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Show FIRST DAY-EVENING SF:SSIO~. liquors as drink; while, in fact, drunkenness is only the last and the smallest of the evils resulting from the desolating cause, which is destroying the virtue, the happiness, and the lives of a vast portion of the human race. This cause is to be found in the hahitual use of those liquors, without any reference to the fact of intoxication. The moderate drinker d<~ily takes into his stomach a quantity of those liquors, when, from the warmth of the- body, they undergo the process of distillation, and the subtle poison finds its way to the brain, where, by its consuming power, all the finer sensibilities of that most delicate organ are destroyed. 'Vhile yet he is regarded as but a moderate drinker, all tho desolations of mind and character, which result from the use of those liquors, stand out in bold relief; and when this destructive habit shall complete its work by an occasional fit of intoxication, it adds but liule to the catalogue of evils which it had before inOicterl upon him. So long as men supposed that no evil resulted from moderate drinking, relying upon the slrength of their good resolutions to abstain from taking so much as to make themselves drunken, they continued to indulge in the destrucli,•e poison; and the fact that, when the moral and intellectual deterioration was efl'ected, they crossed the line of demarcation which separates between the condition of the moderate drinker :md that of the.drun.kar~, was the ''ery reason why the ruinous resulL of drinking, short of mtox1callon, was not understood. Men saw all around them the misery and the crime which are always seen among people who use fermented and s~irituous liquors as drink, but they saw these evils principally in connexion w1th drunkenness, and they heard the public voice mistakenly charge them upon drunkenness, instead of charging the drunkenness itself, and all its attendant e~ils, to the destructive power of alcohol upon the mental and moral energ1es of man. Here was the grand mistake which lulled to a fatal ideal security the devotees of Bacchus, with all the host of cider beer and spiri~ drinkers, who vainly imagined that they might safely indul~e in' mo· deration, and yet stand firm on the temperate side of the line of demarcation. It is evitlent that no man would ever cross this line, unless his resolution, his moral perception, his self-respect, and the affections of his nature, were first greatly.impaired .; and yet it is an appalling fact, that one-third of the adult males m the Umtcd States do cross this line and die drunkards· and let it ever be remembered and often reiterated, that it is that use of ferm~nted and spirituous liquors which is not accompanied with intoxication, that brings them up to and actually puts them over this dreadful line.. This fact being now admitted, let it be proclaimed to the world in tones of thunder, that alcohol in any form, or in any quantity, when taken into the human stomach, is a corroding poison, and that its habitual use produces a diseased state of the system, which ultimately exhibits itself in an utter disregard of all the moral and social obligations of man, ac.;companicd with the positive exhibition of all the vices and miseries which afJlict our race. And let it also be remembered that these miseries and vices are no more chargeable to drunkCJ~nes~ than drunkenness is to them; they are all exhibited together, as the ~nevJtable result of the position in which moderate drinking has placed its hapless victims. Moderate drinking has put them over that line of demarcation which separates between resolution and prostration-between virtue and vice-between soberness and drunkenness; and all the desolation, and all the ruin of the mortal frame and the deathless mind, arc the natural result, not of tlrunkenness, but of the use of fermented and spirituous liquors as drink. Behold, then, t~e tlwusands of pollutcJ streams which, flowing from the ~rew-house, the c1der ?r wine press, and the distillery, and by means of the hcensP !-lyatrm. !-lpre:Hhng through every city, town, and hamlet in thP. land, AUURt;SS Oio' AHNOLD llVl'l-'UJtl. 3U are involving in mighly ruin the fairest hopes of heaven; and raisi_ng high the standard, let a line of demarcation be drawn between the friends of the temperance reformation and its opposers. On virtue's side will stand, encouraged with hope, all who enlist under the banner of total abstinenc€' i on the other side, far down the vale of misery, will be seen, descending into the drunkard's grave, the notoriously intemperate; in their rear, and following in the same b10ad way, will appear the host of unrcclaimed moderate drinkers. From the drunken leader of this numerous band, to the last follower whu takes his glass but once a month, will ~e one unbroken chain i .not a link will be wanting to render the connection plain, and the successiOn sure. Suppose the temperance societies should discontinue their exertions, and the temperance reformation should ct:ase to go forward, when the thousands of drnnkards who now curse our land, shall have been summoned to the bar of God, by whom will their places in iniquity ami wretchedness be .supplied ?-when they shall be crying for one drop of cold water, to cool the tip of their tongues, by what class of persons will the army of tlrunkards be filled? Come, ye moderate, temperate drinkers, who say that a little is good, and that in moderate drinking there is no harm-come, tell me, if ye can, in a few fleeting years, when death shall have arrested the career of those that have crossed, before you, the line which separates between the moderate drinker and the drunkard, who but yourselves will then be seen tottering on the brink of the eternal world, with reddened eyes, bloated facP., and carbuncled nose-with despairing wife and famished childrenwith a body full of disease, ami a soul full of guilt-without the comforts of this life, and without the hope or the future? . Have yo~t ever seriously contemplated the origin and progress of the dtsease of mtemperance?-have you marked the gradatinns by which the drunkard has been brought to his wretched condition? Perhaps, when he was in his mother's lap, a smiling innocent lamb, fit for the purity of hf'avenly joy, his unsuspecting mother, in some pleasant cordial, administered the first seeds of that loathsome disease wherewith he is now afllicted; as he grew to be a fine boy, his father may have given him a little from his own glas~, and he may ~Jav.e heard b?th his parents say that a little is good, and that 111 moderate dnnkmg there IS no harm. 'Vhen he became a man, he often found occasion to remember this saying,-if he was coltl, a little \~armed h~m; if he w.as hot .• :~little cooled hi~; if he was wet, a liule would dry hun; and 1f he was 11l, a lillie would cure l11tn; at any rate, on all occasions he thought he was quite sure that a little would do him no harm. Some· times, to be sure, in an unguarded moment, he would take a little too much, but then he would most manfully resolve never to do so again. But, alas, the dr~nkard's resolution is written on the sand, and one glass of rum will \~ash 1t a_war; the disease of intemperance was now preying upon his vitals i h1s ?onsttlullon had undergone a decided change; without the aid of artificial exCJtem~nt, his spirits would droop and his limbs would tremble. 'Vhen he arose in the. morning he fo~md a little was very good, and he still thought it could do hnn no harm,-lt braced his nerves, gave vigor to his mind, and ver~ much strengthened h.is emaciated frame; at nine o'clock his system was_ agam exhausted, and aga1n required excitement; again at twelve, and agam at four. 1:loor miserable victim of fermented and spirituous liquors, now .a con~r~ed drunkard and outcast from society,-his children are growmg up m Ignorance and vice,-his wife has gone down, with a broken heart to the g~ave,-he stands tottering on the brink of etemity, without comfort ~n~ Without ~ope. Is this a picture or an euthusia8tic imagination only, or IS It but a famt representation of the sad reality? Reflect for a |