in the fire, than we should find of widows thus sacrificed in all the east; a fire too, which, besides its action upon the body, tortures the sour by lost affections, and ruined hopes, and prospective wretchedness.

It is high time to enter upon the business of collecting facts on this subject. The statistics of intemperance should be published; for no man has comprehended as yet the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of this mighty evil.

We execrate the cruelties of the slave tradethe husband torn from the bosom of his wifethe son from his father-brothers and sisters separated forever-whole families in a moment ruined! But are there no similar enormities to be witnessed in the United States? None indeed perpetrated by the bayonet-but many, very many, perpetrated by intemperance.

Every year thousands of families are robbed of fathers, brothers, husbands, friends. Every year widows and orphans are multiplied, and grey hairs are brought with sorrow to the grave -no disease makes such inroads upon families, blasts so many hopes, destroys so many lives, and causes so many mourners to go about the streets, because man goeth to his long home.

We have heard of the horrors of the middle passage the transportation of slaves-the chains -the darkness--the stench-the mortality and living madness of wo-and it is dreadful. But bring together the victims of intemperance, and

crowd them into one vast lazar-house, and sights of wo quite as appalling would meet your eyes.

Yes, in this nation there is a middle passage of slavery, and darkness, and chains, and disease, and death. But it is a middle passage, not from Africa to America, but from time to eternity, and not of slaves whom death will release from suffering, but of those whose sufferings at death do but just begin. Could all the sighs of these captives be wafted on one breeze, it would be loud as thunder. Could all their tears be assembled, they would be like the sea.

The health of a nation is a matter of vast importance, and none may directly and avowedly sport with it. The importation and dissemination of fevers for filthy lucre's sake, would not be endured, and he who should import and plant the seed of trees, which, like the fabled Upas, poisoned the atmosphere, and paved the earth around with bones, would meet with universal execration. The construction of morasses and stagnant lakes, sending out poisonous exhalations, and depopulating the country around, would soon be stopped by the interposition of law. And should a foreign army land upon our shores, to levy such a tax upon us as intemperance levies, and to threaten our liberties as intemperance threatens them, and to inflict such enormous sufferings as intemperance inflicts, no mortal power could resist the swelling tide of indignation that would overwhelm it.

It is only in the form of ardent spirits in the way of a lawful trade extended over the entire land, that fevers may be imported and disseminated that trees of death may be plantedthat extensive morasses may be opened, and moral miasma spread over the nation-and that an armed host may land, to levy upon us enormous taxations, to undermine our liberties, bind our hands, and put our feet in fetters. This dreadfu! work is going on, and yet the nation sleeps. Say not that all these evils result from the abuse of ardent spirits; for as human nature is constituted, the abuse is as certain as any of the laws of nature. The commerce therefore, in ardent spirits, which produces no good, and produces a certain and an immense amount of evil, must be regarded as an unlawful commerce, and ought, upon every principle of humanity, and patriotism, and conscience, and religion, to be abandoned and proscribed

SERMON V.

THE REMEDY OF INTEMPERANCE.

HABAKKUK, ii. 9—11, 15, 16.

Wo 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 but of the timber shall answer it.

Wo unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, hat puttest thy bottle to him, and makest nim drunken alsc, 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 have endeavored to show that commerce in ardent spirits is unlawful,

1. Inasmuch as it is useless; and

2. As it is eminently pernicious.

We now proceed to adduce further evidence of its unlawfulness-and observe,

3. That it seems to be a manifest violation of the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;" and of various other evangelical precepts.

No man can act in the spirit of impartial love