It is unnecessary to preach to any who believe and practice the present truth, a sermon on the evils of intemperance to deter them from the use of spirituous liquors. A standard of piety which roots out such indulgences as tobacco, and even tea and coffee, will of course give no place for an instant to the more grossly sensual indulgence of intoxicating beverages. Yet we cannot overlook this great evil of this evil-increasing age. And to note how this burning iniquity is treated by a class who should stand like a wall of adamant against it; to see how it is purposely ignored by some, winked at by others, and neglected by nearly all of this class, will serve to give us as clearly as perhaps anything else, an idea of the downward tendency of this age, as noted in prophecy. Geo. Trask, in an address to ministers, entitled, "The Pulpit divorced from the Temperance Cause," sets forth the recreancy of the popular pulpit on this question, and the dangers which threaten our land from the fast-increasing evil of intemperance. He speaks as follows: DEAR BRETHREN : We shall not waste King's English to prove that intemperance is getting the upper hand of us, and like a sea of fire, threatens to roll over the nation. Sad demonstrations of this boldly stare us in the face, and the watchman on Zion's walls who fails to discover this is blind in a significant sense. A change has come over our profession touching this cause. We have preachers—successors of the very men who inaugurated the temperance movement—who year by year totally ignore it, alike in sermons and in prayers! Pulpits which thirty years ago roared like Sinai against this abomination, are now silent as the grave, whilst others give it merely a passing notice. Whence this change—whence this "divorce" from a great and suffering cause? Are clergymen wine-bibbers? Are clergymen sots? Does conscious guilt seal their lips in criminal silence! God forbid! Such an imputation would be false—basely false. Compared with men in other vocations—lawyers, doctors, and the like—clergymen are eminently temperate—bright specimens of the virtue. Churlish men say the "pulpit is shorn of strength, and has had its day." True it has lost its stronghold on the populace in some measure. True it is not invested with a halo of superstitious veneration as in dark ages. But, thank God, we have pulpits still which have not lost an iota of vital energy to battle an evil which "drowns men in destruction." What power equals pulpit-power when in right hands? When a preacher, a true man, stands up in his place, and wields the law of God and the gospel of Christ against this giant iniquity, he is the impersonation of moral power, and he creates moral power in all about him—the very power which is indispensable to carry this reform into the strongholds of sin and Satan. He is a water-wheel which sets ten thousand spindles whirling. How, then, has it come to pass that pulpits once so effective, preachers now so able, do comparatively so little against this destroyer? What causes have wrought this change, and rendered pulpits so inefficient? Other agents, we answer, have arisen, and in some sense become our substitutes, and assumed our responsibilities; and our failing to stand up in our places and faithfully to apply the word of God to this evil, has occasioned infinite mischief to a cause we all profess to love. 1. We have placed undue reliance on Washingtonians. These reformed inebriates came from Baltimore and other cities, from theaters, gin-palaces, and "breathing holes of hell!" They were eloquent men. Delirium tremens made them eloquent, and they taught us a new and magnificent lesson, that the drunkard is not beyond the compassion of God, and, though possessed of a legion of devils, he can be restored and sit at the feet of Jesus. They accomplished a grand work in their own way, and we cease not to thank God for it. But they were not men of culture. They had no science, and many of them no religion. They were unable to analyze poisonous drugs and drinks, and of course unable to instruct the public relative to important principles involved in this reform. Hence, when ministers of Christ relaxed their efforts, as many did when Washingtonians took the field, and imagined that these new lights would perfect a work which they had begun, they made a capital mistake. The substitution of their instructions for the luminous instructions of a faithful and fearless pulpit, was like substituting the fitful, fiery flashes of Ætna or Vesuvius for the light of the sun. 2. Many of us have placed undue reliance on Prohibitory Laws. Believing such laws against a nefarious traffic indispensable, we labored indefatigably to secure them. When secured, we imagined our civil authorities would execute them, irrespective of what clergymen in their pulpits might or might not do. Having secured wholesome laws, we seemed disposed to have the comfort of them; we suspended our vigilance, and reposed on our laurels. *Hence, laws just and good, precisely adapted to meet the "greatest evil of the age," are not executed in our cities and large towns. Purse-proof, ruby-faced distillers and venders make them a "by-word and hissing," stir up riots, trample down all law, in disregard of God and man. Why, we ask, is prohibitory law a failure? Because moral power does not come forward to support it. Churches do little or nothing about it, because pulpits do nothing about it; and as the execution of the law is committed to men who care little or nothing about it, of course it is not executed, and we mournfully fail in as grand a legislative measure as was ever devised. 3. We have placed undue reliance on professional lectures. A preacher, entrenched in the prayers of his church, entrenched amidst the elements of the law and gospel, amidst motives drawn from time and from eternity, may wield, if he will, a power well nigh divine. Thirty-four years ago, several sermons on the nature and effects of intoxicating liquors were delivered in the theological chapel at Andover. They were delivered on consecutive Sabbaths, in the presence of Stuart, Porter, Woods—men of might—and in the presence of a most fastidious audience. Now, we have gladly listened to many professional lectures since then; we have admired the dramatic genius and matchless eloquence of Gough; laughed and cried under the wit and poetry of Jewett, and thanked him for his scientific instructions; but those sermons made deeper impressions than all the lectures we ever heard. Those sermons, we dare say, still live in the minds of many clergymen now laboring wide asunder over our vast territory. The momentum they gave still "operates unspent." The fact is, questions of salvation and damnation are involved in this theme. Hence, when a godly man takes the pulpit, prepared to preach on this as on other Bible themes, the hallowed associations of prayer, time and place, wonderfully combine to give him power, and as a prince he prevails. Brethren, let us do our appropriate work, and give noble, worthy lecturers every encouragement to do theirs; but no longer substitute their appeals, however captivating, for the instructions of God's word. Why exchange the pulpit for the platform? Why exhaust our zeal by raising a hundred dollars for some "eloquent orator," and do nothing till he comes, and when he comes lend him with noisy applause, and do nothing afterward? We have given a dozen years and more to the temperance cause. We have been everywhere, preaching against tobacco and strong drink. Wherever we have labored, we have seen here clergymen fully awake, battling the monster with Christian weapons in a fearless and successful manner. Dram-shops and the whole paraphernalia of drunkards have gone down under26their scathing tongues. We fix no limits to the power of an honest pulpit. We have seen thirteen dram-shops demolished by a couple of sermons from a young preacher, and the plowshare of reform driven completely through the place. Glorious men. They do much to atone for the defects of a whole profession. Their reward is on high! We have seen others—fine gentlemen, fine preachers—who treat this as a vulgar cause, and who fear they may compromise their dignity if they "touch it with one of their fingers." The subject was about to come under discussion in a clerical body of late. A member objected, and with a swell of grandiloquence moved "that it be not entertained, as it did not comport with the dignity of the body!" We have seen others, who have never investigated the deadly nature of intoxicating agents, and know nothing of their fatal power on the souls of their hearers, and nothing of their fatal power to render them useless as preachers of the gospel. They remind us of a young and popular preacher, who said, "It is a fine thing to have a man come round and tell us all about rum and tobacco, and save us the trouble." Their idol is polite literature. We see clergymen who do but little themselves, but censure what others do, in a lordly style. What pulpits, or order of pulpits, what societies old or new, are doing anything, comparatively anything, in this terrible crisis? We see clergymen who consider the pulpit too sacred to admit this theme. They think it well enough to reason on temperance on secular occasions—to give it a slight touch on fast-days and stormy days; but to preach a sermon on this mighty evil on a fair Sabbath, when influential sinners are at church, would violate the sanctity of God's house, and all notions of pulpit etiquette. We ask such brethren, Does not the use of intoxicating drinks transgress the laws of life, and is not such transgression the very essence of sin? And should not pulpits preach against sin? We ask, Are not such drugs and drinks obstacles to the conversion of sinners? and should not pulpits preach against that which subverts their own purpose? What sin, we ask, does the Bible assault with such power as that of intemperance? Not the formidable type of intemperance which now infuriates our mobs, and sometimes leads our armies; not the type of intemperance whose ailment is "liquid death and distilled damnation;" but the Bible hurls its denunciations against intemperance in far milder forms—intemperance in the use of wines—the juice of the grape! Pulpits too holy! What place is too holy in which to work for God? When, brethren, shall we rid our profession of this pious legerdemain? When shall we view this glorious reform from a Christian standpoint, place it among Christian ethics, and so preach that we shall impress perishing thousands about us with the terrible truth that "no drunkard can inherit the kingdom of God?" The profession is infinitely in debt to the temperance cause, and gratitude should arm our pulpits against "the great evil of the age." Fifty years ago clergymen generally indulged in the cup, and many were drunken. They drank in their parochial calls from home to house, they drank at tea-parties, weddings, and funerals, and in all ministerial conventions. They marched to sparkling decanters no less promptly than topers marched to dram-shops by the bells which rung out the toddy-hour. Many drank to utter degradation, and the winds of heaven whistled over the bones of many whom drunkenness buried from pulpits into dishonored graves. Hence, dear brethren, consider "the rock whence we were hewn"—consider the terrible crisis through which we are passing. Scorn no more this bleeding cause, but "play the man." "The temperance cause," said a titled divine, when addressing an immense body of clergymen in Brooklyn, N. Y., "the temperance cause—a cause without an effect!" How becoming the occasion, the presence, and an epoch when the flood-gates of intemperance are lifted up, had a counter sentiment been offered: The temperance cause—a blessing in every nation, people, and tongue. As ambassadors of the world's Redeemer—ourselves redeemed from drunkards' graves—we will declare with unfaltering tongue the whole counsel of God against an evil which threatens to whelm the nation in destruction.