When do we find that the love of all sweet things most commonly prevails? In youth undoubtedly. When the mind is pure, free from worldly guile, innocent, and _lamb_-like. When the fresh and untainted spirit drinks eagerly and deeply at the fount of truth, and its type or representative on earth (according to Swedenborg) pure water. Then, sugar-plumes are a delight—ginger-bread a blessing—molasses candy, especially when rolled and pulled out into sticks, _bright_ or _dull_ yellow, according to the cleanliness of the maker’s hands, “the staff of life.” The child becomes a man. He grows selfish and proud. He loses his relish for innocent enjoyments, and with it his taste for molasses. The spirit of love becomes impregnated with impure desires, and his outward man changes accordingly. The saccharine matter no longer suits him in its natural state—it must be fermented, and gases added, and gases deducted, to correspond with the altered soul. What a beautiful emblem is this change of saccharine substance to the poisonous liquor, of the transition state of the immortal in man. First the spirit as in childhood, pure and gentle, like the sweet juice of the grape. Then youth, with its noble and generous bearing, comparable to the result of the first fermentation. Manhood comes on, and with it the fermentation proceeds. Soon the soul is agitated with innumerable gases—and from their bubblings, and combinations, and effervescence, it comes forth a new creature. Well satisfied are most if they go no farther than this, but succeed in calming the troubled elements at this second fermentation. While some, unable to arrest their progress, plunge into the third and woful state; from which, if they succeed in coming out, they appear all soured, and be-vinegared, your universal fault-finders and found-fault-with. Too many, alas! emerge not even at this third gate, but dash recklessly into the fourth, the last and worst, and hope-decaying state—and when dragged through it, are cast out with the blessed feelings of childhood putrified—the flesh rotted off, and exposing the then loathsome skeleton of the soul, the never to be destroyed framework of an eternal nature. How beautiful also the resemblance in another sense. Wherever you meet the poison fire, under whatever name it may assume, whether brandy, gin, whiskey, wine, cider, or beer, as you are confident that the innocent sugar must have been its basis; so in whatever form you meet vice in the human heart, you may be also assured, that there was, and perhaps is yet, in that heart a stronger or weaker basis of God-like love.