evidently an amount of respect for his sagacious scepticism which might prove dangerous if it were not counteracted, so that many of the sincerer members were desirous of having at least one more speech, a good rouser on the side of "the Friends." The chairman felt the pulse of the meeting, and then said—which no doubt was to a great degree perfectly true that he had great pleasure in calling on the Reverend Hyson Green, the Baptist minister, to wind up the proceedings of the evening; but whether the chairman's pleasure arose from the prospect of hearing the young orator, or the certainty of its being the last speech, however long or however dry, we must leave to the recollections of his own bosom. CHAPTER VIII. THE REV. HYSON GREEN. Now this minister was young to look at; but report said he was wiser than he looked, and could double up infidels in no time. However that may have been, we can testify thus much, that he looked a great deal more like a thorough-going clerical than Mr. Wilton-only clergymen, we have observed, don't often wear spectacles, and much more rarely do they sport imperials. It is of no use affecting concealment, and so we state, once for all, that he had looked forward to this meeting with no little trepidation,-his more uncouth advisers pointing out the desirableness, on political and vestry grounds, of "cutting out the curate," and, though he despised the motive, he had sat up all the night before to accomplish this end. He came languidly to the front, and tried to look as if he had nothing to say; but he was far too honourable to begin his speech, as so many do, .with a flat lie; and so with faint and trembling voice, he began at the top of the page which was at that moment shaking audibly in his coat-tail pocket, and never stopped till he had got to the last word there : "I have said it often, for I have often heard it said, that the speeches of teetotallers are remarkable for their egotism: but as I view it now, this, instead of being a reproach, is a trait beyond all praise; for it is consistent, and it is adapted to the highest usefulness. To deal in general sentiments is not the business of those who seek to wedge truth fast into the convictions of mankind. To retail anecdotes from one platform to another is to rob men of that force which they wish themselves to use, and which is diminished more than half when wielded at second hand. In my own profession, experience is indeed permitted to bear witness, but not prominently, and certainly not solely. We have a fact, a doctrine, a revelation, a message, a mystery, to announce and enforce; but in this matter of abstinence, we lack the direct commission and the specific command. Resting in part on the broad sanction of the Bible, we derive our main argument from the 'redleaved volume of the heart,' whereon written are histories of sorrow and shame, penned by our own and others' faults. Therefore do I speak of myself to you, and if God has gifted you with utterance, I beseech you speak of yourselves to me. We live and move together. I cannot, as once I wished and dreamed, turn aside from the crowded banks of the stream of life, and wend my solitary way; neither yet can you fulfil all duty and taste all joy, unless you often tarry by a stranger's well, and drink at his homestead gate. From my heart, then, I would fain bring forth the store of wisdom, gathered in the home of pain, gathered like the mystic herbs of healing in the midnight hours of life-wisdom that brings no glory, but spends its sweetness on the conscience and on the wounded spirit. I take my stand neither as a reformed drunkard, nor as a teetotaller of ripe experience, and yet I could say much in both characters as for the ripe experience, mine has been of tropic growth, and I deem it an instance of love at first sight. I feel as little misgiv ing on the matter of its benefit as I should if Baron Rothschild were to make his will in my favour and die to-night. I feel all the surprise, but at the same time, a great deal of the security and triumph which hereafter I hope to realize, when the gates of glory close, to find myself on the right side. If you will only wait, you shall have the experience ripe enough in age. I cannot wait, I need not, for I am living on the fruit already. Then as to the other side, the desert I have left, its parching, shelterless, springless, treeless, shifting, blinding, fatal sands, —of this, too, I can speak, though I am spared to heap stone on stone, as a memorial in the promised land. I speak with shame-but for years I was estranged from the cause of temperance, as too many, alas! affect to be distrustful of religion-through the violence and unseemliness of many of its professors. I was wounded in later years in that sensitive part (wherever that may be) in which professional honour and Christian zeal dwell together in unity, by the troubles of temperance professors of the gospel, and at all times too easily sheltering my self-indulgence under the example of the elders and fathers, and their ingenious arguments of force against temperance claims. All reverence and filial love to the fathers in Israel; but away with the excuses which the youths pretend to derive from them. : "They bear in unsullied honour the beliefs in which they were nurtured, and their abounding fervour, enkindled from the living coal, has ever borne them onward with a glorious success in the one thing they were sent to do. In their youth, and even in their prime, the evils of moderate drinking were not felt, or not numbered amongst the foremost of the ranks of sin. But all is changed now. As men, year after year, will innocently drink Thames water, and pooh-pooh all mere occasional muddiness as of no consequence; but when they have seen the truth, the hideous truth, in the monsters which crawl and scrimmage in the light of the oxyhydrogen microscope, resolve that they will drink no more,—so is it with the whole age in which we are living. A generation ago, men looked with complacency on the practice of moderate drinking; but now that complacency gives place to shuddering horror, for God has opened up to our view the valley of bones and death that lay neglected at our feet; and in the flickering, panting life of infancy-in the greasy raggedness of thievish youth-in the pining feebleness and cruelheartedness of wifehood-in the vile brutality, and cowardice, and sloth, and pauperism, and crime of manhood-in the pestilential alleys, in the teeming prisons,-God has stretched out before our aching gaze a picture that breathes scorching flames-a picture of the fearful truth that drink is death. This black death rages in our midst-its symptoms, early and late, are all marked and known-its immense mortality is registered, and shall we, with open eyes, put on the garments of the plague-slain-tamper with noisome miasmata-hope to live and thrive in it, when God has shown us the spotted, bloated corpse, and marked with his dread red cross the doors that lead down to hell? O no! out and away from the city that is doomed-away from its borders, far, far away in the sweet bracing fields of safe and peaceful sobriety. But I must speak of myself. If, in the green tree of health and fresh ardour, I did thus, what should I do in the dry? The thought fell like lead not seldom on my soul, as I saw the young and old, so fair or so strong, crushed, like the moth, with losses of money, or of children, or of wife, and falling like stars, almost too swift to trace, all too swift to save. Stern self-questioning came when I stood by the side of the recovering penitent, more generous, more learned, more useful, more beloved than I could ever hope to be,-sterner self-reproach stung me as again I stood to see the lapsed one die. What am, I that I should stand where such an one has fallen ? "The flood had swollen round us both. I stood upon an island fair, and for a moment safe, and as he swept past I called him, oh, how beseechingly, to come and stand with me. But he knew it was not safe. He had often taken refuge there, and ever as he came the flood rose higher, loosed the soil beneath his feet, and bore him slowly off into the boiling depth. Why did I not climb the towering rock and bid him follow where the angry and treacherous flood could never come? And yet I did not climb, and yet I hardly dared to cry to others as they swept tossing by. Was it madness? I was not mad alone-was it hardness of heart? Now God forbid. By what name shall I call the fool-hardiness that despises warnings, direful beyond all others? It was the sin of bribed and wilful ignorance. I know not yet all the danger of the insiduous habit. I was not old enough to believe its power. My soul was lifted up with buoyant purpose and world-embracing love. I dreamed of bliss untainted, of success unclouded, of the waiting crown of glory. No toil, no prayer, no speech too earnest, too exhausting to win that crown. But I would not take my cross. Shall I, can I tell you the peculiar temptation of a life like mine? Not to speak of that plain and potent danger which springs from the indulgent love of people to their pastor, and from the frequency of social intercourse; let me draw the veil from the inner life. One thought must reign high above all thoughts, one purpose direct all reverie and all study, and all action. The whole life hangs upon the work of glorifying God and saving men. If fear and unbelief steal in upon that central thought, the whole citadel is surprised and confused, and open to assault. And mark how much there is in the progress of that life-work to induce the fatal spirit of distrust. A Word to which we have surrendered our own homage and all our hopes, to which we have set our seal, pledging all to its verity and to its power too; that Word becomes a rusty sword, jagged, and blunt, and useless. The amiable, the wise, the tender-hearted, the virtuous, and with them the broken-hearted, and the simple, the ignorant, the vicious, the condemned, lingering hopelessly by the grave side, or sinking fast into its gloom, or leaping wildly into hell, all alike hear that Word unmoved. Hath God bereft his Word of its olden power, hath God given me for a solemn charge till judgment, a people that shall perish? Or, still more painful thought, has he hidden his face from me? I say, that the dismal misgivings of the preacher lead him to seek excitement for the service of the Lord. The sanctity of God's pure house drives the devil's coarser trials of his faith away. He dare not (few dare) call God to hear his supplication with polluted breath. But on the morrow of a sleepless Sabbath night, when the retrospect, all waste though it be, must be viewed, then leanness enters into the soul, the soul is cold and hungry, the Word which he prayed might melt all other hearts, now hardly shines upon his own. "Like a forsaken sick man who drags himself in the darkened chamber, groping vainly for the soothing draught, he too, seeks painfully but wrongly for a healing balm, and instead of fighting out the demon that would suck the marrow of his faith, he yields, and shrinks, and grows indifferent, or despairs. Then each petty trouble of his common life, public or private, exerts a tenfold influence on his temper and his nerves. Restless, irritable, idle, wandering in his studious hours, and sickening over all that most concerns him, because for a season the lively relish has failed, entangled in business which has no charm in it apart from the injured faith within, but which, to a steadfastly believing mind, would be all simplicity and pure delight; all this and much more that may not be lightly told, strand him on a shore where all around the wreckers of this demon foe stand ready to break him up for ever. And foremost of that bloody band, I see the demon Drink. How red and glaring is his fiery eye, and yet he fascinates: - Help, Lord, or thy servant perisheth.' "Shall I change the view? To some I bring darker; but to me no views can ever be so pitchy black as those in which the soul wrestles alone with its woe. I have known the strange variety of human ills, for the teacher sent from God must, like the Great One, obey every wail of pain and want as though it were a voice from Heaven, and often in the stifling typhous air of the very death-chamber, may he meet all human woes at once. Bleak poverty that bade the father die, then wrapped its rags around the little heirs, and bade them live and suffer. The sickening that told of other deaths at hand; the aged blind and lame, the complaining, the harsh, the rude, the cruel, the loathsome, the revolting, all in one, but all servitors in the train of death. I would not compare my griefs with such as these, but I gain no help, no power to endure from spectacles so heartrending. I know the sorrows of an empty basket and an exhausted store; a purse laid aside as useless,-sickness all but unto death,-dejection all but madness, -weeks all but sleepless, and terrible debt without, like the shadow of a dun all round the house. What should I do in the dry?' I asked long before. Say, O wife, and prattle, ye little ones, what shall I do? Drink! drink on! drink more! No; as much as I have done has been evil and not good, and if I dare now, in ny utmost weakness, parley with the power of darkness, will he not mock me, overcast me, enchain me, and deliver me up bound hand and foot to the tormentors? No, I will arise and do battle with the fiend.'-I arose; it was enough; he fled howling; and it sounded like Adieu! henceforth, God be with you;' and from that hour I bear a charmed life; outward change there may have been, but it is slight, for I feel the strength of manhood and the help of God, and the weights which pressed me down and bruised me sorely, I now toss like toys into the air. The evil spirit has gone out, I fain hope, but I fear not to desert-places. The house of my love and faith has been swept and garnished, and he and his seven fellow-devils may knock at the door for ever. Give me joy, then, you who know how blessed is the freedom I have gained; let me lead you who know it not, to try joy like mine. I sincerely wish you, and predict for you great success, and it shall be mine to help. I have heard it remarked by our venerable friend and founder, that it would be a matter of unspeakable satisfaction, if the constitution of this Society were decidedly Christian. I will neither deny, nor discuss this point, but the remark suggested to my mind a curious truth which it will be well for both enemies and friends to ponder. If you wish teetotalism to spread, to become universal, you must infuse one portion of Christian principle into your operations, even if you do not accept the supreme authority of the Gospel in your Society. You will need the enlarged benevolence which the Gospel alone describes and inculcates, for this reason,-mark and remember it, friends and foes alike! The immediate |