nder
the influence of a force different from and in some respects inferior
to, their own. To them the bacchanal appeared a being half inspired;
his frenzy seemed a thing for reverence and awe, rather than for
horror and disgust; the spirit which possessed him must be they
thought, divine; they deified it, worshipped it under different names
as a god; even to a clearer insight the effects are wonderfully
similar. It is almost proverbial among soldiers that the daring
produced by wine is easily mistaken for the self-devotion of a brave
heart.

The play of imagination in the brain of the opium-eater is as free as
that of genius itself, and the creations produced in that state by the
pen or pencil are as wildly beautiful as those owed to the nobler
influences. In years gone by, the oratory of the statesman in the
senate has been kindled by semi-intoxication, when his noble
utterances were set down by his auditors to the inspiration of
patriotism.

It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard: he is led on
by his feelings as well as by his imagination. It is not the sensual
pleasure of the glutton that fascinates him; it is those fine thoughts
and those quickened sensibilities which were excited in that state,
which he is powerless to produce out of his own being, or by his own
powers, and which he expects to reproduce by the same means. The
experience of our first parent is repeated in him: at the very moment
when he expects to find himself as the gods, knowing good and evil, he
discovers that he is unexpectedly degraded, his health wrecked, and
his heart demoralized. Hence it is almost as often the finer as the
baser spirits of our race which are found the victims of such
indulgence. Many will remember while I speak, the names of the gifted
of their species, the degraded men of genius who were the victims of
these deceptive influences. The half-inspired painter, poet, musician,
who began by soothing opiates to calm the over-excited nerves, or
stimulate the exhausted brain, who mistook the sensation for somewhat
half divine, and became morally and physically wrecks of manhood,
degraded even in their mental conceptions. It was therefore, no mere
play of words which induced the apostle to bring these two things
together. That which might else seem irreverent appears to have been
a deep knowledge of human nature; he contrasts, because his rule was
to distinguish two things wh