June 22

And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; . . . For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.—II PETER i, 5, 6, 8.

For fear the flesh should wrongly think

To lord it o'er the deathless soul,

Let abstinence in food and drink

The guilty pride of flesh control.

ST. AMBROSE.

Refrain to-night,

And that shall lend a hand of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

And either curb the devil, or throw him out

With wondrous potency.

SHAKESPEARE.

Those men who destroy a healthful constitution of body by intemperance, as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves.

THOMAS SHERLOCK.

The dose of alcoholic stimulation which spurred the thought of to-day must be slightly increased to spur the thought of to-morrow. So on and on the evil goes, until at last the simple, and, as it was called, the harmless dose, rises to the poisonous dose; until, with unnerved limbs, faltering memory, dulled imagination, estranged feeling, enfeebled reason, the victim falls. Of all men, brain-workers are the men least able to bear up against the ravages of alcohol. I hold that man as prematurely mad who defends the use of alcohol for himself on this ground of necessity. I hold that man as criminally mad who knowingly prescribes alcohol on this foundation. . . . From the beginning to the end of its influence, it subdues reason and sets passions free.

B. W. RICHARDSON.