IV. CONNECTION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS V.-NOTES ON THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (144 Passages), 412 1. Greek Words translated Wine, Strong Drink, and Vinegar 425 Notes GENERAL PREFACE. In CHRISTIANS everywhere unite in accepting the saying of St Paul, that all God-inspired Scripture is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). But the profit derived from Divine Truth will necessarily vary according to the degree of teachableness and soundness of judgment brought to its perusal. The Bible is not accountable for the multifarious errors and abuses it has been employed to support; yet it is occasion for lamentation that on not a few great questions, both of Science and Morals, the Living Oracles have been strangely misapprehended and misapplied. Not the illiterate and vicious alone, but successive generations of scholars and divines, have enunciated mischievous fallacies professedly extracted from the Scriptures. Physical Science, the fixity and recent creation of the earth; in Political Philosophy, the right of arbitrary government and Negro slavery; in Social Economy, the excellence of Polygamy; in Ecclesiastical ethics, the duty of persecuting heretics, and the obligation of unlimited submission to the clergy: these, and other baneful dogmas, have been zealously propounded, not as speculative theories, but as the practical teachings of the Divine Word. That such conclusions are now commonly discarded, is not due to any change in the Record, but to a marked improvement in the manner of reading it; and to a perception that there can be no real contradiction between one portion of Holy Scripture and another, or between the Revelation of God in Nature and in His Written Will. Not less obviously true is it, that social customs and personal habits of diet and indulgence, continued from childhood upwards, may induce a state of mind inconsistent with the unbiased interpretation of Holy Writ. For example, let a man be accustomed to |
