gels, that once attended on his path and ministered to his welfare with joy, now start aside, and reluctantly give up their charge. Such is the tremendous change which drink has made in his character and lot, and such is the fearful contrast forced on the drunkard's soul, when in his thoughtful moments he reflects on the days that are past. And he weeps at times, and would give away a world if he had it, to bring back the blessedness of former days.

All drunkards are not alike; there are infinite degrees in drunkenness, and there are infinite varieties of circumstances in which drunkards are placed. It is not every drunkard that is reduced to rags and beggary; nor is it every one that has banished from his dwelling all domestic comfort. There are some drunkards who have still a plentiful table, and well-clothed backs, and who still maintain something like order in their families. But all drunkards are miserable, and most drunkards are sensible of their misery, and sensible, too, that it would be a happy thing if they were reclaimed from their drunken propensities, and restored to their former state of sobriety.

I was one day passing along the streets of Chester, near the Cross, and there was a drunken man passing at the same time. There was a number of loose men standing at the Cross, talking with each other. The drunken man that was passing, was something of a wit, and I was known to be a temperance advocate; and when the persons that were standing at the Cross saw him passing by, they were anxious to get him to play his wit upon me, and so to divert themselves at my expense, and at the expense of the cause of temperance. As I drew near the Cross, they called to the poor reeling drunkard, and said, "See thee, Jack; see thee, Jack;" pointing at the same time to me, wishing to set him on. But Jack had more sense than they thought he had. He looked first at them, and then at me, and when he saw what they were after, he said, "Nay, nay; I'm not so bad as that neither: he's better than me." Though the poor creature had not virtue enough to be temperate

himself, he knew that those who were temperate were better and happier than himself. And Jack was not alone in his judgment; there are thousands of drunkards of the same mind.

And I am sure that if drunkards themselves are prepared to acknowledge that it would be well if they were reformed, there will not be found many sober people but what will be ready enough to acknowledge that the reformation of drunkards would be a good thing. The child will acknowledge that it would be a good thing if his drunken father were reformed; and the wife will acknowledge that it would be a good thing if her drunken husband were reformed. Many wives and children know that if their husbands and fathers were sober, like some hus. bands and fathers, they might be better fed, and better clad, and escape many unpleasant things which befal them now. Thousands of children that are now obliged to spend the day in weary and destructive labours, might be spending their days at school, receiving useful instruction, and gathering full strength of soul and limb, if their parents were sober. And thousands of wives, who are at present used like slaves, and who languish under the sorrows of a broken heart, might live in another paradise, if their husbands were sober and religious. And I am sure the mother that has a drunken son, would think his reformation a happy thing. The heaviest affliction that yonder aged woman ever had to bear, was a drunken son. She has had eleven children, and has reared them all; she has had oppressive toil, and weary journies; she has known what it was to suffer want, and to endure unkindness: she has many times toiled hard by day, and watched through the long anxious night, tending her suffering little ones. She has buried her firstborn, her best, her favourite child, just when he had reached the years of manhood, and was promising fair to be a comfort and a honour to her: she has wept over the death of an aged parent, and suffered many griefs which none but her own heart ever fully understood. But none of her sorrows, none of her trials, neither want, nor weary toil, nor sleep

less nights, nor the loss of her firstborn son, nor all these griefs together, ever gave her half the pain she has suffered from the drunkenness of one of her children. Oh! the fears, the pangs, the devouring griefs which that poor aged mother has endured, through the waywardness of that one son. And what the mother suffered, the whole family suffered in a great measure. Father, and brothers, and sisters were all compelled to take their share of sorrow. A drunkard is an affliction to the whole round of his family connexions: he is a grief to all who love him, and feel anxious for his welfare, and his reformation is as great and as wide a consolation.

Drunkards are an affliction and a burden to the whole community. Sometimes they become thieves or murderers, and people are plundered or destroyed by them; and the community has to support policemen to apprehend them, and builders to erect prisons to confine them, and sailors and executioners to take away their lives, or to transport them beyond the seas. Sometimes they drink themselves mad, and the community has to erect asylums for them: they frequently drink themselves and their families into want, and then the community has to support them. They frequently bring up their offspring to vice, and turn them loose to prey upon their neighbours; and the community is plagued and injured by them from generation to generation. They consume more than their share of the productions of the soil, and others are, in consequence, left to want they do less than their share of labour, and others have, in consequence, to toil beyond their strength. Under the influence of drink they run into all kinds of crimes, and bring upon themselves, and upon the community, all kinds of burdens and afflictions, and fill the land in every direction, with mourning, lamenta tion, and woe. Some speak as if the drunkard was an enemy to himself alone; but this is a great mistake; he is a public enemy; he is an enemy to all whe are within the reach of his influence; he is the disturber, the tormenter, and the destroyer of multitudes. The want, the crime, the loathsome diseases, and the horrid deaths that are caused in

our country and throughout the world by drunkenness, know no bounds. The man that can look on and behold the mischiefs and the miseries which drunkenness entails on society, and not feel wishful for a reformation, must be a strange and unaccountable man indeed.

The cases in which drunkenness brings persons to unnatural and untimely ends are innumerable. It has been calculated that thirty thousand a year have been brought to an untimely grave by drink in our own country. I once thought this beyond the truth; I could hardly believe it possible that so many should perish in our land every year by drink but my own observations have convinced me, that so it is. During the eighteen months that I lived in Chester, I took an account of the deaths which were occasioned by drunkenness, that came to my knowledge, in and about that city, and I numbered not less than from eighty to ninety in that city and neighbourhood who, in that short space of time, were hurried untimely into eternity, by that one cause. One was the Bala Carrier. He had been delivering out his parcels, and taking in others, and the people, as the custom was, had generally given him drink. He had got a glass here, and another there, till he was drunk. When he was leaving the city, some one, after his horse and cart had started, gave him another glass, and while he stood to drink it, his cart had gone on thirty or forty yards before him. When he had finished his drink, he ran to overtake it, but, by mistake, ran against a cart that was coming towards him. He was thrown down, and sadly crushed, and before the next day he was dead. Another was Foulds, the whitesmith. once a very decent man, and in a good business, but drink,—a little first, and then a little more,-led him astray. Things did not go on so well with him then; it was not likely that they should; and he became melancholy and cheerless. One morning his shop door and windows remained closed longer than usual, and people began to wonder what could be the matter. They broke open the door at length, and there they found him, hanging by the neck, dead. Another was a man of the name of Roberts.

He was

He had drunk himself into complete beggary. He had pawned the furniture out of his house, and the shirt off his back. A friend of mine, as he was going to chapel one Sabbath morning, saw him begging three half-pence or two pence, to get a glass of ale. He got his glass of ale, and went out of the ale-house into the stables, and the next time he was seen, he was dead; he had put an end to his life by his own hand.

Another was a boatman. He had received his wages, and was drinking part of them at an ale-house. There were two other men drinking at the same place, at the same time, and these two appear to have formed the purpose of robbing the boatman. They boarded his vessel as it was in the lock, a little outside the city, and that night attempted to accomplish their object. The boatman, however, was not so easily mastered: he appears to have struggled hard, and in the struggle all three went overboard and were drowned. They were taken out of the water next morning, and formed a horrible spectacle, all victims of intoxicating drink. But to tell of all the cases that came to my knowledge would require a little book. Öne was burned to death; another mistook the canal for a road, and walking into it, was drowned. Another walked into the canal, and was drowned; and another walked into the river, and was drowned. One was teazing a female, and when the female pushed him aside, he reeled into the water and was drowned. One was killed in a drunken quarrel; another fell down stairs and was killed. One died of apoplexy; another died of another kind of fits. One dropped down in the alehouse yard, as he was cursing and swearing; and another fell backwards into a pan of boiling liquor, and died, cursing and swearing to the last. One fell into a coal pit, another was killed by a fall from a house, and another died raging mad. And I have seen a similar havoc made of human life in other places in which I have resided since. I have seen enough in short, fully to convince me, that the statement, that in our country thirty thousand a year were brought to unnatural ends by drink, was not at all beyond the truth.

And what an awful thought, that thirty thousand a year, nearly a hundred a day, of our neighbours in Great Britain and Ireland, should be thus horribly cut off. We hate slavery, and we do well; it can never be hated too much; and some of us hate war, and if we hated it a thousand times more than we do, we should not need to be charged with excess; but neither war nor slavery ever caused such a ceaseless and wholesale ruin of the bodies and the souls of men, of the order and comfort of families, as intoxicating drinks. If a man be found dead in his house, and there be signs that he has been killed by violence; if there be proofs that some robber or some man of vengeance has done the deed, there is a general movement, and almost every one is anxious that the murderer should be detected, and placed in the hands of justice. And it is right that men should be moved at the sight of death, and that they should feel strongly towards the murderer. But look here. Here is a murderer that destroys a hundred of our neighbours a day, that destroys them both body and soul,murders them both for time and for eternity. Here is a thief and a murderer that has plundered every house, and carried mourning and tears into every family. Shall we be so much concerned for the murder of one, and not be concerned for the murder of hundreds and thousands? Shall we feel horror and indignation at the sight of a man who has plundered and murdered one of our brethren, and not feel horror and indignation at the sight of that vice which is plundering the whole land, and spreading death and ruin on every hand? Shall we be anxious to have men protected against death and ruin by the hands of their fellow-men, and feel no anxiety to have men protected against the miseries and ruin brought on them by drunkenness? We ought to regard the reformation of drunkards, and the diminution of drunkenness, as one of the greatest benefits that can be conferred on us.

I need say no more on this head: I feel persuaded that we are agreed that drunkenness is an enormous evil; that the cure of drunkenness would be a vast and an inestimable

blessing; that the drunkard is a most miserable and mischievous creature, and that the reformation of drunkards is an object that ought to be longed for and laboured for by every lover of his kind.

Our second object is to keep all the sober people from becoming drunkards. This will be as readily acknowledged to be a good object as the first. No sober person could like to be a drunkard; and no man, that has any regard to the welfare of his fellow-men, could wish another to become a drunkard. To keep those who are yet sober from becoming drunkards, appears to me to be a more important matter than the reformation of drunkards. If a man should fall and break his neck, it would be well to get his neck set again as soon as possible; but if you can keep him from falling, it would be better still; it would save both pain and trouble, and prevent a terrible amount of risk besides. It would have been thought a great thing, when the cholera was here, if a medicine could have been found that would have cured the terrible complaint; but if a medicine could have been found that would have secured them from taking the complaint at all, it would have been thought a still greater mercy than the other. If a sheep has got into a pit, the sooner it is got out the better; but if, when you have got it out, you can fill up the pit, or so hedge it round that no more sheep may ever fall into it, it would be better still. This is the course which we are wishful to pursue. A vast multitude of people,a number which no man can number, are afflicted with the vice of drunkenness, a disease a hundred times more terrible in its effects than the cholera; and we are wishful to cure them: this is our first object. A still greater multitude are in danger of catching the dreadful complaint, and our second object is to get them to take a medicine which will place them out of the reach of infection, or that will purge the infection, if they have already taken it, out of their whole frame. A number of stray creatures have fallen into the pit of drunkenness, and we are wishful to get them out as soon as possible: a great number more are thoughtlessly flocking towards

the brink of the pit, and we are wishful to keep them from danger, by filling up the pit. When we have accomplished these two objects, the crimes and miseries of drunkenness will be brought to a close, and we shall be permitted to look round upon a sober world.

But this is not the whole of what we aim at. We are wishful, when we have brought men to be sober, to bring them to be truly religious. We have no idea that any man can be truly happy, who does not submit his soul to the authority of God, and consecrate his life to God's service. The " one thing needful" is the religion of Christ, and we have no hopes that the world can ever be made holy and happy, until men have been brought to embrace the Gospel of Christ, and to live in obedience to its precepts. I have no sympathy with those who would separate temperance and religion: I have no sympathy with those Temperance Societies that would prevent a temperance advocate from referring to religion in his temperance speeches. I do not hesitate to say, I have no confidence in temperance apart from religion. I do not believe that any thing can permanently and extensively improve the character and circumstances of mankind, but the religion of Christ. The end at which I aim, therefore, in every thing, is to bring men to believe and obey the Gospel. I use Teetotalism as a means to this end. It is the tendency of Temperance Societies to promote this object, that gives them all their worth and importance in my estimation. In fact, I have no hope that men generally will ever be brought to abstain from intoxicating drinks, for any length of time, unless they are brought to be truly religious. I have no confidence in reformed drunkards, unless they are truly converted to God. I believe that such as are reformed, will go back to their drunkenness, unless they become truly religious; and if they should not go back to drunkenness, they will run into some other evils not much less, if they attempt to make teetotalism their all. I cannot, therefore, be a member of any Temperance Society, which does not aim at turning men from darkness

to light, ana from the power of Satan to God. These, then, are our objects; the refor.nation of drunkards; the preservation of those who are sober from becoming drunkards; and the full and everlasting blessedness of all. (To be continued.)

A WONDERFUL DELIVERANCE OF A QUAKER AND HIS FAMILY.

.

In the time of the American war, an encampment, of about five hundred men, were stationed near the dwelling of David Sands, in North America. During their stay, David Sands and his wife became very uneasy, particularly his wife, who felt a presentiment that some trial was approaching. In a short time afterwards, she was alarmed by a noise she heard in the house, after they were gone to bed, which her husband apprehended might be only the wind rustling among the trees. In a few minutes they were more certain, by finding some persons near their room, and distinctly hearing them say, "Some of the family are awake, we will shoot them." In this alarming situation personal safe. ty seemed to be the first object, and they soon determined to attempt an escape, which was the more easily effected, by their chamber being on the ground. In getting out through the window, one of the company, stationed to keep guard on the outside, discharged a piece at them, the ball of which grazed the forehead of David Sands; however they escaped, but with very thin clothing; and as it was a very cold night, and they remained in the open air till break of day, these circumstances, together with their painful anxiety, rendered it a most suffering time. When they returned to their dwelling, they found it plundered of all the cash, about fifty pounds, most of their bedding, and much of their furniture. A servant and two children, who were sleeping in another part of the house, were not disturbed.

After considering what was best to be done, David found his mind most easy in determining to go to the encampment. On his arrival, he saw several officers conversing toge ther, who said to him, "Mr Sands, we have heard of the depredation committed at your house, and desire

to know what you think can be done to discover the offenders." After some solid consideration he informed them, he had on the road felt a belief that, if the men were drawn up rank and file, about fifty in a company, he might be able, (if he followed the best direction) in passing through them, to detect those concerned in the robbery. The officers wondered at his proposal, thinking it very improbable he should discover them in such a manner, without any outward knowledge of the persons. But they complied, and gave the necessary orders. On passing down the first rank he made a stop near the bottom, but went on to the next, when he soon made a stand at one of the men, and looking him full in the face, said to him, "Where wast thou last night?" He answered: "Keeping guard, sir, and a very cold night it was." "Didst thou find it so when at my house?" replied David; at which the man trembled much, and showed evident signs of guilt, on which he was ordered out of the ranks, and in like manner four others were discovered. Then he went to a young officer, whom he asked how he came to aid and accompany his men in pillaging his house? He positively denied the charge, but David Sands further interrogated him by saying, "Let me feel thy heart and see if that do not accuse thee." On putting his hand to it, it throbbed up to his neck, and so loud, that David Sands called to the other officers to come and see, and hear how it accused the officer. He was therefore considered to be guilty. Two others, which made eight concerned, deserted before the search commenced, and which accounted for the stop he made in the first rank.

The officers now desired to know what could be done for him? He said he should like to have his furniture, bedding, &c. returned, as he wanted his bedding in particular; on which they brought the greatest part, with half the money, assuring him the rest was lost. They were brought to trial before the civil power, but as David declined appearing at the stated time, they were of course acquitted; but this not exempting them from the trial by martial law, and their guilt appearing beyond a