sullying the highest honour, and of staining the fairest fame; of blasting the brightest prospects, and of blighting the liveliest hopes; of extinguishing the noblest spirit of independence, and of deadening the holiest aspirations; of incurring disgrace, and of insuring degradation; of wrecking character, and of losing caste; of producing "the worst specimens of humanity," and of rendering men objects of loathing to their fellow-creatures; of sinking them below the beasts that perish, and of making them nothing better than the foulest of fiends, or as devilish as demons; of impelling them to do, as well as to say, what they would never otherwise have said or done; of prompting to feuds and fights, and of promoting brutality and bloodshed; of exciting to poisoning and drowning, and of occasioning manslaughter and murder?

Is it not, financially, industrially, and commercially, too frequently, the means of spending hard-won wages, and of squandering fortunes; of forfeiting the best of situations, and of preventing future engagements; of undoing business, and of producing bankruptcy; of causing shipwrecks, and of occasioning burnings; of inducing the saddest accidents, and of inflicting the heaviest calamities; of wasting property, and of losing lives?

Is it not professionally, too often, the mean sof ruining those who are employed, and of wrecking employers; of pauperizing the hard-working man, and of beggaring the easy gentleman; of expelling teachers from their schools, and of stripping surgeons of their practice; of withering the laurels of poets, and of tarnishing the reputation of philosophers; of hurling senators from their seat, and of driving judges from the bench; of depriving preachers of their license, and of deposing ministers from their office?

Is it not, also, civilly and nationally, too much, the means of producing pauperism, and of increasing parochial assessment, and national taxation; of erecting hospitals, and of enlarging infirmaries; of building prisons and penitentiaries, and of multiplying hulks and houses of refuge; of crowding orphan institutions and charity workhouses, and of filling Lunatic as well as Magdalene asylums; of causing, more or less, at all times, dearness of bread, and of creating dearth in seasons of scarcity; of destroying annually six millions of quarters of grain, and of spending yearly seventy millions of money—“a sum fully equal to the whole revenue of the kingdom;" of promoting disorder, and of producing degeneracy; of demoralizing society, and of depopulating a country; of being destructive to the bodily, as

well as to the moral welfare of a people, and even of being detrimental to the existence of the human race-as in the case of "the native tribes of America and Australia?"

In fine, while it is, temporally, too frequently, the means of conducing to idleness, and of destroying usefulness; of misimproving golden opportunities, and of neglecting the most precious privileges; of forfeiting happiness, and of inflicting misery; of piercing its victims with the greatest agony, and of visiting them with delirium tremens, or what are called "the horrors,” images the most frightful—is it not eternally the occasion of causing multitudes, both of young and old, to live unmindful of heaven, and neglectful of hell; of ruining not only millions of non-professors, but thousands of professors of religion, and of hurrying them, "shrivelled, shivering, and shrieking," to the place of darkness; and thus of consigning them to the drunkard's doom?

Such is drunkenness in itself, and such are some of its fearful fruits. For, who can adequately recount its doings, or exhaust "the black list" of evils that flow from it? Yet, imperfect as the picture thus presented is, is it not appalling; and, by the statistics of drunkenness which are patent to all, is it not fully authenticated? At the same time, may not very much

of what is predicated of drunkenness be strictly applied to the drinking system, which is too generally the pioneer of drunkenness ?

For such reasons, is it too much to speak of drunkenness as a blot, and a sore; as a disease, and a cancer; as a leprosy, and a plague spot; as a moral nuisance, and a monster social evil; as the scandal of the Church, and the curse of the country; as the most noxious Upas tree that ever existed, and the greatest scourge of humanity; as the worst species of slavery although self-imposed, and the most despotic of slave-masters although willingly served; and even, as the greatest enemy and destroyer of man? And yet, if its progress has now been stayed, has it not of late years increased at the most rapid rate-with little less than railway speed? Is it not, also, still the reigning sin of the present day, not only in the Old, but in the New World? Especially, is it not "Britain's greatest sin, and Britain's foulest stain;" Scotland's true "rampant grievance," and deepest wound? For, although this crying sin has been more or less common in all ages, and it could be said of heathen countries, "they that be drunken are drunken in the night," has not the bad pre-eminence been reserved for our times to witness drunkenness by day, as well as by

night, in a most disgraceful degree; and for our generation to be branded as a drunken generation? On account of the heinousness of this sin itself, not to speak of others, may not God, in the way of judgment, have caused it to increase, as it has done? May he not, also, justly say to us as a nation and a Church, what he said to Israel of old, “drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more?" Because of it, likewise, may not "the land," in no moderate measure, be said at present to "mourn?” For, while other sins are slaying their hundreds and thousands, it may be said to be slaying its hundreds of thousands, and millions; and to have been, in God's dealings with us, one of the procuring causes of the war, as well as of the pestilence, and of other heart-rending calamities.

For such reasons, also, is it too much to speak of intoxicating drink, in the strong terms which are often applied to it, when it is used otherwise than medicinally? For, although no one expects, far less intends, that any bodily or spiritual, personal or domestic, evils will follow in his case, are not these, and the other evils noticed above, too commonly its invariable consequences? Thus, do not too many who "quaff the cup, drink the bitter dregs?" For, is not intoxicating drink, in its influence, the most wily and