further variable quantity to enable us to fulfil the active duties of life. To save waste, therefore, in health, and with due supply, is to induce disease."

Some may argue that the progress of civilization has brought life to such an artificial pitch in the present day that the maintenance of work-more especially head-work-in the degree and duration required for success, or for even bare fulfilment of duty, implies such an amount of continuous tear and wear as, if unchecked and uncompensated by alcohol, or such like means, would speedily terminate in premature decay and dissolution. To that we would answer-I. Such an idea implies something like a doubt of the Creator's wisdom and beneficence in designing a creature fitted but imperfectly for the higher reaches of functional activity. And in connection with this we are reminded very forcibly of a statement we once heard made by a free-thinking disputant, in the course of an argument on the validity of the Decalogue-"What do you call the moral law?” said he. "The ten commandments." "The ten commandments! Is that all? Then I can only say that they are a poor set. All very well for the early state of the world. Quite suitable, no doubt, for the Jews in their imperfect and barbarous development as a people, but quite unsuited for the advanced require

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ments of the present day." Now, just as we believe that the moral law promulgated from Sinai, is broad, and long, and high, and deep enough for all time, so we believe that man's organism has been so contrived and arranged, from the primeval model down to the present generation, as to be duly capable of all ordinary and legitimate function, without the necessitated intervention of alcoholic or any other like adventitious aid. 2. Exceptional cases-cases of emergency -alone warrant the use of such "arresters of waste." If Providence plainly say-"This work must be done, at all hazards, within a given time"-then do it at whatever cost, and make use of such arresters of waste as may be within your reach, with the view of modifying that cost as far as may be. The result may be disastrous; but your fate will at least partake somewhat of the dignity of martyrdom. If, however, there be no such necessity in Providence, and the crisis is wholly self-imposed, then your fate, if calamitous, is not that of martyrdom, but of suicide. 3. Practical Nephalism disproves the allegation. More work, both of brain and muscle-prolonged, energetic, and successful work-is done under the plain water-power alone than with the deceitful aid of alcohol. Other things being equal, it has been proved by facts, that the Nephalist will both do more work, and better work, and live longer under it, than either the moder

ate or the immoderate employer of the boasted "arrester of waste."

And so it comes to this; for we, too, have our conclusions"

1. Alcohol is not food, in any sense of the term.

2. If used as such, it tends to generate diseasemore or less-especially in certain organs, the brain, liver, and kidneys.

3. It is not proved to be an "arrester of waste."

4. And, if it were, the benefit of its use as such were more than doubtful.

5. Science still stigmatizes it as a poison and a drug, and shuts it up, in its proper place, for the use of man, on the shelves of the materia medica.

6. A large portion of society, notwithstanding, still persists in using it as a luxury-often counting it, indeed, as almost a necessary of life-with what cumulative injury resulting, let the statistics of poverty, crime, and disease declare.

7. The wise man, estimating alcohol at its real worth, refuses to be "deceived thereby."

INDEX.