PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

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anonymous favours. But having to travel to the north side of the island, where Betsey resided, for the purpose of taking part in the opening services of a new chapel, the grateful Negro woman came to see me; and then I discovered, from several questions she put concerning them, that these gifts had been forwarded by her, in token of the fervent gratitude she cherished towards the donor of the precious volume, which had been her greatest earthly treasure, and on which she based the hopes of life and immortality that filled her with unspeakable joy.

to be. The service occupies but an hour; and without losing a moment, as soon as it is ended, they hasten to the house of mourning. But the curtain has fallen, and the tragedy is closed. They are surprised, startled, shocked, as they enter the house, to receive the intelligence that the spirit, with all its dread accountability attaching to it, has just that moment fled to the presence of its maker.

They enter the room; and a senseless heap of clay is all that remains of the man they left there so lately. The trembling of the limbs has ceased: the straining eye-balls have shrunk back into their sockets, and the lids are closed over them: the livid purple features of the countenance, lately so fearfully agitated, have settled in the stillness of death, and a friend is tying a white cambric handkerchiet round the head, to support the fallen jaw. From the moment the ministers left the room, the loud shrieks of the sufferer re-commenced; and pointing here and there, all round the room, to the frightful creatures of his imagination, he crouched from one side of the bed to the other; and would have thrown himself off it, had he not been forcibly held down. In agony most distressing to behold, he continued to call upon those around him to save him from them, until his strength became exhausted. At length, convulsed and shaking in every part of his body, he sank into a state of comparative quietude, gasping, and his eyes staring and rolling about the room, until a short time before the ministers returned to the house; when all the powers of life suddenly collapsed; the spirit passed to its destiny; and the life so sadly abused,-such a woful mistake,-came to an end. There was one, at least, of those who looked upon that mournful scene, who turned away from it realizing, as he had never done before, the awfulness of a life blasted by intemperance, and resolving that his example and influence through life should be given to discountenance the use of those fluids which often prove to be a deadly snare, and produce results so fatal to the happiness and the well-being of man.

Three years have passed away, and the young pastor has been transferred to a new and distant scene of labour, still

But our world is cursed with an evil more terrible than either of these, more wide-stretching in its destructive sweep, and more constant and unintermitting in its work of havoc and death; an evil, too, that destroys both soul and body together, gorging incessantly with marred and ruined millions of the most precious and favoured works of the Divine Creator's hand the ever-craving maw of hell and the grave. Pestilence slays its thousands; war, deadly war, sweeps away its tens of thousands; but intemperance kills, both for time and eternity, more than both of them together. No wonder that Addison, in one of his impressive and instructive allegories, in which he describes the king of terrors seated upon his throne, giving audience to those who represent whatever causes disease and death and ruin and destruction among men, in order to weigh and determine their respective claims to be appointed prime minister to the grisly monarch, describes him as deciding in favour of Intemperance with her fiery, bloated countenance, and her train of dancing bacchanals. Of all the agencies of death that are at work in this sinful world, there is none equal to intemperance for spreading disease and misery in the earth, and sweeping away the children of men to an untimely grave. Go where you will, to any country under heaven, the evil is there. Amongst all classes of society, from the ruler on the throne to the lowest grade of subjects, it is at work. It lays low the mighty in the dust; it blights the noblest intellect; it withers the bloom of beauty, subverts all moral excellence, undermines all principles of virtue, wrecks the fairest character, blasts the finest promise of usefulness and eminence, and scatters broadcast the seeds of disease and suffering aud death in all directions. The pestilence rages with terrific energy for a season; and when it has gathered a large harvest of victims, sweeping through many lands in its terrible range, it is then heard of no more, perhaps through a long interval of years. There are seasons when the gates of the temple of Janus are closed, and war's sad ravages are suspended amongst the nations of the earth: savage passions are hushed: the lust of ambition and dominion is restrained, and men find other occupation than that of shooting,

stabbing, mangling, and slaughtering each other, multiplying widows and fatherless children, and filling happy homes with sorrow, bereavement, and poverty. But this ruthless enemy of the human race, intemperance, works at all times and in all parts of the world. Night and day, and every day, from the opening of January to the close of December, with an energy that is never exhausted, an appetite for destruction that is never satiated, this prime minister of death, this purveyor for the grave, gathers its hecatombs of victims and sweeps them away from life; while it imparts fearful intensity to all unhallowed passions, debases and brutalizes the immortal nature of beings made only a little lower than the angels, and produces a catalogue of crimes and evils amongst those who are bound to each other by the most sacred ties of kindred, at the contemplation of which fiends rejoice and angels weep.

Within the tropics the danger of forming intemperate habits is greater than in a milder clime. There is a more rapid exhaustion of the fluids in the system by increased perspiration, requiring a more frequent supply to meet the demands of nature; and if recourse be had to beverages of an alcoholic nature, it requires but little sagacity to see that danger is hidden there. It is also the natural effect of a tropical climate to produce a degree of lassitude, of which the denizens of cooler regions are unconscious, except occasionally, when the fierce heat of a Midsummer day brings them a temporary experience of those relaxing influences which are constantly felt, in a greater or less degree, within the torrid zone. One of the effects of alcoholic drink is to counteract the lassitude for a brief season, and produce a considerable degree of artificial excitement and energy, which, for the time, is exceedingly grateful. But the effect is temporary and soon passes away, followed by a reaction which augments the physical relaxation natural to the climate, and seems to call for a renewal of the grateful restorative. Here also danger lurks unseen and unsuspected; and it is one of the easiest things possible to glide insensibly into the practice of using dangerous stimulants, until a habit is formed not easy to be shaken off; until all the faculties of

Hitherto he had always stood aloof from the use o those stimulating beverages so lavishly used amongst the dominant class in the colony. But the smiling disciple of Esculapius, who had tended him through all the fierce attack, as he took his departure, turning over his patient to the nurses and the cooks, laid it down, with all the authority which professionals of his class are too often unwisely permitted to assume, that he must take a glass or two of good wine every day, and that he must also drink a little brandy and water instead of the lemonade and other beverages of that innocent class he had previously been accustomed to use. Multitudes of these medical practitioners have themselves been the victims of the delusion, that ardent spirits are essential to life in a tropical climate; and the writer has seen not a few of them,-young men of good skill and promise, and desirous of doing right,-swept to an early grave by means of the alcoholic poison; victims themselves of ill-judged advice, while they have, by similar evil counsel, backed with the influence of professional authority, helped to multiply the deluded victims of intemperance. "What the doctor says must be right?” and the young missionary, willing to be directed by the teachings of experience in those matters in which he could rely upon his own judgment to guide him, consented to act the instructions given to him.

upon

The temperance movement was not yet directing men's minds to the wide-spreading evils resulting from the use of alcoholic beverages, and the dangers that lie hidden in what are regarded as the proper and innocent customs of society; and giving salutary warnings, illustrated by thousands. of impressive examples, of the insidious character of such counsel as that given by the doctor to his restored patient. It would have been well for him had it been so; for he might than have been on his guard, and mistrusted the pernicious advice. But with unsuspecting confidence he adopted the practice so strongly recommended; and it proved to be a first step in the road to ruin. In many cases the evil appetite for strong drink increases rapidly as it is

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