the world had witnessed; and it was even then felt, that, should the cause prevail throughout the land, "blessings, mighty as her rivers and exhaustless as the soil, would break forth upon the people, and flow down in ever growing richness and variety to all future ages."

At a subsequent period, another special and wonder-working interposition of Divine Providence was seen in the sudden reformation of nearly all the inebriates throughout the nation. That rational, considerate and

religious men should listen to truth and flee from danger at a solemn warning; that those who ascribed all hope of their salvation to the great sacrifice on the cross, should be willing to make sacrifices for others, and resolve that they would "neither eat flesh, nor drink wine, nor any thing which caused a brother to stumble," may seem not so surprising; though apathy and indifference, even in many branches of the Christian Church, awfully prevailed; but that besotted, scathed, peeled, blaspheming, Goddefying, brutalized men, whose God was their belly and who gloried in their shame, should by thousands on thousands, in all parts of the land, awake to a sense of their awful condition, burst the chains that bound them, trample their appetite and all temptation in the dust, and stand forth, reformed from all that which made them so peculiarly odious and vile in the community, was what none could look for in this world of sin and partial retribution. And yet it was to be. And when men beheld

it, they exclaimed, "With men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible." A miracle it was not; for it occurred in the course of God's providence and as the result of adapted means. For fifteen years an amount of information of which we have little conception, on the evil nature of intoxicating drinks and the doom of the drunkard, had been spread abroad. Thousands and even millions of sober men had abjured the cup. Deep anxiety had settled down on the minds and hearts of broken-hearted wives and parents for drunken husbands and drunken sons; and prayer unceasing was offered that they might in some way be redeemed and saved. The crisis had come. It was to be; and it was to be through the instrumentality of God's truth, that God should have the glory. Four of the six inebriates with whom it commenced went to the house of God to hear one who, in God's name, was to expose the sin of drunkenness and the drunkard's doom. They were pricked in their heart. On their return, the jeers of the bar-room had lost their power. They signed a pledge, and commenced the work of reclaiming every inebriate in the land. Some jeered; others mocked; but many went from their meetings to pray. The conscience of the reclaimed wretch gave God the praise. "It was God," said one, "who saved me: he broke the chains that bound body and soul; he enabled me to stand up in my manliness and be free; my poor heart is full; I am almost blind with the tear in my eye; I brush it away to say, 'Glory to God in the highest.' And if, of the half million of lost men, who, in that great work, of 1840-41, were reclaimed, a no inconsiderable number went back like the dog to his vomit, it derogated nothing from the operation as the wonderful providence of God and the power of sympathy and truth. It only illustrated the debased and unfeeling condition of society which should let them go back; the horrid evil of the traffic, licensed in our midst; and, above all, the folly, then most signally manifest, of relying upon humanity and the strength of man's resolution without help from above or devotedness to the divine service. But it was a wonderful work, for which thousands of families, relieved and redeemed, exclaimed, "The Lord hath done. great things for us; whereof we are glad."

Passing by numerous other divine interpositions in this great work of reform-for I believe the hand of God has been in it from its commencement, though many things may have occurred which could not be approved by his omniscient eye, I come to those more recent occurrences

which are now so extensively filling the hearts of the friends of God and man with joy and praise.

Contending with intemperance, we have been like men resisting the tide of the ocean. Now it has retreated before us; and now it has come in upon us with new and terrific power. Once and again it has seemed to breathe its last breath; but, on the morrow, it has wound itself around us with the cunning of the serpent, and torn us with the ferocity of the tiger. One principle, sufficient enough of itself to save a world, was early established: ABANDON THE DRUNKARD'S DRINK, AND YOU CAN never be a drunKARD! But how could a world, busy, gay and thoughtless, a world bent on luxury and sin, resist at all times a temptation presented in the most alluring forms; and keep under an appetite, satisfied, at any moment, without skill or effort? It was impossible. The early legislators of the land said, the temptation should be regulated; a limit should be put to its power; a character should be required, to wield so terrific a force, both moral and good; and if evil ensued, it should be charged to him who caused it. "Out of the eater should come forth meat, and out of the strong should come forth sweetness." Alas! if ever the devil, the great adversary, more fatally and successfully deceived the world than in any other event, it was in that whole system of license which would quiet christian states and nations, while 30 and 60,000 victims of the cup, year after year, in successive generations, went down to the pit. Excise officers gloated in the price of blood; and the vender over the dead bodies of his slain, wiped his mouth and said, "I have done only what, by the law of the land, I was warranted in doing." But many of the pioneers in reform saw the delusion, and demanded in its stead a system of entire prohibition of the traffic in ardent spirits as a beverage. They were men of thought, men of prayer, men of self-denial, men who were not to be turned aside from duty by the cry," By this craft we have our wealth," or the crocodile tears of those who were rioting in blood. Said the distinguished author of the Reports of the American Temperance Society, Dr. Justin Edwards, in 1834, "The point to be decided, to be decided by legislators of these United States for all coming posterity, for the world, and for eternity, is, Shall the sale of ardent spirit, as a drink, be treated, in legislation, as a virtue or a vice? Shall it be licensed, sanctioned by law and perpetuated to roll its all pervading curses onward interminably; or shall it be treated, as it is in truth, a sin? And if there shall in future be men base enough to continue to commit it, shall the community, in self-defence, by wise and wholesome legislation, shield themselves from its evils" Said a Committee of the Legislature of the State of Maine, in 1837, seventeen years ago, after presenting a masterly Report in favor of a prohibitory law, "Your Committee are not only of opinion that the law giving the right to sell ardent spirits should be repealed, but that a law should be passed to prohibit the traffic in them, except so far as the arts or the practice of medicine is concerned. Such a law is required for the same reason that we make a law against the sale of unwholesome meats, or a law for the removal of any nuisance." In 1838, numerous petitioners in Ohio to the Legislature of that State said : (6 Among the scourges which have desolated and are now afflicting our country, no one can be named which bears rivalship with intoxicating liquors. We implore your aid to protect us against this destroyer of our

species, this common enemy of the human race. It was to extend protection like this, that government was established." In the same year, a Committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts reported a bill prohibiting the entire sale of all liquor as a beverage, "because the public good demanded it." And a Committee of the Legislature of New York reported that, "To prohibit the traffic in ardent spirits, as a beverage, was as necessary as to prevent gambling, brothels, and other public nuisances; and that the voice of the people required certain and present action in the case." In 1839 a highly respectable Convention in New Hampshire resolved, "That there should be a final and complete prohibition of the traffic in alcoholic liquors by legislative enactments." More than 7,000 petitioners in Vermont, in that same year, asked for a prohibitory law. And a large meeting of citizens of Delaware resolved, "That nothing short of an entire prohibition of the sale of liquors, as a drink, can extirpate drunkenness." The inhabitants of Lewisburg, Virginia, said the same year to their Legislature, "If the laws will continue to permit sinks of vice, poverty, and crime to stand open night and day, the same laws must continue to provide poor-houses, and even graves to receive their degraded inmates. Can it be necessary to keep up this state of things forever? must we see our parents destroyed, our families ruined, and our children driven into that ruthless tide which overwhelms all who embark on its treacherous waves in unutterable despair? Is there no remedy? There is. Repeal the laws in question and provide suitable enactments against the further sale of the poison." And the same year a Committee of the Senate of Kentucky in reporting on a petition from Mason and Brancken counties, asking for a law which shall make the vending of spirituous liquors of any description as a drink, or the giving of them to evade the law, an offence of no ordinary magnitude, punishable by the State, said, "There is but one remedy, and that will be effected if our countrymen have the courage, the constancy, and the energy to carry it into complete execution. The remedy is, to attack the evil at its foundation. The practice of retailing alcoholic liquors, except for medical purposes and to promote the arts, must be not only forbidden by law, but completely denounced by public sentiment." And in the same winter, 1,354 citizens of Michigan presented a memorial to their Senate and House in which they prayed, that "all license laws be repealed, and that the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, be prohibited by penal statute." In 1840, a Convention in Massachusetts having 1,480 members, unanimously resolved, "That, until the laws of the State concerning the sale of intoxicating liquors are fully and firmly established upon the basis of prohibition, like the other penal and criminal laws of the Commonwealth, it is, in our opinion, the duty of temperance men to vote only for those men, as candidates for legislative and executive officers, who are known and inflexible friends of such a course of legislation.' "" "And never," said the Wisconsin Territorial Society, in an appeal the same year to the inhabitants of the territory," never was there a nobler incentive to action, than is presented to us to crush at once this demon of human happiness. Not the laurels of the conqueror on the battle-field, nor the purpose of the crusader to rescue the holy city from the tread of infidel feet, are half so fitting the commendations of this enlightened age, as he who wars the foe of intemperance, and seeks to drive it from our soil."