The MARKS OF ABBREVIATION EMPLOYED IN THE NOTES are as under: LXX. for the Greek Septuagint Version. A. V. for the Authorized English Version in common use. V. for the Latin Vulgate Version. T. and Ts. for Targum and Targums. Codex A for the Greek Alexandrine Codex. Prel. Dis. for Preliminary Dissertation. = stands for 'equivalent to,' or 'that is.' over a letter signifies that it is to be pronounced long, as ‘o’in ‘more.' THE BOOK OF GENESIS. CHAPTER I. VERSE 29. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. EVERY HERB] Hebrew, kal asev. Asev, as full-grown herbage (including grain of all kinds), is distinguished from desheh, young and tender grass, and from khatzir, ripe grass, fit for mowing. The Lxx. renders asev by chorton, green plants of every species; but Aquila has chloee, young green corn or grass. The Vulgate reads herbam. EVERY TREE] Hebrew, kol hah-atz, i. e. every plant of woody fibre, in distinction from flexible sprouting plants. So the LXX., pan xulon, every kind of wood or timber; and the V. universa ligna, all sorts of wood-growth. TO YOU IT SHALL BE FOR MEAT] Lahkem yihyeh lěahkělah, “to you it shall be for eating"= that which is to be eaten. With this agrees the Targum of Onkelos, -le-maikal. The Lxx., Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, all read eis brōsin, --for eating. The V. has in escam,—for food. This Divine saying is a Charter at once concise and all-comprehensive. Whatever produce of the earth is fit for food, it places at man's disposal. From dust was the human body formed, and out of the dust comes its sustenance. He who fashioned and animated the one, freely bestows the other. The animals that are eaten derive from the vegetable world all that renders their flesh nutritious. Men are not bound to eat everything that grows, but they can eat and assimilate nothing which has not first grown up under the power of the Highest. In regard to the food so bountifully provided, man's duty comprehends—1, Thankfulness to his Divine Benefactor, which involves devotion; 2, Co-operation with the laws of Providence for the increase of this food, which involves industry; 3, Appropriation of this food to the end designed, the health and vigour of man, which involves frugality and temperance. All waste of food is condemnable; and waste occurs when more food is consumed than can be made use of in the body :hence the glutton abuses both his body and the material fitted to nourish it. Waste equally accrues when food is deprived of any of its nutritious properties; still more palpably, when food becomes transformed into any substance charged with evil to mankind. Such waste is always and inevitably connected with the vinous fermentation which converts grape-sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid. Sugar, the good creature of God, and a real food, is destroyed, and, by new chemical affinities, its elements are broken up, and fresh substances formed, of which it cannot be truly said, "they shall be to you for food." The assertion that alcohol is in sugar, or in any unfermented saccharine substance, can only be made in utter ignorance of the alphabet of chemical science.* This waste of food has become all the greater since-in order to produce intoxicating liquors in larger quantities than the fermented juice of grapes could yield-grain, to the extent of about fifty million bushels yearly, is employed in the United Kingdom alone for brewing and distillation. By the malting process the starch of corn is converted into sugar, and this again by fermentation into alcohol and carbonic acid. Distillation draws off the alcohol thus formed, and the spirit so educed (not produced), being mixed with less water, more readily exerts its specific effects. The solid food thus wasted would supply a fair amount of aliment to some millions of persons every day all the year round. The plea that the alcoholic fermentation is ‘a natural process' cannot avail in extenuation of this waste, since it is no more natural than those other processes of decay against which food is assiduously guarded, nor would alcoholic liquors come 'naturally' into existence at all, were they not designedly manufactured by man himself. "God made man upright; but he found out many inventions." As the sole end sought by this waste of food is the production of an alcoholic beverage, it devolves upon those who sanction the transformation to show that some compensating advantage is thereby secured. (1) That alcohol is itself a food is an hypothesis destitute of all scientific support; for being destitute of nitrogen, it cannot make blood or help to repair bodily waste. The theory at one time generally received, that its combustion produces animal heat, is now abandoned as being proofless, while a series of careful experiments by distinguished men of science in France and England have furnished evidence that alcohol is in course of ejection, unchanged, thirty hours after being swallowed. (2) Another theory, that alcohol serves as an equivalent for food by diminishing the metamorphosis of tissue, is without weight, for experiments have not justified the theory; and were it otherwise, the use of alcohol to diminish the normal waste of tissue would be open to censure, as a mischievous interference with one of the vital processes on which the renewal of corporeal strength depends. (3) Could it be shown that alcohol, when imbibed, is neutral as to any sensible effect, its manufacture at the expense of the staff of life would be a vast economic crime; but the probability is that its operation on the healthy organism is always in some degree deleterious, the measure of injury varying with the quantity, strength, and frequency of the amount imbibed. In all works on toxicology alcohol is classed among narcotico-acrid poisons, and like other poisons, its action when not fatal, is yet demonstrably pernicious. Some of its evil effects, though apparently trivial or even insensible at the moment-as, for example, in impairing the redness of the blood-globules and the structure of the blood-vessels-assume a serious importance when regarded as cumulative during a succession of years. (4) No dispute, indeed, can arise on the point that, as ordinarily consumed (for its exciting property), alcohol occasions a large amount of disease and premature death, apart altogether from the sin and misery of intoxication. (5) Along with these physical consequences due account should be taken of its influence on the moral, social, and religious life of the countries where it is com The old chemical formula of sugar is oxygen 3, hydrogen 3, carbon 3; the new is oxygen 3, hydrogen 6, carbon 3; but in the decomposition of sugar these elements recombine so as to generate alcohol and carbonic acid; thus, онс OHC 2 3 3 3 36 3 Not only is the sugar of grain and fruit thus destroyed, but their albumen becomes converted into yeast, and thus ceases to be food. |