What does the exhortation of religion say to us? What undermines more insidiously every moral principle of the heart; what palsies so entirely every moral faculty of the soul; what so soon and so awfully makes man _dead while he liveth_; what spreads through the whole frame-work of society such rottenness, or so effectually opens the door to all those powers of darkness by which the pillars of public order are crumbled and the restraints of religion are mocked; what so universally excludes from the death-bed of a sinner the consolations of the Gospel, or writes upon his grave such a sentence of despair, as _intemperance_? Behold the immense crowd of its victims! Where are they not seen? Read in the book of God that declaration, "nor thieves, nor _drunkards_, shall inherit the kingdom of God;" then listen to what the exhortation of Christian benevolence speaks to us. Is it asked, _What can young men do?_ We can do this one thing at least. _We can continue temperate._ What if every one of us, now free from the appetite of strong drink, should hold on to our liberty; how would the ranks of intemperance, which death is continually wasting, be filled up? But how shall we continue temperate? Not by using the means of destruction. Not by a moderate indulgence in the cup of seduction. Not by beginning where all those began who have since ended in ruin. But by _entire abstinence from strong drink_. Let us renounce entirely what cannot profit us, what forms no important item in our comforts, what may bring us, as it has brought such multitudes as strong as we, to the mire and dirt of drunkenness. But we can do something more. We can contribute the influence of our example to help bring into disrepute the use of ardent spirits for any purposes but those of medicine. If any of us are confident that we could go on in the moderate, without ever coming to the immoderate use of strong drink, we know that the deliverance of the country from its present curse is utterly hopeless while ardent spirit is in the hands of the people. It must be banished. Public opinion must set it aside. Young men must contribute to form that opinion. It cannot be formed without the total abstinence of the temperate. Let us not dare to stand in its way.