HAT is a drunkard?
A Christian is one who follows
and practices the virtues of
Christ.

An angel is a pure creature who contemplates and enjoys God.

A man is a creature who thinks and

reasons.

A brute is a creature that follows its appetite indeed, but never goes to excess beyond the bounds of order.

What is a drunkard?

I have gone through the whole creation that lives, and I find nothing in it like a drunkard.

He enjoys no happiness like the angels;

He is not preparing himself for happiness like the Christian;

He does not think or reason like a man;

He keeps not his appetite within the bounds of nature like a brute. What then is a drunkard?

The drunkard is nothing but the drunkard. There is no other thing in nature to which he can be likened.

This is not a subject on which we can be allowed to soften down the truth in our words until it becomes falsehood.

The drunkard is a self-made wretch

who has gratified the depraved cravings of the throat of his body, until he has sunk his soul so far that it has lost in his flesh, and has sunk his very flesh beyond comparison lower than that of the animals which serve him: a self degraded creature whose degradation is made manifest to everyone but himself; a self-made miserable being, who, whilst he is insensible to his own misery, afflicts everyone else with misery around him or belonging to him.

He differs from the mad man only in this the mad man has not caused his own calamity, whilst this man has; because the mad man is innocent whilst this man is guilty.

The mad man is an object for pity and compassion, and all the cares of humanity; whilst the drunkard is an object of ridicule, scorn, contempt; a butt for the world to play its follies at; a stock for the world's laughter; a ball for its game of mockery; a tool for the knave's cheatery and the harlot's wilery; an instrument in the hand of hell's malignity.

The madman is placed in security; he can be guarded against injuring himself and others.

The drunkard is let loose on mankind like some foul, ill-boding, and noxious animal to pester, torment and disgust everything that reasons or feels; whilst

the curse of God hangs over his place, and the gates of heaven are closed against him.

Knows he what he says or says not? Has not prudence left the guard of his tongue? Is there any gate to his mouth, any bar to his lips? Are not the secrets of the past and the follies of the present, and fetid fumes of the liquor, and the foul thoughts from the tempter, mingled together, and poured out upon all around him?

The very animal powers sink under drunkeness.

It darkens the senses as well as the soul, and deadens the feelings as well as the mind; weakens, stupefies, shatters, the frame of the animal man, as well as the frame of the rational man; deprives him of God; deprives him of heaven; deprives him of honor; cuts him off from human respect; casts him away from the friendship of men; destroys his fortune; ruins his family; deprives him of himself; kills all his good here, and all his hope hereafter, and bloats his body with premature disease, to fatten the worms and enrich the rankness of the graveyard.

D

RUNKENNESS is a willing fury, a voluntary demon, a state worse than madness.

Would you know how the drunkard is worse than the demoniac? We pity the tormented demoniac; we abhor the drunkard.

We condole with the one; we are indignant and irritated at the other. The snares of an enemy have possessed the demoniac; his own counsels have possessed the drunkard.

With the demoniac, he is driven about a slave by his possessor; with the demoniac he is fallen from his state of mind and manhood; with him he staggers, falls, rolls a disgusting eye, foams and exhales nauseousness. He is disagreeable to his friends, ridic

ulous to his enemies, contemptible to his servants, loathsome to his wife, scandalous to his children-odious to all!

Whilst all who call him acquaintance are indignant, and all who call him friend are distressed; whilst all his nearest relations are miserable, and his children are squalid from neglectwicked from want of example;—the wretched perhaps, from want of care drunkard sits in the house of crime, at the table of infamy, with his cup of weakness, his draught of poison, before him, and is there contending with his brother drunkard which shall most defame himself: which shall show the greatest folly, which shall exhibit the meanest baseness, which shall best shatter his nerves, and destroy his nature.

He who knows has well described the effects of intemperance, in these words:

"Paleness, weakness, laziness, folly." Pale, hanging cheeks, red ulcered eyes, trembling hands, furious dreams, restless distracted sleep; like murderers and persons of an affrighted conscience, so broken, so sick, so disorderly are the slumbers of the drunkard who awakes to misery.

Show me a temperate man, and I will show you a prudent man; show me a temperate man and I will show you a virtuous man; show me a temperate man and I will point out to you a wise man.

For intemperance is the root of folly intemperance is the seed of madness: intemperance is the fountain of uncleanness: intemperance is the wellhead in injustice: intemperance is the poison spring of unbelief: intemperance is the stream where each virtue drowns herself: intemperance is the cloud of fleshly vapor which rises over and darkens all the soul.