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If I should meet with encouragement, I shall republish Massilon, Barrow, Tillotson, Hoadley, Wesley, Bolton, Seed, Baxter, and Campbell, as soon as I am able, in every case reducing the price of a twelve shilling volume to eighteen pente or two shillings.

DRUNKEN REFORMERS.

FOR a man to profess to be a reformer, and at the same time to be a drunkard, is one of the most inconsistent things in the world. The object of reform should be to make people better off. If reform does not increase the happiness of a people, it does not deserve the name of reform. But it can never be the object of a drunkard to make people better off. A drunkard can have no real desire to promote the happiness of his country. A drunkard cannot be sincere and in earnest in seeking the happiness of any one; or if he be, he must be most unaccountably deluded.

If a drunkard wished to see any body better off, he would wish to be better off himself, and to see his own family better off. But instead of endeavouring to lessen his own sufferings and toils, and to promote the comfort of his wife and children; he throws himself headlong into every kind of trouble, and drags his wife and children after him.

One of the greatest earthly blessings a man can enjoy is good health. There can be little earthly comfort without this. Good clothes, and good food, and light taxes, are but poor comforts to an afflicted body, and a broken constitution. With good health a man can enjoy almost any thing; without good health he can enjoy almost nothing. To protect the health of the community is therefore one great end of legislation; to remove things that injure or endanger the health of the community is one great object of reform. Out of a regard to the health of our country have sprung the laws respecting the sale of poisons, the quarantine of vessels, the education of surgeons and physicians, and the powers of

magistrates and corporations. And every man may see that if the health of a community be neglected, its prosperity is sacrificed at once. And all governments and all men that truly wish to promote the welfare of a nation will direct their attention first to the protection and improvement of the people's health. There can be no true reform without this; and no man can deserve the title of reformer who does not attend to this point.

Then what becomes of our drunken reformers? They are disfranchised at a stroke, every one of them. They want the very first mark of a reformer,-care for the health of the community. They want the first instinet of nature, and the first lesson of common sense,—a re gard for their own life and safety. Every one knows that drunkards do not take care of their health; and they know it themselves. And though at times they may argue that they could not live without intoxicating drinks, yet at other times they will confess to you freely, that they are killing themselves. It would take us too long to show in how many ways intoxicating drink injures the health, and what a host of frightful diseases it causes; and there are few in our days who have not heard and read something on the subject. Besides, there wants no other proof that the drunkard does not consult his own health and safety than the immediate effect which the drink produces on him, and the danger to which it constantly exposes him. Thousands of drunkards have killed themselves outright, and gone in their drunken state into eternity. Some die of apoplexy, some of epilepsy, some of palsy. Some sleep themselves to death on the snow, some fall into pits and quarries, some fall into the fire, some walk into the water, and some kill each other in fighting. Others drink themselves into the horrors, and then hang or drown themselves; some drink themselves into crime, and forfeit their lives to the laws, and some drink themselves into debt, and difficulty, and disgrace, and then leap into destruction to escape their troubles, What sort of reforming is this?

There are more violent and awful deaths caused by drunkenness in our country, many times over, than by

all other causes put together; and yet drunkards wish to be called reformers! The worst government in the world never killed half so many as drunkards kill; and yet drunkards talk about monsters and legal executioners, and bawl about reform. Within a few miles of the spot where I am writing, upwards of twenty persons have come to untimely and miserable ends by drunkenness in less than one year, and not one has been taken and hung for any political offence; and yet drunkards are calling themselves reformers. The greatest destroyers of life in the world are drunkards. Death and hell have no such friends as they are. If all were to take their plan, there would not be a man left living under the sun in a few generations; the world would be unpeopled, and the beasts of the forest and the fowls of heaven would be left to inhabit the earth alone. And these same drunkards call themselves reformers!

*Drunkards not only shorten life, but they rack their bodies with pain, and afflict them with diseases while life continues. Look at that poor creature, who has just awoke from his drunken sleep. Look at his mouth, how parched it is. Look at his tongue; it is as dry and as hard as if it were on fire. Look at his face, how pitiable and dejected he seems. See how he clasps his forehead. Hark how he groans. His body is full of fever; his head is racked with pain; his strength is gone, and he cannot eat his food. He has caused it all himself; and yet he calls himself a reformer. Perhaps he was talking about reform when he got drunk. Perhaps he got drunk at a reform dinner. Poor drunkard! into what wild inconsistencies will not thy love of drink hurry thee. A poor, afflicted self-tormentor, and yet he fain would pass among his neighbours for a patriot and reformer!

Another very important blessing is plenty. If men are to enjoy much earthly comfort, they will want a good supply of wholesome food, and decent clothes; and they will want convenient houses, and a little furniture. As great a blessing as good health may be, we should be in a poor condition without those. And all who wish well to a country will labour to secure a sufficiency of all those

things for themselves and for their countrymen. And to keep men from want, and to furnish them with a supply of all things needful to life and comfort, is one great end of all good legislation and all true reform. To accomplish this, honest and wise reformers encourage all useful trade and commerce. They promote the growth and manufacture of the most useful articles, and discountenance the growth and manufacture of such as are useless and hurtful. They oppose all useless and expensive establishments, and the existence of all classes of men that do not contribute something to the improvement and comfort of the commonwealth. They are opposed to sinecures, to unmerited pensions, to all extravagance and wastefulness. They are not for land lying idle, much less are they for it being made to grow things mischievous and deadly. They are for a plentiful production of all useful things, for strict economy in preserving them from waste and injury, and for a fair and liberal distribution of them through the community. Try the drunken reformer's pretensions by this test, and what will become of them? Wanting again.

The drunkard cannot be a friend to plenty. He may talk about cheap bread, but he surely cannot be sincere. Or if he be sincere, he must be mad. The drunkard is the most wasteful animal in creation. He wastes his time, and he wastes his health and strength, which should all be employed in some useful works. He wastes his intellect, that should help him to new inventions and improvements, and preserve him from blunders and failures in his schemes; and he wastes his money that should purchase all things needful.

The drunkard encourages wastefulness in others. He encourages the waste of land, by buying its useless and mischievous productions, instead of its useful and necessary ones. One fourth or one third of all the land in the country is cultivated to furnish intoxicating drinks. If this one fourth or one third of all the good land in the country were allowed to grow thistles only, it would not be half so ill employed.

The drunkard encourages an awful waste of labour.

One out of three of all the able bodied working men, and of all the working animals in the kingdom, are employed in growing, or making, or carrying, or selling the drunkard's drink. Instead of encouraging and obliging all these to employ their powers for the good of the country, he encourages them to employ them in making and circulating the elements of sorrow and death.

The drunkard is a wasteful consumer of his country's bread. It takes three times as much to keep a drunkard as it does to support a temperate man. Many a drunkard swallows as much in drink as would keep a whole family. I knew a working man that drank ten shillings a week for years together, in nothing but malt liquor. I knew another that would drink two shillings a day. Some men go much farther. I know a young man that has spent as much money in drink, in two or three years, as would support a large family for fifty years. The grain and fruit that is destroyed to gratify the intemperate thirst of Great Britain and Ireland, would feed and clothe the whole population of the united kingdoms. The cost of drink to the community is more than the cost of food and clothes and rent. If all the money that intoxicating drinks cost our country were divided among the poorer half of the people, it would be fifty pounds a year to every family of five persons throughout England, Ireland, and Wales. And all this is wasted by drunkards and by those who are following in their train. And those drunkards, the foremost of the intemperate host, would fain be thought reformers! Nay, drunkards, it cannot be. Either the name of reformers must be taken from you, or reform will become a proverb and a bye-word of reproach for ever.

(To be continued.)

THE BENEVOLENCE OF JESUS.

How benevolent is Jesus! He not only condescended to take upon himself our nature, to live a suffering life, and die a shameful death, to deliver us from sin and punishment; but he has opened the kingdom of heaven to all that believe and obey him; and he has assured us, that he will come at the last day and receive us to himself, that we may dwell in his society and behold his glory. Yes, he has told us that this present world shall pass away, and that