world.

The use of an intoxicating wine as a communion wine in so many of our churches, and the efforts of so many clergymen to justify its use, together with the prescription of intoxicating drinks by physicians, are the chief supports which to-day sustain our distilleries, breweries, and saloons, and the prevalent drinking habits and consequent drunkenness. Let all of our clergy, churches, and physicians withdraw their patronage and sanction of intoxicating drinks, and it would not be many years before the manufacture and sale of such drinks would be prohibited throughout the length and breadth of our land. That day will surely come, for a new age is opening up before us very different from the past. The Lord is coming at this day in the "clouds of heaven" with power and great glory. Old things are passing away and all things are being made new--new heavens and a new earth.

Sir Astley Cooper says: "I never suffer ardent spirits in my house, thinking them evil spirits. If the poor could witness the white livers, the dropsies, or the shattered nervous systems which I have seen, the consequences of drinking, they would be aware that spirits and poisons are synonymous terms."

Again he says: "We have all been in error in recommending wine as a tonic. Ardent spirits and poisons are convertible terms."

Dr. Benj. Richardson declares it to be his opinion that the administration of alcohol will become, like blood-letting, a thing of the past, that it is passing into the same position as blood-letting. He, as a student, was educated to bleed; he was educated in the employment of alcohol; he saw the effects of the application of these tested by comparison, and he has, in one instance as much as in the other, come to consider them as behind the age, and both as remedies belonging to a departed and deceived generation.--The Dawn (English), Nov. 19, 1891.

I cannot close this chapter without again earnestly calling the attention of all physicians to the great danger to life which results from giving alcohol in any form to patients in very critical cases, or as they are at or approaching the crisis in their disease, in fevers and in inflammatory diseases, such as pneumonia, etc.

Since writing the preceding pages, in fact, since most of them were in type, my attention has been called by notices in our papers to the fact that champagne was given to a starving man, and that a few drops of brandy were mixed with the milk given to a child in a similar condition, or suffering from marasmus; and within a week a physician who has traveled extensively and lectured before medical, theological, and literary organizations, and who has frequently been in consultation in critical cases, described in my hearing several cases of pneumonia which he visited, which were, as he expressed it, drunk. When asked by the attending physician what he would suggest, he always replied, "Stop giving your patients alcoholic liquids;" and with a single exception, out of a large number, and that was a complicated case, recovery followed. While practicing in Detroit I was called to see a prominent citizen who was suffering from typhoid fever. His physicians had told his family that he would die, but that the "stimulants" they were giving him might keep him alive a few hours. I found him delirious, with cold, clammy extremities and almost pulseless. I stopped his "stimulants" at once and gave him Homoeopathic remedies and nourishment, and the next day he was out of danger. No more dangerous treatment has ever been adopted than to give a patient in a critical stage of disease alcohol in any form or quantity. Every intelligent physician ought to be able to see that this is true. I repeat, alcohol paralyzes the minute capillary vessels and veins (look at the face of the drinker) on the surface of the body, in the brain (look at a drinker's words and actions), stomach, lungs, and kidneys, and congests them with blood, through which the structures are nourished with food and drink and purified by the removal of decomposed and effete substances. Cannot every one see that these vessels, when thus paralyzed and congested, cannot perform their duty as well as they can in a natural state? Then, again, the temperature of the body is lowered internally and its heat wasted from the surface. What patients in the critical stages of disease require are warmth applied, if needed, to the surface of the body and limbs, and hot water (not scalding hot, of course), milk, unfermented wine, and other simple, easily digested articles which will nourish and strengthen the body taken internally.

It is possible that in sudden, severe cases of hemorrhage, alcohol may sometimes rescue a patient from fainting and bleeding to death, by storing the blood in the capillary vessels of the brain and surface of the body temporarily while the bleeding vessels contract; but even in such cases other remedies, if at hand, may prove more reliable.

In cases of marasmus in children, if Homoeopathic remedies and nourishing articles fail to give relief, and the child becomes greatly emaciated, give the child cautiously salt fat pork, fried, but not to a crisp; give him a piece in his hand, too large for him to swallow, and see with what avidity he will chew and suck it. The fat in combination with the salt will supply a want in the child's system, and patients will often be restored by this simple treatment after other measures have failed.

Even if alcohol were a stimulant, as some claim, we can certainly see that to give it to a patient in a state of great exhaustion, either from lack of nourishment or from an inability to take nourishment owing to diseased action, is to most seriously endanger the life of the patient and often to destroy life; for alcohol gives no nourishment, and all unnatural excitement is necessarily followed by corresponding depression, which often carries patients in critical cases below the living point, and death follows.

I will close with the following from the _Health Monthly_:--"The theory that whiskey is necessary in the treatment of pneumonia has received a blow from Dr. Bull, of New York, who discovers that in the New York hospitals sixty-five per cent. of the pneumonia patients die with alcoholic treatment, while in London, at the Object Lesson Temperance Hospital, only five per cent. die.--_Ex._"

CHAPTER IV.

PERSONAL RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF A PHYSICIAN; AND AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF A NEW DISPENSATION.

We know that in various ages of the world the Lord has revealed a knowledge of Himself to man. In the Ten Commandments we have the laws of spiritual life, in accordance with which we must live if we would enjoy spiritual health, precisely as we must live in accordance with the laws of natural life and health, if we would enjoy natural health.

We are dependent upon revelation for a knowledge of the laws of spiritual health, and of the causes and methods for the cure of spiritual diseases; but the Lord gives us, if we will keep His sayings, the ability, by careful scientific study and investigation, to obtain a knowledge of the physical laws of health, and the causes and methods of curing physical diseases. And it is wonderful how the natural in all respects symbolizes or corresponds to the spiritual.

To the Jewish Church the Lord revealed so much knowledge of Himself, and how they should live if they would be prosperous and happy here and hereafter, as that Church was prepared to receive; and He also promised to manifest Himself in person. All Christians believe that He fulfilled His promise when Jesus Christ appeared on earth; but He did not come in the manner which the Jews at the time of His advent expected. He came, not as a temporal ruler or prince; consequently they took Him for an impostor and crucified Him. To His followers and disciples He promised to come again in the clouds of heaven; but the clouds of heaven may not be the clouds of the material earth, any more than the spiritual kingdom which He came to establish was a natural kingdom; and it is possible that His second coming may not be in the manner anticipated by the Christian Church at the time of His second coming. He intimated as much when He inquired if He should find faith on earth. Should Christians, then, not watch and pray, and heed the signs of the times, lest they follow the example of the Jews, and reject Him at His second coming? Should not clergymen, as well as physicians, be led in freedom according to reason, and not blindly by prominent religious professors, clergymen and writers, and creeds formulated in an age of comparative darkness? Should the traditions and creeds of men be allowed to make of none effect the Word of God? Do we not see all around us signs of a most wonderful change going on in the world? Are these changes which we behold from the Lord, or from man?

I was reared in the Baptist Church. My father was a deacon, and labored faithfully to bring his children into the Church. I was taught that I must be converted, or get religion, before being baptized or joining the Church. What was meant by being converted I never fully comprehended, but I inferred from the instruction I received that it meant a radical change in one's feelings, the result of faith in the Lord's "atoning blood;" and that when this change was effected, I should be able to tell an experience similar to what I had heard others tell before joining the Church, which sometimes seemed quite marvelous. I attended "protracted meetings" and "revival meetings." And, one evening, I remember hoping and almost feeling that I felt a little change, and I even thought of announcing my feelings in the meeting; but caution prevailed, and I concluded to wait until the next day and see if there really was any change in my feelings. When the next day came, I could see no change, and consequently I made no announcement. Thus, I grew up and continued, until I was over thirty years of age, outside of the organized Church. I always respected religion, the Bible, and religious teachers, but I never got converted.

I had many things during childhood and early youth to be thankful for. My father and grandfather before him were accustomed to gather the family, night and morning, and read, or have some member of the family read, a chapter in the Bible, and then prayer was offered. Now, when this is done regularly, and especially if the Bible is read, in course, with here and there a few kindly remarks by the father or mother, no one can tell the good impression which is made on the children; they learn to reverence the Bible, and, what is of exceeding great moment, they hear it read through and through several times before they reach manhood, and they become comparatively familiar with the good and living precepts therein contained. The Sabbath-school, once a week for an hour or two, is all very well; but, in my estimation, it is very little, compared with daily family worship and acknowledging the Lord, and asking a blessing. O, that all Christian men and women could be aroused to the importance of such religious observances?

Some years ago, I went with my wife and a friend for a summer outing to the Catskill Mountains, and spent a few days at the Mountain House. There were a large number of guests there, of the various religious denominations. Those religiously inclined had established the custom of meeting every morning around a table, in a large room, when a chapter from the Bible was read, followed by singing and prayer. There have been few, if any, incidents of my whole life that I have more frequently thought of, or with greater pleasure and delight, than of those large, non-sectarian, and, as it were, family gatherings and simple services.

My mother died, as stated in the first part of this work, when I was ten years old. After remaining a widower for three years, during which period my grandparents, who lived with us, died and my only sister was married, my father married a widow, the mother of several children, a good Christian woman and a member of the Baptist Church.

I have always been thankful that I had a step-mother. No own mother could