to gratify it; and this very gratification serves only to increase the demands of appetite. If this propensity be not seasonably checked, it invariably leads to intemperance.

This vice is sometimes contracted by regarding ardent spirits, as a safeguard from the bad effects of the weather. How many, for example, think themselves justified in taking a double portion of spirituous liquors, when they are exposed to the wet or the cold? On these occasions, some, who are temperate at other times, indulge them selves in drinking too freely. But it has long since been demonstrated, that such a practice greatly increases, instead of lessening their danger. In proof of this, a striking fact occurred, near the commencement of the revolutionary war. In a driving storm of snow, a large vessel with many hands on board was wrecked in our bay. Most of them were enabled to reach the shore. The weather was excessively cold. No human habitation was in view; and there was but little prospect of preserving life, unless aid could be immediately obtained. Several casks of ardent spirits were driven on shore. Those, who considered such liquors, as preservatives from the weather, partook freely of them. The more judicious drank nothing, but cold water. It has been confidently asserted, that the lives of the lat ter were preserved, while the former perished with the cold. Many instances of a similar kind might be produced. It has

also been amply proved, that men, working in damp places, are more likely to preserve health and ever to remain comfortable, without than with the use of ardent spirits. Away then with the false maxims of the intemperate, who, in every state of the atmosphere, and on all occasions, can readily find a pretext for the indulgence of their darling appetite.

The free use of spirits at convivial meetings is a powerful incentive to intemperance. The love of strong drink never fails to multiply such assemblages; and, when convened where spirituous liquors are at hand, it is too common to indulge in them to excess. Hence the great danger, to which they are unavoidably exposed, who loiter about taverns, and places, where ardent spirits are vended. Persons may frequent such places merely to hear the news of the day, or to pass away time, which hangs heavily upon them. But few instances, it is believed, can be produced, of those, who are habitually and unnecessarily at such places, without contracting, to a greater or less degree, an inordinate love of strong drink.

A false notion of generosity, which prevails within the haunts of intemperance, is also favorable to this vice. Many people seldom meet a friend at a tavern, but they feel bound, even without the least occasion, to invite him to drink. This produces from him a like return; and it is thought unsocial to refuse the inebriating draught, although intoxication should be the result,

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By this absurd custom, how may become confirmed in the habits of intemperance? How few have the fortitude to abjure this pernicious practice? In this sor. did manner how many are anxjous to manifest generosity, whose hearts are hard, as adamant, to the calls of real distress; and who even practise every evasion, to avoid the demands of justice?

The custom of treating, as it is vulgarly called. on unneces sary occasions, tends to promote intemperance. In some places these occasions very frequently recur. But when do they happen, without giving rise to some shameful abuses? Did they serve merely to afford a fresh opportutunity to the intemperate to indulge to excess, the evil would be the less. For to such persons temptations to inordinate indulgence are seldom wanting. But the mischief of such occasions is, that they allure the idle and the thoughtless, who are not yet hackneyed in vice, to engage in courses, which threaten them with ruin. If there be any occasion for such a practice, which more than any other must strike the reflecting mind with horror, it is at funerals, where every thing conspires to invite sobriety. What greater perversion then can there be, than to attend upon such solemnities with the professed design of cherishing solemn considerations of mortality, and of sympathizing with the bereaved, and, at the same time, by a free use of strong drink. to banish every serious thought?

The practice of drinking ardent spirits, at common social visits, is a further temptation to intemperance. Many people appear to think, that they cannot better evince their hospitality, than by setting spirituous liquors before their friends, and urging them to partake. This is to multiply inducements to excess, against which we cannot too cautiously guard.

Strong drink is often taken to drown reflection. By the tempo rary elation, which it gives to the spirits, many fly to it, as a present relief, not sufficiently considering that it will in the resuit multiply tenfold the evils, which it is designed to remedy.

Parental example sometimes leads children to the practice of this vice. There are however instances, in which the sad consequences of ebriety in parents are made by a kind Providence to operate, as inducements to their offspring to avoid it, as destructive to their best hopes.

An excessive fondness for ardent spirits is often cherished by employing them for medicinal purposes. A clergyman, who was dismissed from the ministry for intemperance, once confess ed, that he was at first insensibly drawn into the habit by consid ering it useful to take some spirit both before and after speaking. How desirable is it, that physicians should properly consider the danger of intemperance, when they recommend ardent spirit to be taken in composition with medicine, How cau tious should we be, lest we delude ourselves into the belief,

that we are using spirituous li quors, either as preventives, or as remedies, when we are only

gratifying appetites, rendered insatiable by irregular indulgence!

THE present age is distinguished, and very honorably distinguished by its efforts in behalf of the poorer classes of society. The virtue of charity was never before so well understood or so successfully practised. It is true that Christianity, wherever it has prevailed, has awakened and extended the benevolent sympathies of our nature, and even in ages of darkness and bar barism it found many a stream of bounty to flow for the relief of the poor. But the charity of former times was often injudicious. It was satisfied with feeling and giving. It did not It did not unite the labor of the head with the impulse of the heart, and endeavor to make its gifts productive of a permanent good. Christians are at length begin ning to learn, that charity must think as well as feel; that judgment must be joined with sensibility; that the precept to do good requires us to search with care by what methods the widest and most durable benefits may be communicated to our fellow beings. Christians have learned to question the value of that bounty, which scatters money with an undistinguishing hand, and even to doubt whether some of those institutions, which have been deemed the most splendid monuments of benevolence, are not on the whole injurious to

mankind. Ihat same active spirit of scrutiny, which has detected and reformed so many errors in religion and philosophy, has been directed to the established modes of charity, and some important improvements have already been introduced We have learned, that if we would de good to men, their nature must be consulted; the great principles of human action must be weighed; relief must be communicated in methods most suited to awaken activity, and to sustain the sen, timent of self respect; and in particular, care must be taken lest the remedy strengthen the disease, lest by relieving we multiply want. We have learned, that charity, to be effectual, must be guided by a knowledge of the human heart, and that the charity, which prevents poverty, is more valuable, than that which waits to be awakened by the presence and sight of its woes.

In some ages of the church, indigence was preached up as a virtue. Europe was overrun with swarms of mendicants, who obtained a reputation for sanctity by vows of poverty, and by a life of beggary. But experience gradually taught men, that indigence and slothful dependence on alms were the last things to be encouraged in a community. As the dark ages past away, Christendom learnt that sancti

Poverty is a great evil. Notwithstanding all the fine colors which fanaticism and poetry have sometimes labored to throw over it, it is a great evil.-It brings with it much bodily suffering. The poor are often obliged to gather round a scanty table and a cold hearth; to sleep under a roof which is open to the rain and the snow; to hear the bleak winds penetrating their ragged walls and windows. They are obliged to labor when pain and weakness admonish them of approaching disease. They have few means of checking sickness in its first stages; and compassion seldom begins to minister to them, until they are stretched on the bed of sickness;-and even then, how little can compassion do, to purify the unwholesome air which they breathe, to keep their crowded room in quiet, to render them those thousand minute attentions which have power to alleviate disease.

Poverty brings also mental suffering. Hope gives to life its highest charm and animation. But the prospects of the poor, as far as respects this world, are faintly lighted up with hope. You see anxiety written in strong lines on their countenances, es

pecially in sickness. They are anxious for the supply of the morrow's wants, anxious for their children whom they see suffering around them. If they look forward, to the decline of life when nature needs repose,no tranquil home rises before them, the abode of comfort and plenty. They fear that want will press more heavily, as the strength to sustain it is diminished. It is true, the almshouse is open to receive them; but can you wonder that those are sad, whose brightest earthly prospect is an almshouse; who know that they must be separated from the habits and associates of past life, be immured with strangers, and live and die without sympathy and friendship?

But poverty brings with it worse evils than bodily and mental suffering. tal suffering. It tends to degrade the character. It is indeed true that its severe trials sometimes form exalted virtues. But these trials often prove too severe, and bear down, instead of elevating the mind. Poverty too often brings with it filth, and this has a very unhappy influence on the character.

It is hard for the poor to be neat. Shut up in one room, with hardly a change of raiment, with few accommodations for preparing and preserv ing food, with minds and bodies exhausted by labor, they gradually give up attention to their dwellings, their persons, their modes of living. Their dress becomes torn and squalid. They feel themselves unfit for society. They lose the important senti ment of self respect. They feel

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