TRUST IN GOD. But blest is he-how great his gain!— His founts of mercy never fail. Like stately tree, whose branches wave Its quivering leaves, so darkly green, Who trusts in God, no weeping fears, His teeming boughs, with mellow fruit, 291 COUNTERACTING INFLUENCES. Or the counteracting influences that blight and mar our social progress the vampire vices that drain the lifeblood of society-the first in magnitude and power will be found in the workings of Intemperance. We see man, who by the aids of science can from the charged thunder-cloud draw the lightnings of heaven, and holding the reins of the subtle fluid in his hand, can, by directing its motions, despatch those swift messengers which convey intelligence to almost every quarter of the world-man, who can bind together in bands of iron the most adverse elements, and from their combined energies extract a power which shall in its uses pervade and impel almost every movement in the commercial, social, and moral world-yet this rational and reasoning being, who possesses such powers, and is capable of fulfilling such glorious destinies, like Samson, lays himself down in the lap of this accursed Delilah, and only wakes to find that he is shorn of his strength, and that God has departed from him. We are told in ancient fable that Prometheus stole the fire from heaven with which he animated the image of man which he had made, but in the annals of intemperance "truth is stranger than fiction;" and the most COUNTERACTING INFLUENCES. 293 incredible incidents of heathen fable lose their extravagance beside the realities of our experience. We are aware, not of one man, but of a numerous class of men, who labour in their vocations, not to bring fire from heaven, but from a far different place-the fires with which they inflame their guests; men from whose ever-open doors issue forth more plagues than ever escaped from the fabled box of Pandora. But, ah! in the case of too many of their victims, not even Hope remains behind! It is these bitter and burning fountains of intemperance welling up at every corner which pour forth the streams that carry death in all his terrors, crime in all its gradations, misery in all its phases, murder, madness, and suicide into every thick haunt of humanity. Into homes where are sons before whom for years the parents have been casting the pearls of their love and grief, their tears and entreaties, to win them to the paths of sobriety, but they, like their swinish prototypes, only trample them under their feet, and turn again to rend them! Into homes where nightly sits the pale mother by the dark hearth, with her children cowering round her knees, painfully listening for the reeling footsteps of him who is misnamed husband and father! He comes, and announces himself by horrid oaths and threats, while his trembling family oppose nothing to his ruffian violence but sobs and shrieks. Into homes where, presiding over the miserable menage, sits a female drunkard! We will not profane the sacred names of wife and mother by bestowing them upon that monstrous libel on womanhood; on her who, instead of being found like a fruitful vine by the house-sides laden with clusters of blessing, stands, like the deadly upas-tree, in the midst of a scene of desolation, where everything of life, every bud of promise, every blossom of hope put forth by the olive plants around her, lie dead beneath the blasting influence of her fatal shadow. Look on this picture, in which we have essayed to portray the dark lineaments of the fiery fiend, at the blast of whose burning breath "our blossom has gone up like dust," and our fruit, like the apples of Sodom, although they seem fair to the eye, are too often found to be full of bitter ashes::- What moves thee, my mother? say, where hast thou been? In all thy sad wanderings, what thing hast thou seen Most fruitful in misery, sorrow, and crime- Alas! from my youth to my sorrowful age I have had, I have still, a stern warfare to wage, For go where I may, or look where I will, This pestilent monster he haunteth me still; He poisons my food, and he murders my sleep, And he scowls on the hearth where at midnight I weep. This monster came down "like a wolf on the fold," VERSES Suggested by a Concert given in Aid of the "Coatbridge Ladies' Benevolent Society," 18th November, 1862. BENEVOLENCE, attended by beauty, She pleads! while rich music is ringing She pleads! while the charm'd ear is listening And the soft eye of Pity is glistening She points to the couch of the dying, |