Why cannot we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel, that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a noble form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great. W. E. Channing. XII. INTEMPERANCE. Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian. The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the intolerable curse.