large sect in the ancient Church distinguished for their abstinence and celibaey were called Ἐγκρατεῖς, οι Εγκρατίται, a fact which must be regarded as demonstrative of the significance and use of this term. It was also regularly employed by the patristic writers to denote a state of continence and to describe those who refused marriage. Instances of this usage are found in Justin Martyr, (“Apol.,” i, 29,) Chrysostom, (" Epist.,” ii, ad "Olympiad,") Clement, (" Strom.," iii.) *

The New Testament writers do not depart from this idea of abstinence in their employment of ¿ykpáтela. The word first occurs in Acts xxiv, 25, as one of the topics of Paul's sermon before Felix and Drusilla. The character and crimes of that guilty pair suggest the sense in which the apostle must have used the term. He was speaking to a man whose cruelty and lust had made him notorious.† Moderation was not his theme, but continence the duty of total abstinence from all unlawful, sinful, sexual indulgence. Wycliffe correctly renders ¿уKрáтεlα in this passage by "chastitie," in which he is followed by the Rheims version. Four or five years previous to the delivery of this discourse, when writing to the Corinthian Church, Paul had employed the verb ¿yкpaтɛúομaι to describe this same virtue of chastity, (1 Cor. vii, 9.) It is quite accurately rendered in the R. V.: "But if they have not continency," etc. Bloomfield's remarks on its signification in this connection are important. He says: § "This is rendered by many non-continent;' by others, non continere possunt,' which seems preferable. Paræus says it is used potentialiter. The truth is, the potentiality is inherent in the very nature of the word. For ἐγκρατής signifies one who is ἐν κράτει, “ in possession of power. Thus εἰ οὐκ ἐγκρατεύονται, ‘if they are not in possession of power,' namely, to abstain. So the term comes to be synonymous with ἀνέχεσθαι,” (ἀπέχεσθαι ?) In this same Epistle to the Corinthians Paul uses the verb a second time, and in a way which shows that the New Testament idea of * Vide Suicer, "Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus," i, 998, for numerous quotations from the fathers of passages in which έykpaтɛúоμaι is used in this sense.

6

Tacitus says of him, (H., v, 9,)" Per omnem saevitiam et libidinem."

Kuinoel ("Comm.," in loc.) cites Xenophon, "Ages," v, 4, πɛpì тāv åøpodioiwv ἐγκράτειας αὐτοῦ, as an instance of the use of ἐγκράτεια in the sense of chastity, rare in the classical writings.

§"Rescensio Synoptica," vi, 386.

temperance must include abstinence.* He says, (1 Cor. ix, 25,) "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things,” πάντα ἐγκρατεύεται. It is true that this passage is often quoted in favor of the moderate use of alcoholic beverages, but never was there a greater perversion of Scripture. It gives the whole weight of its sanction to the practice of the strictest abstinence from every thing that can intoxicate or in any wise injure. The text alludes to the training of the competitors in the ancient games. The severity of the discipline to which they subjected themselves is described by Epictetus, ("Encheiridion," 35) "Do you wish to win the Olympic prize? It is necessary to observe a strict discipline, to eat what is prescribed, abstain (àπéxɛodai) from all confections, exercise at the appointed hour in heat and in cold, drink nothing cold, nor wine, (un vivov,) as you are wont," etc. So Horace ("Ars Poetica," 414) says that the athlete abstinuit venere et vino, "abstained from venery and wine." The earlier versions recognized the true significance of the verb in this passage. The Vulgate renders abstinet; and Wycliffe, followed by Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva version, renders "absteyneth." Conybeare and Howson render, "He trains himself by all manner of self-restraint." In the very next verse (26) Paul illustrates and makes personal application of the doctrine of Christian temperance. Continuing the figure of the preceding passage, he says:§ "So run I, straight for the goal. I aim straight blows, and not in feint, at the enemy. blacken my own body with blows, and lead it about as a slave, lest, in any way, after acting as herald to others I myself

I even

* Professor Bumstead objects ("Bib. Sac.," January, 1881, p. 89) to the doc. trine that the New Testament teaches total abstinence on the ground that the verb άnéxoμal, which "the New Testament writers "used" to express the idea of wholly abstaining is never used in connection with wine." If he means that it is the only verb which expresses that idea, we dissent, and point to έyкparεvoμaι. If he means to claim that the use of wine as a beverage is not included in the text which he quotes (1 Pet. ii, 11) we again dissent. We would also call his attention to the fact that the verb úñéxoμaι is used, (1 Thess. v, 22, "Abstain from every species [or R. V., "form," εidovç] of evil ") in immediate connection (ver. 6) with the injunction "Be sober," výowμev, covering the evil of drinking and every other evil, whether named or omitted.

+ Vide also Elian, "Variæ Historiæ," xi, 3.

"Life and Epistles of St. Paul."

§ Adapted from Farrar's rendering, "The Life and Work of St. Paul,” p. 392.

should be rejected from the lists." Surely this is no indulgent or luxurious notion of temperance as a prudent pampering of the body. It is stern, self-denying discipline. So far apart are the apostle's and the chancellor's conception of this Chris tian virtue! The other passages in which yкρáтειа occurs are Gal. v, 22, where it stands as the completion and crown of "the fruits of the Spirit," which are in opposition to "the works of the flesh," enumerated in the preceding verse, and among which "drunkenness " is prominent; and 2 Pet. i, 6, where it is classed among the chorus of graces, and is rendered in the Vulgate abstinentia, and by Wycliffe "absteynence." The adjective form, eуkрaтn, occurs once, in Titus i, 8, where it answers to vηpáλeos in 1 Tim. iii, 2.

From this inquiry, therefore, the conclusion is irresistible that the temperance of the New Testament is a power in and over one's self moderately to use all innocent things and absolutely to abstain from all that is injurious. Applied to intoxicating beverages it can have but one signification. Here the New Testament insists upon total abstinence. This is Christ's teaching by the Holy Spirit, and there can be no doubt that his practice conformed to his precepts, and that, so far from being a moderate drinker, he was, what he commands each one of his followers to be,

A TOTAL ABSTAINER.

APPENDIX.

A.

ALCOHOL IN HEALTH AND AS A FOOD.

(Pp. 4-7.)

WE submit some further and recent evidence. from the scientific and medical stand-point as to the harmfulness of alcohol in any shape or quantity in health, and as to its utter uselessness as a food. An editorial in "The London Lancet." the leading medical journal of Great Britain, of Jan. 1, 1881, p. 28, says:

The most rigid teetotaler may well be satisfied with the growing tendency in physicians to use it (alcohol) strictly, and to be satisfied only with distinct proofs of its utility; and the most generous believer in the medicinal virtues of alcohol must know that the public and individual patients are taking a keener interest in this question than they ever did before, and are making very shrewd personal experiments on the subject. Our own opinion concerning it has been freely expressed, and we have not concealed our conviction that good health is most consistent with very little alcohol or with none; that he who uses alcohol freely or frequently, or by itself and apart from food, is surely laying up disease and degeneration for himself and probably for his descendants.

Frank Woodbury, M.D., Physician to the German Hospital, Philadelphia, in a paper on " Clinical Phases of Poisoning by Alcohol," published in "The Philadelphia Medical Times" of April 9, 1881, says, "Alcoholic liquors are poisonous because they contain alcohol." And, after stating that he has personally repeated the experiments of Anstie, Parkes, and Wollowicz, he declares: "I am, therefore, forced to the conclusion that alcohol is not a true food in the sense that it favors nutrition in a state of health."

R. Greene, M.D., of Boston, in a paper on "Alcoholic Stimulants as Medicines," read before one of the medical societies at the annual meeting, Boston, June 8, 1881, and published by the author, asserts:

Alcohol is neither food nor medicine. It cannot add one molecule to the plasm out of which our bodies are daily built up. On the contrary, it exerts upon the whole animal economy a most deleterious influence. It does not supply, but diminishes, vital force. It weakens the nerves, deadens the sensibilities, and lessens the power of the system to resist disease or to recover from its effects.

At the thirty-first annual meeting of the Illinois State Medical Society, held May, 1881, and reported in "The New York Medical Record," July 23, 1881, "Dr. E. Ingalls, who had corresponded with all the leading members of the society regarding the use of alcohol, said alcohol should not be used in health, and physicians should discountenance its use by their example and by their precept."

Dr. B. W. Richardson, of England, thus sums up the "Results of Researches on Alcohol," in an address published by the National Temperance Society, 1882, pp. 19-21:

What I may call the preliminary and physiological part of my research was now concluded. I had learned, purely by experimental observation, that in its action on the living body this chemical substance, alcohol, deranges the constitution of the blood, unduly excites the heart and respiration, paralyzes the minute bloodvessels, increases and decreases, according to the degree of its application, the functions of the digestive organs, of the liver, and of the kidneys, disturbs the regularity of nervous action, lowers the animal temperature, and lessens the muscular power.

Such, independently of any prejudice of party or influence of sentiment, are the unanswerable teachings of the sternest of all evidences, the evidences of experiment, of natural fact revealed to man by experimental testing of natural phenomena. If alcohol had never been heard of, as nitrite of amyl and many other chemical substances I have tested had never been heard of by the masses of mankind, this is the evidence respecting alcohol which I should have collected, and these are the facts I should have recorded from the evidence.

This record of simple experimental investigation and result respecting the action of alcohol on the body were incomplete without two other observations, which come in as a natural supplement. It will be asked: Was there no evidence of any useful service rendered by the agent in the midst of so much obvious evidence of bad service? I answer to that question that there was no such evidence whatever, and there is none. It has been urged, as a last kind of resource and excuse, that alcohol aids digestion, and so far is useful. I support, in reply, the statement of the late Dr. Cheyne, that nothing more effectively hinders