Consider, moreover, that if the habit of drinking be indulged, _it may be difficult, if not impossible, should you live, to break off in more advanced life_. Thus, even in this day of reform, there are individuals, calling themselves respectable, so accustomed to drink, or traffic in the poison, that all the remonstrances of philanthropists and friends, the wailings of the lost, the authority of Heaven, and the anathema of public sentiment combined, cannot now restrain them. Let the youth, then, who turns with shame from such examples of inconsistency, beware of a habit so hardening to the conscience, so deadening to the soul. But, to increase your contempt for the habit of drinking, think how it especially prevails _among the most degraded portions of the community_. Inquire through the city, or village, for those who are so polluted as to be shut out from all decent society--so inured to vice that they cannot be looked upon but with utter disgust; learn their history, and you invariably find that the insidious glass has been their companion, their solace, and their counsellor. And should not dark suspicion and decided reprobation be stamped upon that which is thus associated with the lowest debasement and crime? Such drink, in its very nature, has a perverting and debasing tendency--leading to foul speeches, foolish contracts, and every sensual indulgence. Those under its influence will say and do, what, in other circumstances, they would abhor: they will slander, reveal secrets, throw away property, offend modesty, profane sacred things, indulge the vilest passions, and cover themselves and friends with infamy. Hence the solemn caution, "Look not thou on the wine, when it giveth its color in the cup: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder: thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thy heart utter perverse things." Those who, by gaming or intrigue, rob others of their property, and those who allure "the simple" to ruin, it is said, fully understand its perverting influence. "Is it not a little one?" say they; and so the unwise are "caused to fall, by little and little." "She urged him still to _fill another cup_; * * * and in the dark, still night, When God's unsleeping eye alone can see, He went to her adulterous bed. At morn I looked, and saw him not among the youths; I heard his father mourn, his mother weep; For none returned that went with her. The dead Were in her house; her guests in depths of hell: She wove the winding-sheet of souls, and laid Them in the urn of everlasting death." Such is ever the tendency of the insidious cup. For the unerring word declares, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby _is not wise_." "They are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment."