BAND OF HOPE RECORD. BRIGHT MORNINGS AND DARK EVENINGS. By the Rev. G. W. MCCREE. How we love a bright morning! The sun breaks forth from the clouds, and illumines the green earth with unspeakable splendour. Every hill, lake, spire, meadow, palace, flower, and sea, sparkles in the light. The dew is like jewels. The birds sing for joy. All the trees of the wood are glad. Little children-like angels from heaven-bound through gardens fragrant with sweet scents, and aged men chant with solemn voice the morning hymn. But dark evenings come. No sun nor stars nor song. Gloom, fear, danger, and tears visit us. Where the joy? Where the hope? Where the beauty? Where the life? The night is come, and they are fled. Such is many a life. We know that the early days of thousands were fraught with promise. They enjoyed a father's care. The love of a mother rested on them. Brothers, sisters, lovers, troops of friends, were there. Strength enabled them to bound like a deer. Education enriched them with wisdom gathered from the men of old, and the marvellous discoveries of the new age. Money was at their command. They had a flowing tide, a fair wind, a smooth course, and a bright sky overhead. But their evening was dark. Life was abused. Imprudence, passion, worldliness, the lusts of the flesh, bad companions, and the resorts of vice ruined them. Friends dare not mention their names. The venerable father died of a broken heart. The mother clung to life awhile, and then expired in despair. And the ruined one was swept away by the dark and stormy sea, and wrecked for evermore. Such an one might utter his wail, and say— Obscurest night involved the sky; Th' Atlantic billows roared, No braver chief could Albion boast, He loved them both, but both in vain, Not long beneath the whelming brine, Expert to swim, he lay; Nor soon he felt his strength decline, Qr courage die away; But wag'd with death a lasting strife, He shouted; nor his friends had fail'd They left their outcast mate behind, Some succour yet they could afford; The cask, the coop, the floated cord, But he (they knew) nor ship nor shore, Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he Alone could rescue them; Yet bitter felt it still to die He long survives who lives an hour And so long he, with unspent power, And ever, as the minutes flew, At length, his transient respite past, Could catch the sound no more. No poet wept him; but the page That tells his name, his worth, his age, Is wet with Anson's tear. And tears by bards or heroes shed, Alike immortalize the dead. I therefore purpose not, or dream To give the melancholy theme No voice divine the storm allay'd, We perished, each alone. But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he, Many a life has ended miserably. Why? Through wine. and strong drink. Every man can produce cases in point. Here, for example, a great painter begins life in a blaze of fame, becomes a drunkard, and dies in a public hospital. Here, as another example, is a popular singer, he enchants immense audiences, begins to drink, is enthralled by delirium tremens, grows. restless, walks day and night in the charge of a keeper, and falls dead in the streets. Some die of disease, some drink poison, and some perish on the scaffold. They had a bright morning, but their evening was black with portents of woe and death. This is not fiction. We write the words of truth and soberness, and implore our readers to ponder some facts which we intend to lay before them. They are neither new nor novel, but are selected for a special purpose which we will presently unfold. Our first extract is taken from the "Report of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, by their Committee for the Suppression of Intemperance, given in and read by Rev. Robert H. Muir, Convener, May 31st, 1849." Said Committee was emphatically a committee of inquiry. They deemed it desirable "to gather as many facts and suggestions as possible from the church at large, and thus to prepare the materials for a deliberate finding of the General Assembly as to what practical steps this church can take for the suppression of intemperance." They accordingly issued circulars-two in number-earnestly soliciting their brethren to supply what information and suggestions they were able to give on the subject of their labours. To these circulars four hundred and seventy-eight responses were received. These came from every corner of the land, and many of them enter with praiseworthy explicitness and fulness into the subject. These returns prove the intimate connection betwixt drunkenness and the publichouse. Let us give a specimen :-"The inhabitants of this parish are remarkable for sobriety;" and then invariably follows such statements as "There has not been a publichouse in the place for upwards of twenty years.". In close connection with returns of this class, there are those of a directly opposite character, but proving precisely the same thing. We select the first that meets us:-"The parish contains 610 inhabitants, and there are eleven houses where intoxicating liquors are supplied; nine of these are shops, and two are public-houses. In all there is accommodation for drinking. This gives a drinking accommodation to each 55 of the inhabitants of all ages." What is the consequence of this? Here it is :-"Too many of both sexes, and all ages, are addicted to the vice of intemperance. Children are rendered familiar with it in being employed as carriers to their mothers." In another return we read :-"I am told there are twentyfive or twenty-six houses in the town (with a population of about 2,000) where spirits are sold." What then? In reply to the inquiry, what classes of the population are more remarkably addicted to intemperance? we read:-"The labouring classes generally; and it is commonly understood that there is, to a very considerable extent, drinking among females. Among boys also, from fifteen to twenty, belonging to public works, and beginning to earn wages for themselves." Our second extract is from an address by the Rev. Asa Mahan, the President of Oberlin Institute :- "I knew of a young man who went to college, and studied very successfully. Being of a bright and animated disposition, he was often invited to pleasure parties, and although he went to them he never could be prevailed upon to take a glass of wine. He was engaged to be married to a young lady of the first rank, and all seemed to go well and promise a future happiness; but intemperance had to do its work. While at a party, the young lady was told of the abstemious nature of her intended partner. She was told that nothing in the world could induce him to drink a glass of wine. 'Don't say so,' she said, 'till I have tried him.' She asked him to take a glass of wine from her. He firmly refused. She threw her charms about him-she prevailed. He got intoxicated. The abstemious youth became a drunkard, and ran rapidly in the downward course. Her father, though in the habit of drinking himself, could not bear to see his daughter marry a drunkard, and he was ordered from the house. The father got into difficulties and became bankrupt. He went into the back settlements to recruit his fortune. One night about twelve years afterwards, while there was noise, and dancing, and music, a strange wailing noise was heard outside the building. It became louder and louder. All was silent. The music ceased. The door was opened, and the figure of a man entered, and threw himself on the floor, crying 'O, God, save me from the fiends!' The young lady went up to him, and as she approached, his upturned eyes met hers. It was too much for her-she fainted away. He whom she had wronged thus, lay before her a poor maniac, and in two days more, I had the melancholy duty of attending his funeral, and hearing the clods of the valley rumbling on his coffin. She is now, if still living, in a lunatic asylum, her father and mother sleep in an untimely grave." Our final extract is from a speech by the Rev. Dr. Burns:"Never shall I forget the end of one with whom I was well acquainted, a member of the church of which I was pastor at Perth. He was a moderate drinker; and at the solicitation of a traveller with whom he did business, retired one evening to an hotel. For the first time in his life he became intoxicated, went home, and in the heat of passion, excited by liquor, inflicted on his wife injuries of which she died. In due time he was tried, the evidence was conclusive, and sentence of death was pronounced. Never shall the scene be effaced from my memory. I attended him in his cell, and was the last to leave him on the scaffold; and there, within sight of the church of which he had been forty years a member, was he hung like a dog." What shall we say to these things? We think that the words of one who never defiled himself with "wine or strong drink" may guide our impulses and investigations. John the Baptist said:"And now also the axe is laid at the root of the tree; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." This is what we must do. We must seek to hew down the tree of drunkenness, and burn up its very roots. How may this be done? By more zealous training of children in the practice of total abstinence. Let every other temperance agency go on. Let the agitation for a Permissive Bill prosper. But this, we believe, is the true hope of the future. We must adopt the children of the nation as our own. We may save them now. In ten years more thousands of them will be beyond our reach-DRUNKARDS. We do not " see through a glass darkly." We have witnessed scenes of juvenile drunkenness we dare not paint in faintest colours. We could make our readers shudder with accounts of riot, of vice, and of misery among children and young people. A mere child said to a missionary :-"Young I am, drink has ruined me. My father died a drunkard, as |