Thousands have become habitual drinkers, and ultimately confirmed inebriates, through the advice of their medical advisers. In accordance with some absurd hypothesis, or perchance to please their patients, too many medical men, during the past twenty years, have ordered the habitual use of whiskey, rum, brandy, and other stimulants. The calamities thus entailed are fearful to contemplate; and those thoughtless physicians who have contributed so largely in extending this great national vice will bear to their graves a dreadful responsibility. So far, then, as eating and drinking are concerned, it is evident that the precepts of the Christian religion are far better calculated to promote the welfare of mankind than are those of the man of pleasure. Religion inculcates simplicity, frugality, temperance; and the fruits are physical and mental vigor and tranquil enjoyment. Irreligion encourages unrestrained convivial excesses; and the results are disease, pain, and general debasement. Note, again, the devotees of fashion, whose pleasure consists in unnatural and artificial excitements, who regard the ordinary affairs and duties of life as tame and irksome, who convert night into day, and who are happy only when in the midst of the exaggerations, the frivolities, the romances of life. Do these individuals employ their faculties or their time in accordance with the laws of nature, or with reference to the duties and destinies which manifestly pertain to them? The excitements of the play-house, the ballroom, the race-course, and similar places of fashionable resort are prone to divert the mind from the serious duties of life, to engender morbid tastes and sentiments, and to implant feelings of discontent with reference to ordinary duties and occupations. When indulged in to such an extent, these amusements are unchristian, and therefore derogatory to health and happiness. Not in the gilded saloons of fashion are to be found peace, contentment, and charity. Not in the souls of pleasure-seeking devotees are to be found real satisfaction and enjoyment. But among those who lead religious lives, whether high or low, rich or poor, wise or simple, will be found the highest developments of love, virtue, health, and true happiness. A worldly life develops and fosters all that is sensual and selfish in man. It continually rouses the organs and faculties of the system into abnormal activity and excitement. It perverts the delicate and sensitive functions of the organism from their legitimate uses to the gratification of transient impulse, passion, and caprice. It plays with the thousand living nerves and fibres as upon the inanimate strings of an instrument, heedless whether the overstrained and palpitating chords of life snap asunder under the exciting ordeal. Its fruits, consequently, are demoralizing, and in the highest degree detrimental to health, usefulness, and happiness.