A MINISTER'S DEGRADATION.
IN an address Dr. Fulton recently delivered, he said: It is not two years ago since he was invited to preach in a certain church in Jersey City. While in the company of the pastor he noticed that the latters breath smelled of wine. He confessed that he had in obedience to St. Paul's injunction to Timothy taken "a little wine for his stomach's sake." He was a most brillant scholar and in every sense an ornament to the church. He had gone on from small beginnings till he had broken down the barriers of prudence and discretion one by one, and the end was not far off. He was soon reduced to a mental and physical wreck and went to San Francisco. Three weeks ago this unfortunate man called on Dr. Fulton begging for $5 to get his overcoat out of pawn. For months previously he had been sleeping in the very lowest and cheapest lodging houses in New York. Hundreds of other cases could be cited, Dr. Fulton said, were it not a work of superrogation. He did not think that any one was so inexperienced with the habits of man not to perceive the danger that lurked in the wine cup. The only safeguard to be found against its polluting power was to let it severely and entirely alone, and not by homeopathic and unfrequent doses at the beginning to familiarize one's system and constitution with its stimulating sway, and in that manner lay the foundation for a life of misery, degradation, and ruin. There should be no compromise tolerated with such a poisonous habit. A man should not tempt fate, and those who would lead abstemious lives should put the wine cup out of sight and out of mind completely and forever.