"O madness to think the use of strongest wines

And strongest drinks our chief support of health!
When God, with these forbidden, made choice to rear
His mighty champion, strong above compare,
Whose drink was only from the limpid brook."

Such delusions, however, have now little hold upon the public mind comparatively; the sin of drunkenness is now, therefore, the greater. In the providence of God a great temperance reformation has progressed during the past twenty years. The total abstainers in England and Wales are numbered at one million and a half, principally labouring people. In one iron foundry, with which I was acquainted, exactly twothirds of the hands employed were total abstainers.

The Messrs. Chambers have furnished a very excellent tractate upon this subject, entitled, "The Temperance Movement." The document also, entitled the "Medical Certificate," is signed by fifteen hundred medical men, including the heads of the profession, declaring in the strongest manner the far worse than uselessness of all intoxicating drinks in health-beer, wines, or spirits under any circumstances. However those drinks may whip the system, they add no strength to it, but on the contrary debilitate.

I cannot omit here to state my personal acknowledgments to Dr. Ralph Barnes Grindrod, LL.D., for the perusal of his admirable prize essay, "Bacchus," a perfect encyclopædia upon this subject, needing indeed no feeble commendation of mine. That work has, perhaps, by its extensive circulation both in this country and in America, obtained the highest commendation it could possibly receive. Parties who might not feel themselves equal to the study of so learned and voluminous a treatise would do well to peruse the Rev. Benjamin Parsons' "Anti-Bacchus," a great literary effort, but smaller in compass. These two works, the circulation of which has already been very extensive, descend with their authors to posterity as national blessings.

They will, I venture to assert, possess monumental niches in the hearts of the wise and good until time shall be no longer.

In all those happy instances in which I have observed temperance to take the place of habits of intoxication, the change has only been effected, under Providence, by following out the advice of a great genius, who well observes:

"Evil habits are so far from growing weaker by repeated attempts to overcome them, that if they are not totally

subdued, every struggle increases their strength; and a habit opposed and victorious is more than twice as strong as before the contest. The manner in which those who are weary of their tyranny endeavour to escape from them appears, by the event, to be generally wrong; they try to loose their chains one by one, and to retreat by the same degrees as they advanced; but before the deliverance can be completed, habit is sure to throw new chains upon the fugitive. Nor can any hope to escape free but those who, by an effort sudden and violent, burst their shackles at once, and leave her at a distance."*

The only influence, however, we remember that can be depended upon to enable man to do this, that can emancipate man from the thraldom of sin, is "the fear of the Lord," which is "to depart from evil." That fear-that blessed fear -which comes upon the careless soul suddenly perhaps, like "the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings." Oh! glory be to the Giver of that fear! There is omnipotence in its wings-omnipotence to overcome all obstacles to piety and peace. Whether it so come, or whether it steals o'er the soul noiselessly like the day-break, there is omnipotence in that fear; and beneath its influence, the long-formed evil habits of a life are uprooted, like the tall trees of

Dr. Samuel Johnson.

the forest before the breath of the tornado, or withered and scattered, like the oak before the shaft of the lightning.

Resistlessly and omnipotently that fear comes, and evil is before it but as the rolling thing before the whirlwind, or the dew before the sunbeam, or Satan before the mighty power of God.

Oh! send that loved fear, blessed Saviour, into every soul of man!

Surely among men who view human nature in the aggregate is the City Missionary. Imagine him plunging into the depths of some apparently interminable neighbourhood of gordian-knotted courts and alleys, from day to day. He has opportunities indeed of studying human nature; and he finds that-

"Lawless and unrestrain'd, the human race

Rushes through all the paths of wickedness."

Traces of grace received are few and far between

"Oases in the moral desert rare."

The pious reader will, I doubt not, feel affected by the case of poor B- B--.

My acquaintance with B B commenced about four years since, in one Frying-pan Alley. Here she was a terror to many. She always reminded me of the fabled accounts of the Amazons. She was of colossal stature, and a fiery red complexion. I have seen her little more than halfdressed, her long, coarse, jet-black hair streaming almost to her waist, sally forth from her room, maddened by drink, and, armed with a long broom, daring the whole court to combat. Surely, if ever any case appeared almost hopeless it was hers.

I shall not conceal that I felt afraid of her. Not so much afraid of her, however, as of suffering her soul to change worlds without warning; but I expected to be knocked down; and although it would not have been the first time I have been knocked down, that is not, after all, a matter to which a man becomes perfectly used and reconciled. But B- B- never knocked me down; she has insulted me; but her broom she reserved for Mrs. and others, who furnished themselves with brooms to match. B- B- " fierce as she was, at last appeared to listen to my warnings as the warnings of a friend, and permitted me, when she was sober, to read and pray with her; but her drunken habits continued the same.

It has been already stated in this chapter that we succeeded in forming a Total Abstinence Society -one of the earliest members was this woman. Many drunkards, sweeps, costermongers, dustmen, etc., joined, and became reformed characters. I shall not soon forget sitting on the platform at a tea festival of this our Society, at which about two hundred persons were present, and seeing BB and a dozen or twenty others handing