true reason in every case why men desert the sanctuary, you would find in many cases, that the insidious practice of mingling strong drink, and the temptation offered of thus devoting the sacred day of the Lord unobserved by men, are generating this habit. That day when the last and best excuse that tipplers have for the practice, will not apply that it renders them strong to labour, is spent in beastly indulgences. Thus God is twice insulted, nay, three times. The body that should be the temple of the living God is polluted; and he that pollutes the temple of God, him shall God destroy. The fruits of the earth, grown by the divine agency, are perverted from their benevolent designation. And the Sabbath of the Lord, made for man, to instruct him and fit him for the kingdom of God, is abused to a purpose. more vile than any day of the seven. How God will feel while men thus employ the very hours he consecrated, in selling their souls into bondage to the devil, it can be easily conceived.

Now the heart of piety bleeds over the miseries that are coming upon this infatuated multitude, and all the laws of piety urge the believer to step in and stay the plague. I remark,

III. That the laws of humanity give us the right, and impress the obligation to be active in putting a period to the prevalence of this destructive vice. The intemperate man, beast as he has made himself, is still a brother. He descended with us from the same common parent, nor can we by any process of reasoning throw off the relationship he sustains to us. Could he be metamorphosed into a brute, and all the relationships that tie him to men be dissolved, when he becomes intemperate, the case would alter. Then humanity would make

upon us its smaller claim as when a beast suffers, or as when a serpent dies. Till then the claim of kindred calls for pity.

How ruined is the man who has accustomed himself to the artificial stimulus till the habit is fixed! The money that should buy him food and raiment, buys him disease and pain, and despondency. That labour that should earn his family reputation and pleasure, and health, and science, goes to pull down their habitation, and cover them with rags, and feed them coarsely and scantily, and plunge them from respectable life into poverty and wretchedness. The man himself is ruined; his health, his ambition, his intellect, and more and worse than all he can have no part in the kingdom of God. And down toward the same ruin he drags, with all the power he has, his hapless family. Suppose him to have a wife how altered is her prospect. She married a man; his face was human, his breath was sweet, his heart was affectionate, his countenance spoke the kindest emotions. He promised her his heart for life, and she gave him hers. But she now embraces a savage, and must wither under his insults if not his blows, and must sue a bill from him, or wear out life in the den of a tiger. And must see her children, the pledges of an honest affection, under the training of a brute: must know that little short of a miracle can rear them to comfort, or knowledge, or character. Her high hopes for them are sunk, and she becomes thankful if she may but keep them with her and furnish a rag to cover them, and a piece of bread to feed them. She must see her comforts all torn from her, the very bed she brought to him, and the conveniences her father gave her. She had begun to move in circles of high character, and had taken an elevation from which she must now come down. She

was the mistress of her house, but is now a menial. And all this, were it all, would be comparatively nothing. She must see her companion come down from independence to beggary, from reputation to neglect, from health and promise, to disease and gloominess, and death and hell. Once, perhaps, she hoped to live with him in heaven, but as no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God, she abandons this hope, and tries now to save her children. Here again her burden is a world. How can she hope to counteract the influence of a father's example, and unteach a father's precepts, and neutralize a father's influence. She had always told her children to obey their father, but if they obey him now they must die with him and be damned with him.

Thus she surveys her household with despair and sees not but that every star of her night must be covered with a deep and dark cloud. She was the mother of a promising family, and dwelt in a comfortable habitation. But her miserable associate involved his interest, and mortgaged his dwelling, and sold his lands, and gave up his business, and she must now try to keep herself warm in that darksome hovel. I see her, on some cold December's evening, returning from the wood with her fagots, that she may keep the life-blood flowing warm in the veins of her infant. And I see her little bare-foot lads trying to repair their father's wrong, bearing on behind her some brushes for the fire. Poor lads, they hope their father will come directly and bring them home some bread. Ah, he comes yonder, but has spent the shilling to glut his appetite, and another is leading him home. Go now and meet that abused wife at her door, and enter with her and take the inventory of her table, and if your heart does not ache, it is made of marble. There is nothing there to eat: if there is, the

mother earned it last night when she should have been allowed to sleep.

Go now and visit her father's house, and see how many comforts lay around her cradle; how overflowing is the table where she was reared; how full of all life's dainties that house where she, in an evil hour, committed her person to that being, who now holds her as with the paw of a panther; and then if there is anything you will not do that can be done to stay other wives from such a destiny, and other children from such a famine, then feel that you lack the common sympathies of humanity. What can possibly give us a right to interfere, and save a fellow creature, if we have none, in this case? Where can the laws of humanity operate? Might I tear that imploring female from the jaws of a Iwolf, or the mouth of a crocadile, or the rush of a cataract? And by what law? The law of humanity? And is this law so binding that I must even risk my life? Well, she may die a slower death by the abuses of an intemperate husband, but not a surer one; and her children may not as certainly perish as if already in the embrace of a bear, but the danger, if they are young when the father becomes a brute, is not much less imminent.

When, then, may the laws of compassion operate; when are they binding as the very law itself of God, if not in this case? To publish the tippler, or dash in pieces his bottle, or refuse him a shelter in your house, or employ in your service, are deeds direct of compassion, if by such means we may have the remotest hope of forcing him to the necessity of abandoning his cups. If we may not do this without intrusion upon his rights, then we may not cut the halter he is hanging on; may not dull the blade he has whetted to butcher himself; may not extin

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guish the brand with which he intends to set his house or a world on fire; may not seize the maniac and put a chain on him; may not hunt down the tiger who is lurking in our village for some hapless lad whom he may devour. To deprive him of citizenship, and put a guardian over him, and a prison wall around him, are the kindest deeds, if his beastly appetite has deprived him of the power of self-government. We should pray that the very same deeds may be done to us when we shall have unmanned ourselves, and rendered coercive measures of restraint indispensible. To all these measures the laws of humanity propel us.

Why have a prison for the thief and none for the inebriate? The thief is the less dangerous man. He will do his deeds in the dark, and will not contaminate our children by his example. Why incarcerate the robber? He but causes property to change owners, while the drunkard breaks in upon the more sacred compact of marriage, sunders the parental and filial relationships, and robs the domestic circle of its comforts. The highwayman robs the stranger, the drunkard his own family. The former takes the booty and is gone; the drunkard stays to rob again and again of every shilling that is earned by his family, or given them in charity, till he has stripped the bed from under them, and the clothes from off them, and the bread from their mouths, and stays not till, if possible, he has rifled them of home, and character, and hope, and salvation. Where then is the robber with whom humanity requires us to wage war rather than with the man who is thus spoiling his own house? I know not where that compassion has originated that will tolerate a man in plundering his own house, but will hang him if he forcibly take a dollar from the stranger, on the highway; that will suffer him to totally de