As religious men, as spiritual beings, whom God claims to become His children, we are called upon to face this subtle, powerful, and all-persuasive foe. We are to do our best to understand its ways--we look to science to help us and to teach us. We are then to take every weapon within our reach to resist its approach,--argument, persuasion, entreaty; we are to lose no opportunity of unveiling the tactics of the foe, and rousing those who are imperilled to a sense of their danger; then as Christian citizens we are bound to use all the influence we possess to hold this terrible natural temptation within the straitest limits, and to fortify all the powers of resistance in our fellow-men to the highest possible degree. In such a crusade against the enemy of our race, few things are more effectual than a vivid and accurate delineation of the effects which drink produces--such a delineation, for instance, as that which is given in chap. xxiii. 29-35. Let us proceed to examine this remarkable passage. "Whose is Oh? whose is woe?" asks the Teacher. Who is it whose constant and appropriate language is that of lamentation--the piteous cry of pain, the agonised exclamation of remorse? "Whose are contentions?" Who is it that lives in an atmosphere of perpetual strife and loud quarrellings? "Whose is groaning?"--that sustained sigh of desponding and irremediable misery. "Whose are causeless wounds?"--not only the bruise and the gash which result from furious sparrings or unforeseen falls, but also wounds of the spirit, self-loathing, and shame, the thought of what might have been, the realization of a ruined home, and of suffering wife and little ones, and the conviction that the evil can now never be undone. "Whose is the darkling of the eyes?"[548] Who is it whose eyes have that horrible inflamed, lack-lustre look, which is the exact opposite of the light and clearness and sparkle proper to the human eye?