possibly deny. It were well, therefore, if the advice which follows were better remembered, so remembered as to be carried out into practice. Notwithstanding, however, the absolute truth and certainty belonging to this statement; notwithstanding the acknowledged troubles, discomfort, and pain, which daily await and overtake the drunkard in his sin; yet how lamentably frequent is the sight, how constant the recurrence of those scenes, to which allusion is made in the former part of our text! Quarrels and contentions, provoking words, profligate language, and blasphemous expressions, are among the common, the daily results of that vile and abominable excess in liquor, which is so universally condemned in Holy Scripture. Neither are the evil effects of immoderate drink confined to the sins committed by the tongue. Wounds and bruises, a diseased body, a debilitated constitution, are sooner or later the sure consequences attending that

Most

vicious habit against which the Preacher of Israel here lifts up his voice. truly doth he affirm, concerning it, "At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." It is, moreover, a vice totally unprofitable; nay, it is a vice destructive alike to the bodies and to the souls of men; and condemned alike by laws human and divine. whilst we are told, on authority indisputable, that "the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty," we find "drunkards" enumerated by the apostle among those sinners, those outcasts from happiness eternal, who "shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” 2

2

And

If a man be desirous of ruining his prospects in the world, if he seek to get himself an ill name, if he be ambitious of the title of a worthless character, certainly he can take no surer step thereto than by frequenting those houses, and joining those parties, where sobriety is

7 Prov. xxiii. 21.

21 Cor. vi. 10.

deemed a folly, and to be " mighty to drink wine" is applauded with the name of being a good fellow. Nevertheless, this pernicious habit of indulging in intoxicating liquors is a "sin which doth so easily beset" certain individuals, and we may say, men of certain professions, that, as we are now addressing a military congregation, a word on the subject may not be accounted untimely, or out of place. Happy they, whose consciences can in this matter give them "an answer of peace!" and they, in all christian charity, will join the preacher in devout and earnest prayer that their less sober companions may have grace to recover themselves from the deadly snare into which they have fallen, ere that ruin be upon them, even that woe to the uttermost, which is the decreed portion of those, who will so recklessly and inordi nately "follow strong drink." 3

There is, in fact, no one sin which doth

3 Isa. v. 11.

so easily beset" very many men of the military profession, than the vice of drinking to excess; there is none which doth more involve the soldier in trouble and disgrace. No respectable soldier, indeed, can for one moment think, or argue, that there is either profit or credit to be derived from an unbridled and wanton use of intoxicating liquors; although, if the truth be spoken, there is perhaps no vice more frequent in the barrack, or its neighbourhood; and no one crime for which soldiers are more frequently punished than for the beastly and degrading vice of drunkenness. We have only to look at the entries in a regimental court-martial book, and this statement will be fully confirmed. It will be seen that drunkenness, and drunkenness alone, is the cause of so many defaulters being recorded; the cause likewise of men neglecting their duty, of being found unfit to fulfil the orders they have received

4 Heb. xii. 1.

when on guard, or on parade. An outrageous love of liquor may in truth be said to be the source of every evil in a soldier. It is an absorbing, and a ruinous habit, yea, it is a consuming fire, and brings many a promising youth to a premature state of debility, cutting him off in the very prime of manhood.

This, my brethren, is no gratuitous, or vain assertion. Walk through the wards of a military hospital, and you may see one man weak and imbecile as a child, restless at the same time, and burning under the torturing influence of a raging fever go a little farther, and you may see another patient wasted to a skeleton, and fast sinking into the grave; and you shall, on inquiry, be told that in either case the constitution is shattered irrecoverably, that there is scarcely a hope of life; and this because a habit of drinking immoderately having been contracted, and persisted in, the springs of life have been totally destroyed. Alas! that it should