for its laurels; to be exposed to its perils, and fascinated by its pleasures. Evil will seek his allegiance; vice will sing her syren songs, and smile her sweetest smiles, to win his love. His heart is warm; his nature is impulsive. Will you expose him to the perils of the wine cup? Even now he loves to take it from your hand. Beware! think of the genial and the great, who, once fair and promising as your boy, lived to be a byeword and a curse. What if such should be his fate? Beware, lest that boy you love, when some day eagerly chasing some fancied pleasure, should fall over this terrible stumbling-block, and rise no more. Mother! as you love that fair child, and as you cherish the memory of him who has passed into rest, place not that peril in the pathway of the lad, but looking at the dangers that beset his footsteps to the better land, do all that in you lies, to clear the way.

Citizen-christian-before you is a stumbling-block, over which thousands of your brothers and sisters daily fall, and are trampled down by the pressing crowd. It is a perilous obstruction in the way to home, to religion, to peace. Do your best to remove it altogether, and "learn the luxury of doing good." Whether poor or rich, young or old, illiterate or cultured, you may do something to lessen the world's sin and sorrow. Pressing on in the path of righteousness and peace yourselves, for the sake of those who may follow you, do all you can to clear the way.

AN AWFUL TRAGEDY.
[From the "Scottish League Journal."]

"If even gold rusteth, what should iron do:
And if a priest be foul, in whom we trust,
What wonder if the unletter'd layman rust?
And shame it were in him the flock should keep,
To see a sullied shepherd and clean sheep.

For sure a priest the sample ought to give
By his own cleanness how his flock should live."

Chaucer's" Good Parson." Only a few months have elapsed since we had to chronicle the terrible death, through dissipation and want, of the editor of a Falkirk newspaper, when we are again called upon to announce the fate, in some respects even more melancholy, of a man who was the parish minister of Denny a few years ago, and was on his way the week before last to the south of England to fill a responsible situation in an academy. About seven o'clock on Tuesday last, a man, about 32 years of age, handsome in person, well dressed, of gentlemanly appearance, and affable manners, called at the River Police Station, Newcastle, and asked Forster, the officer in

charge, if any vessel was lying in the river bound for Dieppe. Forster replied that he was not aware that there was any such vessel, but promised to make inquiries on the subject. He noticed that the gentleman smelt of spirits; and, from his style of speech, he concluded that he was a minister. The gentleman, on leaving, said he would return next day; but instead of doing so, he sent a note to Forster, stating that be obtained the information he sought, and cordially thanking the officer for his courtesy. Nothing further was heard of the writer of this note until about half-past six on the morning of Thursday, when persons on board the steamer Newcastle, coming up the river, and when opposite the Mushroom, observed a man struggling in the water, and calling for help. A small boat near put towards him, and as it approached, the drowning man called out, Be sharp.' At the same time a life-buoy was thrown from the steamboat, but on its being seen that the sufferer was unable to reach it, a man on the Newcastle jumped overboard with another buoy, and swam towards the drowning man, whom he reached at the same time as the people in the small boat already referred to. The man was taken into the boat and put on board the steamer, where means were used to restore him, but without effect; and by the time he was conveyed to Mr. Carr's Ship Inn, on the Quay, he was quite dead. On further inquiries being insti tuted, it was ascertained that the deceased had been staying at the Charles XII. Inn, Tyne Bridge, where he had arrived on Friday week. He had given the name of Mr. Burns [his real name was Anderson] to the landlord, who was highly pleased with the engaging manners and gentlemanly conversation of his guest. Mr. Burns appeared to have a good stock of cash; but it would seem that he was rather partial to the bottle, and of somewhat irregular habits. On the Saturday night, while out in Newcastle, he fell among loose company; and was robbed of all his money, his watch, and his coat and vest; but on returning to his inn, he strongly declined to lodge any information with the police authorities respecting the robbery. In the course of the Monday moning he left the inn, saying he was going to see a minister of the Scotch Church in Newcastle, with whom he was acquainted. He never came to the inn again. It is conjectured that, after a night of dissipation, while in the neighbourhood where he was found in the Tyne, he had gone down an alley to the edge of the river to bathe his face, and had fallen in.

So ended the career of one who was educated for the work of the holy ministry; who was duly ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland, and a deacon of the Church of England; and who, but for the ensnaring influence of the accursed drink, might now have been an honoured and succesful labourer in Christ's vineyard. It is with such cases before us that our souls turn into bitterness when we see ministers and elders of the Christian church, professing to teach the gospel which tells them that 'it is good neither to drink wine nor anything whereby a brother stumbleth,' and who nevertheless, by using alcoholic drinks at their tables, and giving their tacit sanction and even their open countenance to drinking customs, encourage people in the use of poisonous and intoxicating drinks against the seductive influence of which even Christian ministers, with all

their advantages of knowledge, education, and social safeguards, may find it impossible to stand. We appeal to the common sense of ministers of the Gospel if it be not true that if they practised total abstinence, such cases would never occur. And we appeal to their Christian principles if it be not worth the self-denial of their glass of wine, to save their weaker brethren from so frightful a fate as the one which has just occured, with all its concomitant shame and wretchedness to relatives and friends, and the scandal it brings upon the cause of Christ.

OUR ADVOCACY-ITS WEAKNESS AND ITS POWER. By Mr. G. M. MURPHY.

We take the following positions for granted:

That the moral, mental, physical, and social evils, resulting from intemperance, are universally acknowledged by thoughtful and intelligent minds.

That the drunkenness of Great Britain, in all its stages, proceeds, mainly, from the use of alcoholic drinks.

That the drinking usages prevail, and work immense mischief among all classes of society.

That facilities for obtaining exciseable liquors are fearfully numerous, and sanctioned by various laws; these laws and facilities being an offshoot of the acquired appetite for intoxicating beverages.

That the entire disuse of alcoholic liquors is the only feasible remedy yet propounded for the evils we deplore.

That the principles of total abstainers are, scripturally, scientifically, and experimentally true.

That it is the duty of Temperance reformers, by every means in their power, privately as well as publicly, to disseminate these truths.

That prudence dictates the embodying of public sentiment in legal enactments against the trade in intoxicants, as far and as fast as that sentiment is created.

That the ultimate triumph of sobriety is certain, and however the faith and patience of teetotallers may be tried, working in hope, guided by wisdom, and strengthened by God, victory must at last be theirs.

Believing these points incontestable, we proceed to point out the method by which our work as Temperance advocates may be permanently advanced, and to state some means whereby the cause is sometimes seriously hindered.

Without honesty of purpose and purity of motive no advocate can really succeed, whether he preach, write, or lecture, whether

he labour indoors or out.

The hollowness of insincerity will leak out at last, to his confusion and shame; the cause, alas! (among the unthinking) bearing no small share of his reproach.

To deep-seated principle the advocate must add steadiness of purpose, intelligent conviction, general good sense, and an aptitude to communicate truth to his hearers. His facts should be facts. His illustrations should bear on his subject, his inferences should be logical, his bearing gentlemanly, and he should finish speaking when his speech is finished. His opponent should not only be tolerated, but listened to with respect. If his opposition is honest, respect is due to the man; but if not, respect is due to the speaker himself, and the cause he represents; an intolerant speech is an offence against freedom of thought, and weakens the cause he who makes it would defend.

The advocate who cultivates his natural talents and abilities, striving to add the charm of elocution to the grace of truth, must be powerful. He, like Dr. Watts' busy bee, "Gathers honey all the day.

From every op'ning flower."

It is very pitiable when, with the world as a storehouse of facts and incidents, the Temperance speaker goes on year by year ignoring them all, uttering the same platitudes, cracking the old jokes, wearing still more threadbare, long since "used up" illustrations. The good steward brings out of the storehouse things new and old.

Naturalism must never be departed from by the advocate who would succeed. It is awkward, as a wooden legged elephant, to see a man naturally grave striving to be grotesque. True, he sometimes creates laughter, but at him instead of with him. It is no less a mistake for a man whose rough and ready experience would carry conviction to every hearer's heart, to get himself into the, to him, fog-bank of learned disquisition, using words ignorant of their meaning, perplexing his hearers, shaming his friends, and betraying the cause by darkening counsel by words without knowledge. The old proverb says, "Let the shoemaker stick to his last;" so here, let the scientific man speak authoritatively on science, the historian on history, the divine on divinity, the economist on social statistics, the experimentalist on experience, the statistician on statistics, and let us use their facts without aping their positions, and our work will prosper. The successful advocate must discriminate between things that differ. We lately heard a speaker affirm that the traffic was the cause of which drinking and drunkenness was the effect-a position

about as tenable as that butchers' shops are the cause of the consumption of beef, mutton, and pork. Another speaker, at the same meeting, spoke of the shutting up of the public-houses, &c., as "striking the axe at the root of the tree," both speakers seeming to forget that the trade in drink was a very natural sequence to the habit of drinking, and that instead of being the root it was but a scathing bronch of a more destructive stem. Such statements would damage the speakers' cause, and weaken their influence with every intelligent hearer. The analytical faculty would enable us to give to each argument its proper weight and position; to select at will the weak points of an unfriendly attack, as well as help us to systematise our own, thus preventing what is sometimes done, travelling from Dan to Beersheba in a speech, and landing "nowhere" at last.

Personalities should never be indulged in by the advocate. Attacks on individuals, or illiberal invective, is suicidal to success. The Temperance platform is not the arena for the display of personal bitterness, but for the enunciation of great principles. Coarseness or indelicacy should be carefully eliminated from the speaker's address. He who by his advocacy brings a blush to the cheeks of modesty, or gives a taint to the youthful mind, has sown a seed which may germinate in distrust to the cause, and lead to the alienation of many from our ranks. Our only hope of success is in the adhesion of the good, the wise, the virtuous, and the holy, and he who offends one of these little ones throws a stone of stumbling in the path of progress.

Presumptuous predictions of a speedy final triumph are a source of weakness to the cause. Prophetic clap-trap may catch the ear, and draw the applause of an ignorant or partizan crowd; but sober sense laughs it to scorn; the world will not be made moral at a bound, and when the disapointment comes, those who before yoked themselves to the prophet's chariot wheels, receive such a shock to their faith that they lose heart and hope, not unfrequently turning back, to their own dishonour, and injury of the cause.

Exaggerated statements and over-drawn pictures are highly injurious and prejudicial. The evil is fierce enough; we need not make it more grim. A skeleton is ghastly enough without paint. Besides, if proof is publicly demanded, resort must be had to the plea of ignorance, or prevarication, and a damaging exposure is the result, the effects of which years will not wipe away from the minds of the audience.

Consistency of conduct must mark the measure of an advo