13
domination of aristocrats and yet be the slave of sin and municipal reform, too, while you have a rotten burgh in your own heart; and the civil government of the country, such as you would wish, and the cessation of taxes, add to this the march of science and every improvement, yet after all, as a nation or as individuals, we will be miserable in the extreme, if we are defieient in morals, --only righteousness exalteth a nation.
Causes.
None need deny that certain circumstances in the physical, and in the righteous government of God in the moral condition of a people, tend to generate and spread this disease. The Bible teaches us that God is the moral Governor of the world; but if this tract fall into the hands of any who esteem revelation lightly, we would wish.to establish that the constitution of nature proclaims this most important truth,—the heavenly bodies, animals, vegetables, and every natural object are subject to certain laws, which are undeviating and, unflexible. "Order is heaven’s first law," and, if matter be subject to such laws of order, we may conclude that, mind must be subject in a higher sense, as mind is above matter. Without order, every social tie would be torn, asunder, every relation inverted, every government overturned, and thc whole assembly of human beings eonverted into a discordant mass. Without morality there would be no social order, so the material universe proclaims God's moral government, or that he will punish sin.
Some vices may be the moral eause of pestilence, others of the moral and physical eonjoined of the latter description, none oceupies a more prominent place than
Intemperance. 1st, Physically. In making this assertion, we shall not deal in speculation, but rest the whole matter on well-authenticated and recorded facts. On this point we have the concurrent testimony of most of the physicians who have had the opportunity of observing the progress of this disease in Asia, Europe, and America. Dr. Rieehe informs us, that in China. "the disease selected its victims from
