For any class of society to take a station above others, and endeavor to force men to abandon the cup by passing votes or enacting by-laws, that no spirits shall be sold them, is but exciting their rage, and causing the intemperate to drink the more out of revenge, and causing those, that are already temperate, to increase the quantity as an act of defiance. It is a fearful precipice on which we stand as a religious community. Estimating a man's standing in society by his immense wealth, or learned profession, rather than by his integrity and virtue, is attended with the most dangerous circumstances, as we have already noticed. Men cannot be reformed by force, nor by declaiming what a low, mean, unworthy, degraded part of the human race they are. There is too much pride in our world. We ought to bear in mind that death will soon lay our heads equally low in the dust, and "the worms shall cover us!" O the folly of human pretensions to greatness! Let us not mind high things, but condescend to men of low estate. By preachers and people of all denominations obeying the exhortations of our text, mankind would, in a great measure, be restrained from crime, and certainly from being openly intemperate. If then, we sincerely desire to reform them, and to hold a powerful check upon their conduct, and prove ourselves the benefactors of our race, let us begin the work, by adhering most scrupulously to our text, which exhorts us to be of the same mind one towards another, to mind not high things, but to condescend to men of low estate. It is the duty of preachers, in particular, to be meek and lowly in spirit--to be humble and watch over the moral maladies of mankind--to break down the arrogant distinctions, which the fashions and riches of the world have set up--to esteem men purely for their moral and intellectual worth, independent of the gifts of fortune, and to visit those, who are given to intemperance, and, by gentle persuasive measures, endeavor to lead them to habits of sobriety. And when this is effected, treat them according to that respect, which their virtues merit. God is kind to the evil and to the unthankful, and ought we to be unkind to them? Heaven forbid.