Now it is from this point of thought that we learn to extend the apostle’s principle.  Wine is but a specimen of a class of stimulants.  All that begins from without belongs to the same class.  The stimulus may be afforded by almost any enjoyment of the senses.  Drunkenness may come from anything wherein is excess:  from over-indulgence in society, in pleasure, in music, and in the delight of listening to oratory, nay, even from the excitement of sermons and religious meetings.  The prophet tells us of those who are drunken, and not with wine.

The other point of difference is one of effect.  Fulness of the Spirit calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts.  They who know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is, either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have all keenness of wonder gone.  That which ought to be men’s shame becomes their boast—­unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion.

Whether this be real or affected matters not; it is, in truth, the real result of the indulgence of the senses.  The law is this:  the “crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time;” for it has been well remarked that the terrific punishment attached to the habitual indulgence of the senses is, that the incitements to enjoyment increase in proportion as the power of enjoyment fades.

Experience at last forbids even the hope of enjoyment; the sin of the intoxicated soul is loathed, detested, abhorred; yet it is done.  The irritated sense, like an avenging fury, goads on with a restlessness of craving, and compels a reiteration of the guilt though it has ceased to charm.

To this danger our own age is peculiarly exposed.  In the earlier and simpler ages, the need of keen feeling finds a natural and safe outlet in compulsory exertions.  For instance, in the excitement of real warfare, and in the necessity of providing the sustenance of life, warlike habits and healthy labour stimulate, without exhausting life.  But in proportion as civilization advances, a large class of the community are exempted from the necessity of these, and thrown upon a life of leisure.  Then it is that artificial life begins, and artificial expedients become necessary to sharpen the feelings amongst the monotony of existence; every amusement and all literature become more pungent in their character; life is no longer a thing proceeding from powers within, but sustained by new impulses from without.

There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I would specially direct your attention.  There is one nation in Europe which, more than any other, has been subjected to these influences.  In ages of revolution, nations live fast; centuries of life are passed in fifty years of time.  In