The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

24 TI/e Drikzing s im uiir Chief S o ci al -Evil.
(4.) zlfora/y and relz,iotisy, by the depraved tendencies
and propensities called into exercise, by the temptations
to vice elicited and encouraged, by tihe exclusion from
ilmylriads of families of moral and spiritual influences, by
the weakening of the will-faculty and loss of moral control, by the callousness of conscience produced and the
reckless wickedness to which alcohol impels its votaries.*
To the depraving effect of alcoholic drink every minister
of religion, every Sunday-school teacher, every town
missionary, every district visitor, every prison chaplain,
bears the fullest witness. This corrupting power of alcoholic liquor is, in truth, something astounding and unparalleled, and is incapable of being more fitly symbolized
than by the image of the Serpent, full of guile and fascination in its approach, but armed with fangs charged with
deadly poison. A Cochin-Chinrese proverb gives the
same idea with a local coloring —" As a tiger in a wood, so
is wine in a man." Lord Bacon's saying is full of weight;
"WVine is the most powerful of all things for exciting and
inflaming passions of all kinds, being, indeed, a common
fuel to them all." There was more than symbolic teaching in the ancient association of Bacchus with every species of debauchery and vice.
2. The OBSTRUCTIVE effects of the drinking system aire
innumerable, universal, and all-pervasive. It has been
powerfully said, " Intemperance is the mightiest of all the
forces that clog the progress of good. It is in vain that
every engine is set to work that philanthropy can devise,
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodgings, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again."
* "Wine is a moecker (scorner), strong drink is ra~itg"'-(Prov. xx. i.)epithets which, by being applied to the drinks used, indicate their characteristic effects in disposing to a contempt and violent disregard of all things
good and sacred. Dr. Adam Clarke caustically remarks, "Stron,g dr;nk is not
only man's wav to the devil, but the devil's w-t, to0 nlan."