keeps his appetites and mind within the limits of reason and moderation. Temperance, therefore, is opposed to gluttony and drunkenness, and excesses of all kinds.

This is a duty which we are too apt to look upon as one which relates only to man as an individual, and the observance or non-observance of which concerns himself alone. But this is a mischievous error. Men, living in society, have duties in addition to those which they owe to themselves, and responsibilities, the disregard of which affects, not themselves only, but others. To men, generally, attach the duties of husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers; and in addition to these are the public or social duties, the performance of which is equally binding upon them. To discharge all those duties faithfully and efficiently is a duty which every one owes to the society of which he is a member; but how he is to do this without the cultivation of temperate habits, is a problem difficult of solution. Of the horrible results of intemperance generally, and of drunkenness in particular, we have too many and sad examples in the history of mankind, and in our daily experience. "In the house of a drunkard," says Cobbett, "there is no happiness for any one, All is uncertainty and anxiety. He is not the same man for any one

day at a time. No one knows anything of his outgoings or of his in-comings. When he will rise or when lay down to rest is wholly a matter of chance. Whether he will be laughing or sullen at his return to his home no one can tell. At sometimes he is one man, at other times another. His time is chiefly divided between raving and melancholy. Well might the Apostle warn his disciples not to sit down at table with drunkards; for, leaving the sin of drunkenness itself out of the question, what is so intolerable as the babble of a drunken man? What so uncertain as the consequences of communication with him? This minute he shakes you by the hand; the next he seeks your life; and the only recompense you receive for the injuries he inflicts is, an acknowledgment that, at the time of committing the injury, he had voluntarily put himself upon a level with the brute."-The Sin of Drunkenness.

"Intemperance," says Mr. W. R. Baker, “is at once the grave of every virtue, and the hotbed of every rank and obnoxious vice. It not only paralyses all that is good, but gives extraordinary vigour to all that is evil. It not only deadens every moral sensibility, but excites into life and activity every animal passion that is opposed to morality and human happiness. The history of crime is little more than the history

of intemperance; for, in all ages and countries in which it has prevailed, it has either been the chief exciting cause of evil actions, or has given to evil conduct a virulence and atrocity of which it would otherwise have been destitute. Our prisons, our penitentiaries, our convictships, and penal settlements, are little else than the receptacles of the miserable slaves and victims of intemperance; but the number of our public criminals-of individuals whose misconduct, arising out of their intemperance, has subjected them to the penalties of public law and justice-bears but a small proportion to the number of those who, although they have never appeared at the bar of their country, are an especial curse to their families, and an injurious incumbrance to the community to which they belong."-Intemperance, the Idolatry of Britain,

page 35.

"The places of judicature which I have long held in this kingdom have given me an opportunity to observe the original cause of most of the enormities that have been committed for the space of near twenty years; and by a due observation I have found, that if the murders and manslaughters, the burglaries and robberies, the riots and tumults, the adulteries, fornications, rapes, and other great enormities that have

happened in that time, were divided into five parts, four of them have been the issues and products of excessive drinking-of tavern or ale-house meetings."-Judge Hale's Advice to his Grandchildren.

As it was in Hale's day, so is it at present. Our judges of assize periodically bear testimony to horrible mass of crime which springs out of the debasing vice of excessive drinking.

Temperance, then, is clearly one of the most important duties which man owes to his neighbour. The above quotations graphically and truthfully depict the criminal and destructive consequences of its neglect; and those consequences, it will have been seen, comprehend almost every injury, every lawless ond wicked outrage, which it is possible for the most brutal and depraved to inflict upon their fellowcreatures. And, considering that temperance is not only pleasing to God, and beneficial to neighbour, but that it is also productive of health, strength, worldly respect and happiness to ourselves, surely we can have no higher motives to incite us to its scrupulous observance.

GRATITUDE TO BENEFACTORS.

"Withold not good from them to whom it is due,

when it is in the power of thine hand to do it."-PROV. iii. 27.

If we are forbidden to return evil for evil : if we are even required to pray for them who persecute and injure us, then surely the feeling of gratitude to benefactors is a duty which ought to be performed with a willing and cheerful heart. "As the branches of a tree," says an ancient writer, "return their sap to the root from whence it arose; as a river poureth his streams to the sea, where his spring was supplied; so the heart of a grateful man delighteth in returning a benefit received." The absence of this feeling is ingratitude; and ingratitude is justly held to be the blackest of vices. In its least offensive shape it receives favours with a cold and thankless heart. Its more hideous features are seen in returning evil for good-in biting the hand that has been busied in efforts to promote our comfort and happiness. Its effect is to check the exercise of charity and benevolence; for, although the strongest motive to the exercise of these virtues ought to be a sense of duty to God, still this circumstance does not lessen the obligation we are under, gratefully to acknowledge, and, to the best of our ability, to reciprocate those offices of friendship and good