fashioned Nathaniel did not see any particular impropriety in Charles rollicking a little in the metropolis, after the freshness of the honeymoon was over, even when (the Boothby, as he playfully called her) Mrs. Drake informed him of Sarah's condition, and volunteered a piece of her motherly mind about Mr. Charles and his unfeeling behaviour in staying away from his wife at such a time; he only thought that the likeliest thing to do was to send his dear Boothby down into the country, and as he happened to require just then a little more liberty than was consistent with her notions of conjugal duties, and he fancied that Charles had hardly yet rubbed off his very natural vexation, this arrangement, he thought, and indeed said, would be the pleasantest for all parties. But he did not tell his young friend the secret which had been committed to him in the sacredness of nuptial confidence; and for some reason never properly explained, the dear little wife thought proper to keep her own counsel (at any rate, for a short time), from him whom it most concerned. Whatever additional shade would thus have gathered round Charles's falling character, if knowing he had given no heed to his wife's double claim on his presence and tenderest love, we rejoice that it is not our duty to draw it. He was innocent of this, and his conduct was so unjustifiable otherwise, and so pitiable in its results, that we may well refrain from making him appear so heartless, and so criminally weak, as to have purposely kept away at this affecting season.

We have said that he openly insulted his benefactor, but we should also have said that Nathaniel forgave the insult on the spot, and forgot it on the morrow, attributing it to its true cause, sorrow and drunkenness. Charles knew well enough that he had nothing to fear from his faithful friend, and that he need not even apologize for the spiteful falsehood he had so shamefully uttered. But the mischief was done in his own feelings towards Nathaniel. He could not go up to him with the frankness of contrition, nor with the freedom of one who knew that he was forgiven the moment he had sinned.

He had lost self-respect. All that he had gone through previously, though it was attributable so largely to his own

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folly and vanity, had left him self-respect, increased unhealthily till its true name was, as we have intimated, conceit; but this wrong-the wrong he himself had done without provocation-without the shadow of an excuse,—this blow dealt by his own reckless hand, had laid low in the dust all confidence-all that remained of youth's generous candour. A youth trained as he had been is like a well-timbered ship with many anchors on board. It is not a little shock that will wreck it, and when it is rolling fearfully in the trough of the greedy sea, there is an anchor still to be thrown out-to save the vessel from drifting to its fate. But when selfrespect and self-reliance have gone, all the securities which mere human wisdom can devise fail and sink at once. He was adrift now. How swiftly does destruction come at all times to the hapless victim, though others see it from afar; but how lightning-like in strength and suddenness is the blow which fells the innocence and untested virtue of the home-bred youth.

WE can look back in calm though sad review on the follies, and excesses as we deem them, into which Charles had already fallen. We can reason deftly on the weakening tendency of self-indulgence, illustrating it by a reference to his wine-bibbing, and his inability to sustain the very lightest disappointments-but let us endeavour to be very charitable, and we shall assuredly be the gainers in wisdom. Drinking was not the source and origin of the evils which fell upon this youth's life. Is it ever the actual cause of the too common lot of poverty, disgrace, disease, death, and spiritual ruin which this age has so greatly to deplore? Yes, in some instances it would be safe, and nearer to the truth (which can never be absolutely shown) to say, drink is the cause, the one master cause, of this desolation which you see. But do not lay upon it a burden which in all fairness it must not be

supposed to merit. For if in vehement declamation you persuade men that drink is the universal operative cause of all, or nearly all, manner of temporal evils, as well as the most poisoned of the fiery darts which pierce and slay the soul-you will teach the abstainer a fatal lie-you will sing him to slumber when only one danger is past, and that the most palpable and the easiest to be shunned; while a thousand others-call them, if you would be truthful, a thousand demons-lurk at every step even of the temperate life, waiting with yawning jaws to catch the prey which your exaggeration has made so easy. Far more consistent with the great body of observed facts would it be to say that drink is the earthly doom and punishment, the very hell of other sins. Like hell, it is sin in its continuance-sin developed-sin in its appropriate atmosphere-and thus sin punished. There is no other fact in terrene life which so awfully exhibits the true nature of sin, or foreshadows the terrible curses of perdition, as this of the prevalence of drinking habits. Why what must that thing be?-Sin-for which the only Divine remedy is the death of Christ, and the most generally adopted human remedy or counter-irritant, delirium tremens? Does sorrow lead men to drink? Granted for a moment. Does pain lead the lost to blaspheme God and curse each other and themselves most of all? Suppose it, or believe it—in either case we can see only a hell-only the judicial and natural abandonment of a sinner to sin. What is so near to our conception of sin being its own punishment, as that of a man who is so weak, so infatuated, so bereft of sense, so abandoned of all good angels and of God, that he takes to drinkswallows for an unquenchable thirst the unquenchable fire-to allay the soreness of the smart folds the scorpion close over the heart? To get rid of some of the consequences of sin, to rush into the seventh hell, where all is sin-where all are sinners, and sinners without ceasing? Let us not identify sin and drink, but taking a broad and patient survey of all we hear and see, let us rather judge, each one to his own confusion and humiliation, what is the real character and fruit of that sin which we bring ourselves to hold so lightlythat thing called sin-what is it? What must it be when,

as only one amongst other necessary consequences of its introduction and reign amongst men, the use of intoxicating beverages has come to be general and almost universal-nay, this is but a glimpse of the frightful picture -only think what sin must be, when notwithstanding all that the life, and blood, and truth, and grace of Christ have done for some men, they are still found dabbling in the scattered pools of that burning lake from which their Lord died to save them-think of the almost hopeless ruin which sin has wrought in the conscience, the judgment, the common sense, the natural emotions of man's heart, when even the Christian dare in his monstrous madness ply the wine-cup in the very face of Heaven. See them do it, without a qualm, without trembling, and fainting, and expiring with the monstrosity of their crime and danger. Hear them parleying with the demon, trafficking with him, pleading his cause, becoming the mouth-pieces of his lying excuses to mankind. Cross-examine these lying witnesses, and you will find them honest, sincere, speaking their deadly falsehoods in the very spirit and power of truth, and with an unprotesting conscience. We say to one and all-look on the impudent and unrebuked tyranny of hell's chief falsehood, enthroned in the temple of Christ, desecrating every act of genuine worship, garbling every response, and spoiling every gift from within the veil. Look on the blood-bought Christian, still so far the victim. and the slave of sin that he actually believes he is doing no wrong, offering no insult to the tears, and sweat, and blood of his Redeemer, by laughing, and joking, and dallying, and making sport or affecting to derive his pleasure from the flames in which unredeemed souls are wailing and howling at the very sanctuary door. Oh, what ruin hath sin wrought in the noble nature of man, that not only in his fallen, hopeless doomed state, but also, and still in the peace, freedom, and allsufficient wisdom of his regenerate state, he should be found resting content with the idea that he shall escape external torments hereafter, and may safely and consistently take to his bosom the live coals of a hell which he sees to be indeed a hell in the case of others. That he should touch the accursed thing and not instantly sink into the hell of for ever,

is a wonderful stretch even of Divine compassion. That he should put the very emblem of sin, and death, and hell to his lips, and not fall dead with remorse and horror at the sacrilege, shows what an omnipotence to curse resides in sin, when even the omnipotence of Grace is so imperceptibly slow, and reads to all men a fearful warning, not on the idle because self-evident theme of the sinfulness of drink, but on the exceeding sinfulness of sin itself, and the horrid probable reality of that hell in which sin, so mischievous, so appalling even here, under Divine restraints, shall be left all to itself. If a man ceases to reverence purity in his innermost thoughts, he has already fallen into sin. The open addiction to lewdness, with its attendant disgrace, its frequent criminal charges, its still more frequent accompaniment of disease and agonized life, are in themselves fearful evils; but let us never forget that they are symptoms and consequences of sin. In the same way while we most earnestly contend for the vile sinfulness of drinking, let us mourn over and curse it as one of the most common and most terrible of the earthly punishments of sin already committed. If we do so, we shall not be content with repenting of the one sin without seriously protesting against all sin; we shall put to silence the ignorance of foolish men who argue that the efforts to promote abstinence intrude upon the province or derogate from the dignity of the Gospel-for we shall present the rescued drunkard as one who having tasted, in pain and infamy, the bitterness of death, is now desirous of obtaining a victory over that very death which has made such havoc already with his peace and glory.

CHAPTER VIII.

PHILOSOPHY IN PARABLES.

CHARLES BARTON, then, cannot be described as owing all his troubles to the habit of drinking, but, through that habit, to the hurtful sway of sin in his mind; neither, on the other hand, can it be said that he was driven to drinking to drown