It is from this point of view that we are enabled to perceive the symbolical fitness of the Biblical prohibitions of ferment and its degenerated products in all such ceremonies and sacrifices as typified Life, Purity, and Regeneration.

It has been very beautifully observed by Professor Fraser, of Edinburgh, that

"The Divine Ideas expressed in the laws of Nature are, through our physical discoveries, becoming, in the form of similar ideas in ourselves, a part of the experience of man. Every scientific discovery puts us more in sympathy with the Divine meaning. The antagonism of Faith and Science disappears, as each deepening insight into natural law is felt to bring our thoughts into nearer harmony to those Divine Thoughts of which our otherwise strange surroundings in this world of sense are found to be the expression."

A little reflection would show that on a point of daily morals so important as temperance and the use of inebriating beverages, one which in so many forms crosses the path and confounds the purposes of the Sacred Oracles, it is hardly credible that the most advanced examples of inspired wisdom, in lawgivers, prophets, and apostles, should antagonize alike the partial truth of the contemporary philosophy of paganism, the experience of successive ages, and the conclusions of modern Science forced upon the reluctant judgment of its disobedient priesthood. Yet the fact is undeniable, that, in spite of the opposition of the interested, the venality of the press, and the despotism of fashion, Providence has, during the last thirty years, compelled Science to lay her successive offerings upon the altar of Temperance.

We can here only attempt an Epitome of the Evidence furnished by Observation, Statistics, and Science, but it shall be an historical consensus-drops, as it were, from a cloud of witnesses,'—in the language of divines and dramatists, physicians and philosophers :"Wine deceiveth him that drinketh it."-THE VULGATE, Hab. ii. 5.

"How exceeding strong is wine! it causeth all men to err that drink it."I ESDRAS iii. 18.

"Water makes those who drink nothing else very ingenious, but wine obscures and clouds the mind."-EUBULUS, B. C. 375.

"I admire those who desire no other beverage than water, avoiding wine as they do fire. Hence arise irregular desires and licentious conduct. The circulation is hastened. The body inflames the soul."-CLEMENT of Alexandria, A.D. 180. "O thou invisible Spirit of Wine, if thou hast no other name to be known by, I will call thee-Devil."-SHAKSPERE.

All that

"The fumes of the Wine left him nothing of his more refined nature. was honourable or intellectual in his character had now completely ceded to all that was base and animal."-WILKIE COLLINS, 'Antonina,' 1851.

"Alcohol is a disturber of the system, and cannot be regarded as a food. Alcohol neither warms nor sustains the body. Alcohol should be prescribed medicinally as carefully as any other poisonous agent."-Dr EDWARD SMITH, 1860. "The influence of alcohol upon the nervous system, and particularly upon the brain, is manifest by a progressive and constant series of symptoms, which, in different degrees of intensity, are reproduced in all individuals. These constitute a true poisoning; and this morbid state is exhibited under three phases :-(1) surexcitation; (2) perturbation; (3) abolition of the cerebro-spinal functions.”—Dr MICHEL LEVY, on Hygiene,' Paris, 1857.

"Facts establish, from a physiological point of view, a line of demarcation between alcohol and foods. Alcohol is not a food. It acts in a feeble dose as

an irritant; in a larger as a stupefiant."-Professors LALLEMAND and PERRIN, Paris, 1860.

"Alcohol does not act as food; it does not nourish tissues. It cuts short the life of rapidly-growing cells, or causes them to live more slowly. The stunting which follows its exhibition to young animals is readily accounted for."-LIONEL S. BEALE, M.D., F. R. S., of King's College Hospital, 1863.

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Experience and statistics, amongst operatives, soldiers, and middle-class civilians, in England, America, Germany, and India, establish the truth that, under the same circumstances, the per-centage of sickness and mortality is twice as great amongst moderate drinkers as abstainers, and four times as great among drinkhards."-Dr LEES.

"Alcohol is a mere drug; and although a constituent, is not the valuable one in wine."-ROBERT DRUITT, M.D., Report on Wine, 1866.

"Finally, there are a number of substances, of which we are not able to prove that they are either used for the repair of the tissues, or transformed in the body so as to generate heat; in this class we place alcohol, chloroform, the æthers, various alkaloids, strychnia, morphia, and the vegetables which contain them."F. E. ANSTIE, M.D., on ‘Stimulants and Narcotics,' 1864.* [For other testimonies see Note to Matt. iv. 7.]

Now it seems to us, that so far from having, in any one particular, contradicted these truths, the Bible has most singularly confirmed, and, in words at least, anticipated them.

History says "All nations who drank intoxicating wine, in all conditions of climate and culture, have erred through its use, and gone out of the way."

Scripture responds-" Israel, God's chosen nation-her priests, her teachers, her princes and kings, drank wine in bowls, and were swallowed up of wine, wherefore they were sent into captivity."

Experience says "The common and social use of intoxicants, alcoholic or otherwise, has a physical tendency to create an intemperate appetite, insatiate as the grave, making slaves of thousands."

Scripture answers-" Wine deceiveth a lofty man, and enlargeth his desire as hell (Hab. ii. 5); it bringeth poverty and pain, sorrow and remorse upon him, yet he crieth, 'I will seek it yet again'" (Prov. xxiii. 35).

Morality teaches-"Wine is dangerous-it slowly but surely ensnares and enslaves the Will. Terrible is the power of this tricksy spirit to allure; it causeth all men, of whatever rank, to err."

Scripture re-echoes-" Wine is a mocker (lātz); Wine is a defrauder (bogād). Woe to him that giveth his neighbour drink!" (Hab. ii. 15). Virtue exclaims-" Wine stimulates the sensual nature, and narcotizes the moral and spiritual: whence arise irregular desires."

Scripture replies-"Look not upon it, lest thine eyes look upon strange women, and thine heart go after perverse things.' Experiment proves-that "alcohol is a disturber of the brain, and decreases consciousness and the perception of light, and 'casts darkness over the soul (Eubulus).

This author inconsistently contends, however, that alcohol is food, because it arrests waste! He begs his definition, which we entirely repudiate. Food is that which, first, acts innocently upon the body, and, secondly, acts usefully by making blood. Alcohol does neither. Scientific men should scorn mere tricks of definition, and adhere to facts.

Scripture correspondingly commands-that "God's priests, while doing His work, shall drink no strong drink, lest they die”;—and it further declares, that "while the drinking Jews rebelled and corrupted their ways, His Nazarites remained pure as snow."

Physiology announces-that "the maximum strength of man can only be realized by abstinence from alcoholic wine, which cuts short the life of growing cells, and stunts the growth of young animals."

Scripture records—that “when the strongest man was to be reared, an angel from heaven imposed the practice of abstinence upon both mother and child."

Science declares-that "intoxicating wine is not food; that alcohol is a mere drug; that it should be prescribed as carefully as any other poisonous agent; that, as a poison, it ranks with strychnine, opium, and tobacco."

And Scripture finally anticipates all this, for, in text after text, such wine is not only described as acting like the poison of the serpent and the basilisk,' but actually called a POISON (Deut. xxxii. 33; Hos. vii. 5; Hab. ii. 15).

When Christians are half as anxious to harmonize Bible teaching with Temperance truth, as with geology or astronomy, they will find ready to their hands a much ampler and far simpler apparatus of conciliation. One final illustration must suffice. According to Augustine, the Manicheans held that intoxicating wine (for they used grapes) was Fel principiis tenebrarum- the gall of the Prince of Darkness.' Now the Bible clearly speaks of a wine that is 'the poison of dragons,' and describes with the very signs of fermentation, a wine that biteth like a serpent.' Thus the idea of wine being a poison is not a mere modern notion. It can be shown, however, that it is the express and literal language of Scripture; nay, more, that on the supposition that it was the Divine purpose to teach us that wine is poisonous by means of the Scripture, God has done so in the only possible way, i. e. by the use of the proper Hebrew word for 'poison.' If any one chooses to argue that the word has other possible meanings, less true and applicable to the case, we can only protest against eliminating the true and most fitting sense of the passage, and thus making the Bible into a 'nose of wax.'

in

In the A. Version there are only two words translated poison, and one of these is so translated but once; in the margin a poisonful herb.' The texts prove that this word (rösh) really signifies some special herb of a bitter nature, like hyssop, hemlock, or the poppy. The other word is khamah, the Hebrew term for 'poison general, connoting that inflaming property common to so many intoxcants. In the A. V., the word is actually translated 'poison' in six out of the eight instances in which it occurs as the name of a physical substance or property :—

*

* There is another word (root, mar), signifying in one passage 'gall-bladder' or venom, but not 'poison' in our broad sense.

Deut. xxxii. 24.

Deut. xxxii. 33.
Psalm lviii. 4.
Psalm cxl. 3.

The poison of serpents of the dust.
Their wine is the poison of dragons.
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent.
Adder's poison is under their lips.

Job vi. 4. The poison drinketh up my spirit.

It may be objected that the skin bottle Hagar carried with her is called khameth, and that this is the same word. Even granting that (of which there is no proof), no example occurs of the use of khameth for bottle,' from the time of Moses to that of the minor prophets. It was, then, quite obsolete in the days of the latter-had been so, apparently, for eight centuries,-and, moreover, there were four other words for bottle,' and four or five for cup, in regular use by the later Hebrews. To depart from the current and continuous meaning of khamah, as 'poison,' and identify it with a long obsolete word for kidskin 'bottle,' is a simple whim. Even then the idea returns, since 'the bottle' could only mean, like 'the cup of the Lord's right hand,' a vessel containing some destructive potion.

But khamah had a 'figurative' use as well, and is the word so often translated fury, anger, wrath, displeasure. As 'poison' is that which disturbs or destroys the body, so God's cup of wrath is that mental poison which destroys the soul. Professor Nordheimer, in his 'Critical Grammar,' translates hay-yayin hak-khamah as the 'maddening wine' (Jer. xxv. 15), because it is that punishment which makes mad. "They shall drink, and be moved, and be mad." As yayin harekakh (spiced wine) in Canticles literally means 'wine which (is) spice,' so yayin hakhamah literally is wine which (is) poison.'

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We now direct attention to two plain texts where Tyndale seems to have been thoughtlessly and implicitly followed, and so the word 'bottle,' under the unconscious influence of prejudice, displaced the word for its poisonous contents. He who had so correctly translated the word as 'poison' before, could not do so here, simply because he could not believe in the sense it gave. We who know how literally true that sense is, why should we seek to obscure or ignore it?

Hosea, vii. 5: "The princes made him sick with khamah (poison) of wine."

Habakkuk, ii. 15, 16: "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy khamah (poison) to him! The cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto thee."

Lexicons and commentators cannot make this matter plainer than

*Dr McCaul, Professor of Hebrew in King's College, in his 'Examination of Bishop Colenso's Difficulties,' has the following concerning the Hebrew khamushim, to which the assailant of the Pentateuch, taking a leaf out of the book of the assailants of Abstinence, persisted in assigning the exclusive meaning of armed':-"The meaning 'armed' is not only doubtful, it is improbable; first, because it does not suit the context of Exod. xiii. 18. Its suiting the three other places where the word occurs cannot outweigh the fact that it does not suit here. The testimony of the ancient versions is of no value, as the word does not occur at all after the Book of Judges, and had therefore become obsolete long before the time of the earliest of them, the Lxx. Their translation is a mere conjecture."

6

does the context. Even our translators, in putting 'bottle,' say in the margin, as did Tyndale, heat through wine.' St Jerome's version has fel, 'poison,' 'gall.' Montanus has venenum tuum, 'thy poison.' Drusius cites others; so does Rabbi Jonah in Ben Melech. The learned Dr John Gill says, "The word is by some translated 'thy gall,' 'thy poison,' which fitly enough expresses the poisonous doctrines which men sensibly imbibe." Professor Pick translates, 'pouring out His wrath.' It is plain, beyond denial, that the prophets were not speaking of wine-vessels at all (much less of princes handing skinvessels to the king), but of the causal-quality of the liquor drunk. It was the khamah which sickened and maddened; and the declaration is, that God will pour His cup (elsewhere called khamah, fury) upon the man that giveth his neighbour khamah to drink. If that drink were not poisonous, where would be the foundation for the figure? The lexicons cannot deny the facts. Parkhurst defines khamah as 'an inflammatory poison'; Archbisop Newcome has 'gall, poison.' The Arabic still retains the word in several forms, as khumat, shumum, khemah, for 'POISON,' 'fever,' etc. So we reach the old conclusion, that whenever we are willing to credit the Biblical teaching, we shall find an exact accordance between Biblical language and physical truth.* If men are not willing, they will go on evading, quibbling, controverting, to the end, wresting the Bible to their own destruction, and converting a volume which is the Directory of moral purity and life, into an instrument of social deception and moral death.

In Lessing's beautiful book, On the Education of the Human Race,' after comparing the Jewish Bible to a primer, he refers to the captivity under Cyrus, when the Jews were first made conscious of the full meaning of their own Scriptures, and, through the influence of courtly fashion, first effectually taught sobriety :

"Revelation had guided their reason, and now, all at once, reason gave clearness to their revelation. The child, sent abroad, saw other children who knew more-who lived more becomingly,—and asked itself, in confusion, 'Why do I not know and do that too? Ought I not to have been taught and admonished of all this in my father's house?' Thereupon the child again sought its primer, which had long been thrown into a dark corner, in order to throw off the blame upon the primer. But, behold! it discovers that the blame does not rest upon the book: that the shame is solely its own, for not having long ago known this very thing, and lived in this very way.'

So the Christian Church has been sent abroad into the realms of

* How contrary the procedure of Christians where other kinds of discrepancies are to be obviated, is evinced in Dr Hanna's book on the 'Forty Days after our Lord's Resurrection.' He observes, in regard to the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances, that if it cannot be said the attempts to reconcile them "have all absolutely failed, it must be said that not one of them is entirely satisfactory"; -but, he argues, if missing links were supplied, we should then doubtless be able to harmonize what now seems conflicting. On the drink-question, we believe, all the material missing links are now found; we only need the willingness to accept the reconciliation in a candid and truthful spirit.