itself is debasing and degrading. Drunkenness-what is it? I have attempted sometimes to describe it, but I always feel that I have made a great failure of it. A drunkard—a man, with a man's capacities, with a man's sources of enjoyment, with a man's intellect, and a man's reason, a man's heart, and a man's soul, lowering himself below the level of the beasts, over whom God gave him dominion, is a most pitiful sight.

Oh, how degrading is it! Look at the records of crime, and can you find me a murder within the last twelve months in which the drunkard has not been the prime agent? I search the records of crime, in vain, to find such a case; but justice is visited on the head of the man, drunk or sober. The poor wretch who was swung into eternity the other day, before a crowd of men, women, and children, declared to the very last that he had no knowledge of the fact. "Gentlemen, I was drunk, mad drunk!" Oh, if we would bring before the people the horrible evil of drunkenness, it seems to me as if we must call upon the drunken dead (for they won't take warning by the living) to wipe the grave dust crumbling from their brows, and in tattered shrouds and bony whiteness stalk forth, a host to testify against the power of the drink. Bring from the gallows the drink. maddened man-slayers, and let them grip their bloody knives; and they would stand, a host to testify against it. Let the poor unfortunate victims, drowned by their drink, crawl from their slimy ooze, and, with suffocations blue, and livid lips, hear them testify against the power that has destroyed them.

Let them snap their burning chains, the doomed drunkards, and, sheeted with fire, and dripping with the waves of hell, hear them, hear them, testify against the deep "damnation of their taking off" by the power of intemperance. Hear it, oh young men, hear it! and may it

warn you against the outer pleasant circle of the whirlpool, the vortex of which is death!

But we speak of Social Responsibility. To get at that, we must get at the influence that every man exerts. Is there a young man in this assembly that will tell me he has no influence? Then he will say that of himself that he would not let me say of him. I made a man very angry once, because, when he was asked to join our abstinence movement, he said, "I do not know as I have got any particular influence," I said, "I do not know as you have ;" and he was very angry. I heard of a man who once said he had not been as good a man as he ought to have beenthat he had overreached in bargains, that he had shut his ear to the cry of the widow, and so on, but that it should not be so any more; when a gentleman got up and said, "I am very glad to hear my friend make this statement, for I can testify to the truth of all that he has said." "It is false, sir," said the man. The idea of a man without influence! Why, if you stand still, shut your eyes, close your mouth, and fold your arms, you exert an influence by the position you occupy. A man cannot live without exerting an influence. Now there are a great many people who say, "Ah, it is a very good work you are engaged in, going among these poor degraded people." A gentleman in Edinburgh said, "If Mr. Gough will only go among the poor creatures in the West Port, and on the High Street, and in the Grass Market, he will get an audience that may probably be benefited by his addresses." I am willing to go anywhere and everywhere-to the West Port or any other port, to speak on the subject of temperance, just where the people call me (and my time is pretty well filled up); I will go anywhere. But, I believe, I have got an audience to-night better to be affected, and with whom more good can be accomplished than if every man and

woman of you were a debased and degraded being, of the very scum of the streets of the city. Why? Because prevention is better than cure. You say, "It is all very well for you; you are a teetotaler; teetotalism is a capital thing for the poor and the degraded, and those who cannot govern themselves." Let me say, my Christian brethren, teetotalism is by the Bible a lawful principle; it is lawful to abstain. I am willing to be bound by the Bible; I bring you passages containing cautions and warnings, and reproofs and condemnations of the use of wine; and if you can find me one word in the Bible rebuking or reproving abstinence from wine, I will abandon the principle to-night. It is a lawful principle; and you say it is good for the debased. I say it is good for you, if by your abstinence you can help up your brother that needs it for his own salvation from drunkenness. Precept is a very good thing. I often hear it said, "You are engaged in a good cause, Mr. Gough; go on, I wish you success; you have got my sympathies, I hope you will do a great deal of good." All very pleasant this. But precept without example is worth but little. If the principle is good, and is worthy of your offering it as a precept, or an advice, then you should exhibit it as an example. A clergyman presided at a meeting I held at one time; they called it a teetotal meeting, though it is a term I do not like very well, I prefer the word "abstinence," because a great many people do not understand the word "teetotal;" they think we must drink nothing but tea. But what we mean is abstinence from intoxicating liquors as a beverage you all understand that. Well, this clergyman said "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a teetotaler, and have been for the past two years, and I will give you my 'reason why.' I found I had no influence over the drunkards in my parish till I was. Let me give you an illustration of it. A few weeks ago one of my parishioners

was very drunk in the street, and he was not aware that i was a member of the Temperance Society; he was very drunk, and he insulted me; the poor fellow was so much under the influence of liquor that I paid no attention to it; but I saw him a few days afterwards sober, and I said to him, 'I am ashamed of you, you are getting to be a complete nuisance; you are a disgrace to the parish; every two weeks, when you get your wages, you spend them in the public-house, and leave your family in destitution and want, while you hang about the streets in the shameful manner in which I saw you the other day. I am ashamed of you, you are a perfect pest to society;' and he shrugged his shoulders, and twiddled his fingers, and jerked his elbows, and looked at me as sulkily as he could. Presently I said to him, 'Why don't you do as I do ?' and then he looked in my face and said, 'Do as you do, sir! There is a great deal of difference between you and me, sir.' 'What difference ?' I asked. 'Ah, sir, you know, sir, you are a gentleman, and I am a lab'rin' man.' 'Well, what difference can that make?' 'Why you see, sir, when you wants your drink, you don't have to go to no public-house to get it— don't you see? You gets your wine in the cellar; and there's lots on it there, and you've only to send the sarvant down to bring it up; and then you drinks in purty good company, and drinks purty good liquor too, I 'spects, sir; and if I could afford it, sir, I'd do jest as you do, sir. But don't you see, sir, I'm a lab'rin' man; I gets my wages once in two weeks; I gets paid off at the public-house, and when I gets my money I takes a drink along with the lads, and then I takes another, and that is the way it goes. I drinks what I gets every two weeks, and you drinks your'n all along, sir, reg'lar.' 'Ah, but,' I said, 'I do not drink at all.' 'What, sir! you a teetotaler ?' 'Yes, I am, and have been more than two years.' 'Well, sir, you never

made no bad use of drink, as nobody ever heer'd of, did you, sir? Well, sir, really, if a gentleman like you can give up your wine, that drinks in good company, I think a lab'rin' man like me that's exposed to a great many temptations, and does make a bad use on it sometimes, I think it is high time to give up mine; and see if I don't;' and he went away to the secretary of the Society, got a pledge, and put his name to it. There, sir,' said he, 'I tell you, if a gentleman like you can give up your wine, a lab'rin' man like me ought to do the same. There's my name, and I'll stick to it. Now," said the clergyman, "I had no power over my brother by saying, 'There is a good society for just such as you are: there is an exceedingly good society, go and join it;' but I could say, 'My brother, do as I do'— there was the secret of my power." I say, if you will raise an intemperate man, you must set him the example, and let your example strengthen him in his purpose and his resolution. As I said last night—and I am not going over the argument-it is a hard matter to save a drunkard; it is a hard matter for that man to break the appetite that seems to permeate every nerve and vein in his system, crying like the leech, "Give, give, give."

It is a hard matter, and he needs help, and he needs assistance and words of kindness, and words of sympathy and encouragement, and, above all, he needs a good example. In 1853, when I first visited this country, I was giving an address in a certain place, and two persons came up to sign the pledge-the worst specimens I ever saw at a public meeting in my life, though I have seen such in the streets. I can hardly attempt to describe them; the man looked as if the drink had scorched up his intellect; he was bowed down, crooked in the back, a sort of shiftless creature, as they would say in America; his limbs hanging as if they were half paralysed--a perfect victim. And the wife was a