This examination we can all make for ourselves. We can all call to mind the case of some individual, whom we have known for years, perhaps from his infancy, who is now a poor, miserable drunkard. In early life his hopes and prospects were as fair as ours. His family was respectable, and he received all those advantages which are necessary, and which were calculated to make him a useful and respectable member of society. Perhaps he was our school-fellow, and our boyhood may have been passed in his company. We witnessed the first buddings of his mental powers, and know that he possessed an active, enterprising mind. He grew up into life with every prospect of usefulness. He entered into business, and, for a while, did well. His parents looked to him for support in old age, and he was capable of affording it. He accumulated property, and, in a few years, with ordinary prudence and industry, would have been independent. He married, and became the head of a family, and the father of children, and all was prosperous and happy around him. Had he continued as he began, he would now have been a comfort to his friends, and an honor to the community. But the scene quickly changed. He grew fond of ardent spirits. He was seen at the store and the tavern. By degrees he became intemperate. He neglected his business, and his affairs went to gradual decay. He is now a drunkard, his property is wasted, his parents have died of broken hearts, his wife is pale and emaciated, his children ragged, and squalid, and ignorant. He is the tenant of some little cabin that poverty has erected to house him from the storm and the tempest. He is useless, and worse than useless: he is a pest to all around him. All the feelings of his nature are blunted; he has lost all shame; he procures his accustomed supply of the poison that consumes him; he staggers through mud and through filth to his hut; he meets a weeping wife and starving children; he abuses them, he tumbles into his straw, and he rolls and foams like a mad brute, till he is able to go again. He calls for more rum--he repeats the scene from time to time, and from day to day, till soon his nature faints, and he becomes sober in death. Let us reflect, that this guilty, wretched creature had an immortal mind--he was like us, of the same flesh and blood--he was our brother, destined to the same eternity, created by, and accountable to, the same God; and will, at last, stand at the same judgment-bar; and who, amid such reflections, will not weep at his fate--whose eye can remain dry, and whose heart unmoved?