whole race to the light and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

OUR Father, wilt thou bless the word spoken. May it enlarge our charity, and yet make us love the truth. May it increase our toleration for one another, and yet deliver us from indifference. May we know what things to value; what things to emphasize; and yet may ail that we do be done in the large spirit of catholicity and forbearance. May we bear with each other. May we love one another more and more. More than every other instrument may we employ the spirit of true divine love. Let thy kingdom come. Let thy will be done upon earth as it is done in heaven. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.

THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION.

"What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have, of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."-1 COR. vi. 19, 20.

The Christian obligations which lie upon us in the direction of physical health and strength and beauty are almost unknown to ascetic theology. We have come down bearing yet in us the effect of the false theology which taught men to despise this world, and to call it all manner of names; to despise the man in the body, and to inculcate the duty of destroying a large part of man's nature. By a perversion of the figurative language of Scripture, men have been taught that it was their duty to sacrifice the affections and appetites and passions, in order that the spiritual life might have power which is as if one should teach shipmasters making voyages in steamers to put out the furnace, and to keep all grease from the engine-room, in order that the cabin might be kept sweeter and pleasanter. You might roll forever in an eternal storm or calm if you destroyed propulsion. Power in the hull is necessary to the well-being of the cabin; and power in the human body is essential to the wellbeing of the mind. It has not anything that needs to be extinguished. There is not an appetite too many. There are no passions which are not needful. We are compactly and symmetrically organized. Harmonization, regularity, subordination-these are needed; our rampant affections need to be tamed; they need to be brought under some intelligent

SUNDAY EVENING, April 12, 1874. LESSON: Psalm xix., HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 1008, 1001, 1020,

plan; they need to maintain their position as servants, and should never be allowed arrogantly to assume the port and mien of masters; but they are not to be put out.

On the other hand, we are to honor the body. It is a part of our Christian duty to honor it, by vigor, by health, by all that fruitfulness in worldly ways which springs from buoyancy of spirit and soundness of body; and he sins against himself who, by appetite and passion, or in any other way, perverts the uses of his body.

I purpose, to-night, not so much to discuss directly the subject of Temperance, as to present the subject at large as it lies in my mind; and this with reference to a general view, suggesting some considerations which ought to enter into our daily life, and into all the exertions which are being made in our time to stay the evils of intemperance.

There are naturally two departments of this subject. The one is the traffic in intoxicating drinks or injurious substances; and the other is the use of them. Both of these themes are now brought before the minds of our citizens; and we are called, and must be called, inevitably, to act in regard to them both.

I shall speak first as to the traffic in intoxicating drinks. This depends, not on anything that is inherent in it, but on this: that it supplies the strongest and most impetuous craving which human nature can know. I suppose that there is no other demand so strong as the morbid taste for stimulants; and just as long as men crave them with all the impetus of their being, just so long that craving will be supplied. You may make up your minds to that. If men have to dig a thousand fathoms deep, and build walls in the very center of the earth, they will build them; and as long as the demand for intoxicating drinks remains, so long it will be supplied, clandestinely or openly. Therefore this traffic, either illicit or permitted, will exist so long as those morbid conditions and cravings exist which create a demand for it in society.

The knowledge of this fact does not touch the theory of right or wrong, but it touches the question of prudence in procedure. In regard to the right of the community to ex

tirpate this traffic if it can, there is in my mind no doubt whatsoever. If we have a right to regulate every part of business for the public weal, to forbid the sale of poisonous elements except under certain regulations and conditions, to forbid that men shall carry concealed weapons, to maintain the peace of the whole community by one and another restriction, then, certainly, we have the same right, in a more imperative form, to defend the community against an evil which sums up in itself almost every other evil which is known to human society. To say that you have no right to suppress the traffic in intoxicating drinks is to indulge in an unwarrantable license of speech. It is one thing to say that you have no right; it is another thing to say that it is not expedient.

In regard to what is called the "Maine Law," which absolutely forbids this traffic, that law is right. It is conformable to all the analogies of civil society. There is but one single fault to be found with it-you cannot make it work. If you could, I think there would be an end of the argument. You may enforce it in neighborhoods, in particular communities; but, looking upon this nation, I anticipate that a hundred years will not see such an educated public sentiment, nor such conditions of general living and health, as will make it possible to maintain such a law.

I was, from the earliest day, an advocate of that law. I believe it still, as much as ever I did, to stand in just principles, and to be a thing much to be desired; but I have given up the expectation of seeing it exist with any considerable working force in our time.

Then it was supposed that if you could not enforce a law absolutely excluding drink, perhaps you might indirectly gain the end sought by making the men who traffic in intoxicating drinks responsible for all the mischiefs which they do. Well, that did look feasible; but it does not work, either. Men will not prosecute nor serve as witnesses in such cases; magistrates drink; and the desired results are not produced, to say nothing of the fact that the consequences of inordinate drinking are dubious, and that the worst mischiefs are of a kind which you cannot meet with law. It may be that if a