intoxicating drinks was to men in health needless, and so dangerous; and that therefore it was both politic and a moral duty to abstain from it absolutely. I think nothing has been taken from that principle, and that nothing has been added to it. It is just as sound to-day as it was in the beginning. It was a kind of divine providence that led men to this very simple ground, which every man understands, and which addresses itself, first or last, to the reason of the great bulk of the community. Intoxicating drinks are not needful to men in health, and men in health had better let them absolutely alone. It is easier to let them alone than to tamper with them, or to tell how much or how little they may be indulged in.

But in undertaking to persuade men to banish intoxicating drinks if they had used them, or not to touch them if they had never learned to use them,,men fell upon reasons which would not bear proof; and it is not strange. Physiology is every year disclosing newer and newer views; and it is not surprising that it is found that the old doctrines were in many respects false.

For example, there springs up a school in the community which teaches that all stimulants of every kind are bad: not alcoholic stimulants alone, but tea and coffee, pepper and salt, and everything else that tastes good. When I come to consider what things have been, by one school and another, shown to be mischievous, I marvel that the race exists yet on earth! If I were to follow physiological doctrines as I see them laid down in journals of health and hygiene, and as they are taught by the frantic schools that are endeavoring to reform the community, I should not dare to take meat, and I should not dare to take anything with which to qualify my vegetables. Salt is declared to be bad. I am told in one quarter that pepper is extremely bad. I am told in another quarter that I must give up vinegar-except in the disposition! Everything, first or last, is condemned. You must not eat raised bread. Yeast in bread is bad. If saleratus is put into it, it is worse yet. Fat in your food is bad. Almost everything that belongs to cooking has had its blow. And there are those in the community who expect that they are

going to draw men into their school on the general doctrine that stimulants are bad.

Now, there is nothing that you call food which is not stimulating; and a doctrine which generally sweeps away stimulants will never prevail. It will have some adherents here and there; but this is a matter in which everybody has liberty in nature-a liberty with which grace will not interfere. If common sense does not interfere with it, nothing will. Every man has a right to regulate his own diet; and any attempt to reform the community must proceed on a ground which will meet the sober sense and the experience of

men.

Therefore, those schools that are carrying a crude and incorrect physiology to the extreme I regard as standing in the way of temperance reform-not as helping it.

Take the theory of reaction. I remember myself to have made very strong appeals for this theory, saying to men, "Every particle that you drink, every degree that you raise the tone of your system by stimulants, will cause you to rebound to the other extreme, and you will go down just as far as you go up." I thought it was true; but there never was a falsity greater than that. The reaction is not according to the action. Under certain circumstances, in exceptional cases, it may be; but if you take minute quantities of alcoholic stimulants you produce one class of effects, and produce them without reaction.

It was my lot to live in the western country where men were subject to congestive fevers which were more dangerous and deadly than any yellow fever; and the most prodigous stimulants were administered to patients. Ammonia, brandy, and a variety of other stimulants of the most intensive character were given to them every ten minutes. According to this theory, after taking such stimulants they should have been dashed down into a bottomless pit of reaction; but there was no reaction whatever. On the contrary, they were

carried on and over the gulf of congestion, and were cured. This fact opened my eyes to the untruth which inhered. in the primitive argument that the system could be carried up by stimulants only to undergo a corresponding waste of

its stock. I saw that it was wrong physiologically. And the mischief of such an argument is, that when men, having heard it stated, find out that it is not true, they lose faith in all other arguments on the subject of temperance, and say, "I know they are all false."

The same objection holds good against the poison-theory on which Mr. Greeley used to found his whole temperance doctrine. He took the ground that alcoholic stimulants were absolutely poisonous. If that could be proved, all the rest would be very easy; but, though I do not consider alcoholic stimulants food, and although I do consider many of them, by reason of their adulterations, as poisonous; yet I do not regard them as poisonous in every case. For instance, I do not think that wine and cider, or even brandy and whisky, are in and of themselves poisonous, though they may be made poisonous under certain circumstances.

How absurd it is to tell a young man whose grandfather never, morning or noon, forgot to take his dram, and lived to be eighty-six years old, and, when he was seventy-five could lift a barrel of cider and drink from the bung-how absurd it is to tell such a young man that alcoholic stimulus is a slow poison! He laughs at you. It is a poison under certain circumstances; but to undertake to base an argument which shall meet the experience and the convictions of the whole community on such a theory as this is to take away from yourself the sympathy of the common-sense of the great bulk of the community-if they observe and think.

It is said that alcoholic stimulus is not a food, that it builds nothing, and that the system does not need it. suppose that is in accordance with the facts of physiology. But is it right to assume that nothing is needed by the body except that which is a part of its constructive force? Does it follow that there are no other wants besides constructive wants? There are many eminent physiologists who say that tobacco, in very moderate quantities, and that even opium and alcohol, in very small doses, are nerve-preservers. They assert that there are two effects which are produced by these stimulants, the first of which is conservation. They take the ground that any given amount of action of the brain or

the nervous system wastes that brain or nervous system less where very minute quantities of alcohol or other stimulants are employed. They say that the second effect of stimulants is a narcotizing one, and that if you augment the dose you go on to this second and entirely different stage, and come to a condition of incipient intemperance or intoxication.

Now, to teach that men should avoid alcoholic stimulants because they are not food, and from that to infer that they have no function at all under any circumstances, is not to blind intelligent men, but is to repel them. In other words, it seems to me that we must make our physiclogy consistent with our observation and experience. I would rather say to the young men under my charge, "Do not drink alcohol; because you do not need it and because you run many risks in drinking it. You do not know what is in your blood hereditarily. You do not know what are those conditions of your nervous system which may break out under stimulants into morbid states which will sweep you away. You do not know, if the habit of indulgence in intoxicating drinks should be formed in you, what trouble and anguish would be the result. You do not know what work would be done upon you and in you. And observation should teach you that this habit is so perilous, even aside from physiological considerations, that every man should say to himself, 'Let me be healthy on good food, letting alone artificial stimulants of every kind."" On this ground I can urge, with a clear conscience, on my parishioners and friends, abstinence from indulgence in the use of alcohol-namely, on the practical observational ground that it is not needed for health, and that it is full of risks and perils.

On this not only practical, but, as it seems to me, commonsense ground, it is in vain to expect that we shall carry the community with us immediately, and generally, and finally. I make this remark because I feel that to a very large extent temperance movements have been organized on the idea less of "A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together," than on the idea that the work is one which can be done up at once and got rid of; but you never will have done with it. The restraining of men from intemperate stimulants

must be a part of the staple work of each generation.

As long as men live in physical bodies you never can cleanse the community from intemperance. Every age must attend to it for itself, and follow it up. If intemperance were like the measles or varioloid, which you can have but once; if having fallen into it, you could get rid of it once for all, that would be another thing; but the desire for basilar excitements is a part of the animal nature. The reasons that are acting upon men in this regard are in their nature continuous. They will go on to your children, and to their children. And all the paroxysmal efforts of men to give extraordinary attention to this subject for a little while in order to destroy intemperance, and then have a rest, or opportunity to attend to something else, are ill-timed. They may do some good, but they will not destroy the force of this great evil. We must consider that the liability of men to super-stimulation is one of those elements which belong not alone to savage life, in which it takes on a brutal form, but preeminently to civilized life.

As

Savages drink in order to experience what may be called mental pleasure. Having no thought power, no imaginative power, no joy from intellectual forces, they attempt to produce a glowing enthusiasm by the use of stimulants. society becomes more civilized and more mentally active, men drink in order to produce, not the lower forms of excitement, but that state of mind and body by which they shall be enabled to work more efficiently and continuously-by which, in other words, they shall be enabled to put the work of twenty hours into the space of ten; or by which they shall be enabled to do four times the usual amount of work in any given period. These are the general influences which are tempting men to use intoxicating drinks. And we are to take this cause of temperance and make it a labor of humanity, of patriotism, of morality, and of religion, in the school, in the newspaper, everywhere, continually, every generation for itself, working, working, working.

One of the first elements, then, in this reformatory work, should be the diffusion of knowledge. It should go on at all times. I am bold enough to say that if you cannot secure