ceedingly strong: for this offence carries with it great provocation on many accounts. In every instance, it is a waste of that plenty which God designed should supply the wants of men. Contrary to reason and humility, you, by excessive drinking, inflame your body, whilst others pine away, destitute of the necessaries of life. You swallow down pernicious draughts in your carousing, which properly applied, would revive the health of those who languish in want of such a cordial.

Had you a numerous offspring settled in a distant land, some of whom had great abundance, whilst the rest were destitute, without any fault of theirs; what manifold grief and indignation would you feel, to hear the former consumed their abundance in excess, refusing to relieve the necessities of their own brethren? Yet this is always done in the sight of our common Father, when men waste, on the gratification of a base appetite, what might have fed the hungry, and clothed the naked. Even allowing the intemperate drinker is rich, his conduct is cruel towards those who are in want before his eyes, or so near him, that if he was not wilfully deaf or blind, he must hear their groans, and see their distress.

But when a man is poor, or his income only sufficient, by frugal management, to support his family, excessive drinking, in this case, is a crime still more black; for he tramples upon natural affection, and, whilst taking his cups, is stripping his children of their garments, and snatching the bread from the mouths of his almost famished family. Though his besotted companions falsely and stupidly call him no one's enemy but his own, he is in truth the worst of foes to his own household; and the father of us all looks down upon no one more daringly in rebellion against the law of love than the drunkard, or more afflicting to those who are, alas! his near relations.

Further, our reason is an inestimable gift from God. It renders us capable of receiving knowledge from his word and works here, and of enjoying his love for ever. We are happy in ourselves, and useful to others, just in proportion as our reason is improved and sanctified by divine grace. Accordingly, the loss of our reason is universally judged to be the sorest calamity which can befal us. What a crime then must it be to suspend wilfully the exercise of reason, and become incapable of knowing what we either say or do? We are commanded to set a watch before our mouths, as those who must give an account of every idle word we speak. What more audacious contempt of this command, than for a man to intoxicate himself, till there is nothing so foolish, abusive, filthy, or blasphemous, but he will utter it?

Besides, duty requires that every appetite be brought into subjection to Christ. What a daring violation, to inflame your passions by excessive drinking! Yet this is inseparable from intemperance. It increases pride, and inspires insolence, from whence come quarrels and implacable hatred. It often separates between dearest friends, hurrying them into duels, and bloody transports of revenge upon each other. Lust also it excites to the utmost degree.

So provoking an abuse of plenty, so shameful a violence committed upon our reason, so daring an act of rebellion against the government of God, must certainly exclude all who die under the guilt of it from his favour. The scripture abounds with denunciations of punishment to be inflicted on drunkards, and on all who inflame themselves with wine. I shall produce but one; it is fully decisive, and enough to make their blood run cold against whom it is pointed.

"But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants and eat and drink with the drunken, the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," Matth. xxiv. 48.

Not only the present evils, therefore, which intemperance draws after it, but the final doom of this shameful sin, are revealed in scripture to alarm our fears, and give us full proof of their misery, who are enslaved by love of wine.

So that either we must utterly subdue it, or give up heaven and God. But as the thought of losing his favour is worse than death to every real Christian, it follows that, however he may naturally incline to excess in drinking, or company tempt to it, or worldly advantage allure, as a recommendation to the intemperate, he will persevere in a course of sobriety, and, whether he eats or drinks, take care by no means to displease his God.

SUNDAY XLI.

CHAP. XLI.

On the Sin of Lewdness.

EVERY Christian must deny the irregular gratification of his love for woman, to which depraved nature violently impels; because this passion, though

necessary for the propagation of mankind, and useful in wedlock to several excellent ends, yet, unless restrained and governed by the law of God, it proves one of the vilest seducers, and a source of evils ex. tensive and beyond number. What time, parts, and、 influence are prostituted through the impulse of lust to inveigle and debauch the innocent! Men of lib. eral education and finest sense will be guilty of what shocks every mind influenced by the fear of God, or compassion for their fellow-creatures; guilty of lying in wait to gain an advantage in an unwary moment, by vile deceit, over a heedless virgin; of bringing her to indelible shame, and loading her parents also with hopeless grief; guilty of offering to the ruined object of their lust an injury, which, if done to a sister or daughter of their own, they would instantly revenge with the point of the sword. Instigated by their lust, they will open the way to adulterous commerce, and all its train of mischiefs, by seducing unmarried women, who too seldom prove chaste in wedlock when they have been debauched before. They will be guilty of contributing to fill the world with whores, at once its sin and scourge; creatures abandoned to every detestable temper and practice; cruel, remorseless, corruptors of youth, plunging them into desperate courses, till they are cut off by the hand of justice.

These consequences, in a less or greater degree, are sure to follow the unlawful indulgence of our natural appetite for women. Yet these make only a small part of the evils which flow from fornication. No pen can describe fully what the soul suffers by it. When sense of duty or modesty remain, the first commission of this sin is punished upon the spot with the horror of a guilty mind. By frequent repetition, all sense of religion is extinguished, and all intercourse with God ceases.

The company of men hardened in the practice of lewdness is sought after as a refuge, till the secret offender against chastity contracts a brow of brass, and becomes first an abject slave to lust, and then an infamous pleader in its defence; his conscience is seared, the captive hugs his chains, and glories in his shame.

Add to this catalogue of dreadful evils the bloody quarrels amongst the lewd, and the murders which they are led to commit; murder of children yet unborn, loading the mind with guilt; and imbittering life beyond conception; murder often of the new-born babe, which the law avenges by the infamous death of its sanguinary parent.

Instead, therefore, of saying (as libertines impudently speak) where is the harm of taking a little pleasure out of the way, you will perceive, that thieves and robbers are harmless and honorable too, compared with the lewd, because injuries from these open foes have very soon an end, in most instances are borne with ease, and may be redressed, never striking at our immortal interest. But the seducer of a female destroys her reputation, tears her away from her family and friends, banishes her from the society of virtuous woman, entangles her in the bloom of her years in the snare which will soon drag her down from her life of pleasure to a condition below brutality, the condition of a prostitute. So that the very mention, or even remembrance of her name shall afresh excite grief in her family and relations, grief unassuaged by the least ray of hope in her death or after-state.

Upon this fair representation of the case, ask now any young woman, in the use of her reason, into whose hands she had better fall; into those of the lewd, the dishonest, or the robber? Into their hands, she would say, who will only take my pro