been trained in the school of tee-totalism, they could not have spoken more decidedly concerning the evils arising from the use of inebriating drinks.

I have in these pages placed before the reader the sentiments of the ancients respecting wines and other liquors of that character. I have given a brief view of the various substances that have been used as inebriants; have referred to most of the nations that adopted them; and have proved both the existence of unfermented wines, and that those which may have been charged with any intoxicating principle were repeatedly filtered, or carefully fumed and baked, for the sole purpose of depriving them of all strength or spirit. The philosophy of the time of Pliny, Plutarch, and Horace, taught that wines which unnerved the body, inflamed the passions, idiotized the mind, and led to crime and disease, were better avoided than drunk, because, instead of increasing, they destroyed the pleasure of conviviality and social intercourse; and, therefore, that they might drink the more, and drink without injury, they drank wines that would not intoxicate. The practices and examples of antiquity have frequently been arrayed against the doctrine of total abstinence; but a fair and candid examination of history have shown that the wines of the ancients, the drinking customs of the ancients, the taste and appetite of the ancients, and even their drunkenness, were of a character altogether different, and, in many cases, the very opposite, to ours. Both Pliny and Plutarch, and others, prove that the most popular, most useful, and wholesome wine, was that which was deprived of all strength or spirit; in a word, was a wine which one who practices total abstinence would rarely hesitate to drink. If the authority of antiquity is pleaded, we certainly have a right to demand that our opponents should first produce some of the wines of antiquity; until they do the latter, all reference to the former is worse than absurd. Perhaps there never was a subject which opposed a vitiated taste that has been assailed with so much ignorance, prejudice, and irrationality, as total abstinence. Men, without the least knowledge of the history of the vine, without a grain of scientific information respecting fermentation, and as ignorant as the bottles from which they borrow their logic of the drink and drinking customs of antiquity, come forward to prove that modern port, sherry, Burton, porter, and strong beer, are just the same sort of liquors that Pharaoh drank and that Aaron mingled with his sacrifices. The simple reason of all this is, that, because they love these modern poisons themselves, therefore all men of all ages must of necessity have loved them, even before these liquids could have

had an existence. The argument, put into the form of a syllogism, stands thus:

If I, A. B., love wines highly brandied, then all men of all ages must have liked them too.

I, A. B., do love wines highly brandied! Therefore, all men of all ages were fond of wines highly brandied!! Ay, were fond of them, and actually drank them, before any brandy, or pure alcohol, or any such brandied wines, were produced or manufactured, or had any existence!

CHAPTER VI.

On the sentiments of Scripture respecting Wines, &c.-Different Hebrew words translated by the word "Wine."-Yayin, "Wine;" Tirosh, "New Wine;" Chamer, "Red Wine;" Mesek, "Mixed Wine;" Shemarim, "Wine on the lees," or preserved Wine; Saba, a stupifying Wine; Shacar, "Strong Drink," or rather a sweet drink. Ashisha, flagons or preserves. Raisins, or dried grapes. Abigail, Ziba, Melchizedek; Jacob's blessing of Judah, blood of the grape; "Wine that cheereth the heart of God and man;' "Wine that maketh glad the heart of man;" "Wine of Lebanon;""Wine of Helbon;" "The Wine, or strong drink" of the Passover. Solomon's wine. "Drink thy wine with a merry heart." "Give strong drink to him that is weary.' Wine at the Marriage of Cana. Wine recommended to Timothy. The wine put into new bottles. bottles of Job. Old wine better than new. Our Lord called a wine-bibber. Wine of the first Sacrament; chomits or leaven. Scripture condemnation of wine. Total Abstinence enjoined on Kings, on the Priests, on the Nazarites. On Samson and his mother. Israelites in the Wilderness. Elijah. Nnpaλios, sobriety, vigilance. Water recommended in Scripture. Abraham. Abraham's servant, Hagar. Israelites. Gideon's army, Saul, Nabal's Sheep-shearers, Abigail, Old Prophet, Elijah, Obadiah, King of Israel, King of Assyria. Job's traveller, "Water sure." "Spring up, O well." Multitudes fed by Christ. Christ at Jacob's Well, &c. &c.

New

IT has generally been customary for those who possess the Scriptures, but who do not understand their contents or design, to array the sacred volume against whatever may oppose their prejudices. The authority of the law was marshalled by the Jews against the Gospel of the Son of God. Scripture and the fathers of the church were quoted as a proof that Columbus was a heretic and an infidel for suggesting that there was another continent, and a clergyman actually published a sermon to show that Jenner, for endeavouring to check the ravages of the small-pox, was the beast of the Apocalypse. In our day, the authority of the word of God is pleaded as a sanction for the use of one of the most desolating of all poisons. "I must have a new Bible," said a good man the other day, "before I can adopt the principle of total abstinence." It therefore behoves us to inquire whether or

not the book of Revelation encourages the drinking of modern spirituous liquors, wine, beer, cider, &c. A very little examination of the scripture, in connexion with what has been said already on ancient wines, will be sufficient to satisfy every candid mind. In entering on this subject we will first examine the words or phrases which are used in the word of God to express wine or strong drinks.

not necessarily express a fermented liquor. By itself the term can neither satisfy us as to the one or the other; on this point, the context, or some circumstantial incident, must be our guide. Our opponents, without any examination of the different wines and different modes of manufacturing them, have jumped to the conclusion that yayin or wine always means a fermented brandied liquor with a large quantity of alcohol in it, and then have erected, as they suppose, a splendid building, though, unfortunately for their The term theory, on a foundation of sand. Aoyous, often means a word or a certain vibration of air; why not argue that it always has this signification, and therefore that the Saviour of the word is a mere vibration of air? This would be just

ing of the press if the husbandman pleased; but if he chose he could prevent it. He might boil it down to a consistence too thick and saccharine to ferment; he might filter it and deprive it of the gluten, or yeast, essential to fermentation; he might mix it with water and vinegar, as in Cato's "family wine," and thus dilute it beyond the power of producing a strong wine; he might exclude the air by fastening up the bottles immediately, as in the new amphora mentioned by Columella, and the new bottles spoken of by our Lord, and thus prevent its working, for Chaptal says that "grape-juice will not work if the oxygen of the atmosphere be excluded;" and he might, as Pliny and Columella direct, immerse it in cold water and sink its temperature below the degree essential to fermentation. He might add gypsum and other anti-ferments; he might from design or carelessness, leave it exposed to a heat that would cause the acetous fermentation to follow the vinous; or, by exposing it to the heat of an oven, or by boiling it, or by filtering it, "toties," repeatedly, render it very innocuous, although it had fermented; yet, though subject to all these processes, the liquid would still be a "yayin,” or wine, a liquor that had, in whole or in part, been obtained originally from the vine. So he might ferment it, or mix it with honey, wormwood, or squills, or opium, and still it might retain the generic name, yayin, or wine, for it was made from the expressed juice of the grape. The juice that Pharaoh drank was yayin, or wine, for it was pressed from the grape, and the juice which made Nabal drunk was a yayin or wine, although after pressure it had been either fermented or drugged, though most probably the latter. These observations will be sufficient to show that the word yayin, or wine, does

as rational as to say that yayin or wine always means a fermented drink with a large quantity of alcohol in it. Virgil says the kinds and species of wines were innu

of the poet, and says that they were correct, and yet modern wine-bibbers tell us, in the very face of facts and history, that there is, Some and ever was, but one sort of wine. foolishly insinuate that, should we give more than one signification to the term wine, we shall unsettle the meaning of the word of God. We never knew before that allowing the context of an author to settle the mean

ance,

ing of the word he uses would endanger his discourse. We always thought that he who sets context, facts, and history at defiand affixes to words the arbitrary interpretations of his own fancy or prejudice, is likely to do the most mischief to the book which he undertakes to expound. Those who adopt total abstinence are willing that the context, that history, and well-attested facts, should settle the meaning of the word yayin, or wine; but wine-bibbers go to their bottles and palates for an interpretation. Which of these interpreters is most likely to arrive at the truth we leave the candid and ingenuous to say, but we query whether the divination of the winecask or beer-barrel will, in this particular, be the best guide.

2., Tirosh, supposed to come from the root V or UNI, “head, chief, or beginning," may refer to the head or berry of the grape, or to the first or chief juice that begins to flow from the fruit; it is, therefore, promiscuously rendered in the English version by the terms "wine," or "new wine." In Isaiah lxv. 8, it alludes to the juice in the swollen or ripe fruit before it was expressed. "When the new wine is yet in the cluster, one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it." The wine in the cluster was unfermented, and then there was a blessing in it. No one who has carefully examined the effects of inebriating wines will say that there is a blessing in them,

7. ND, Sava, is supposed by some to mean, "to drink hard or to guzzle," by others, "to turn round or reel," and may refer to a drink which was so pleasant that tipplers swallowed it in large quantities, or to one so thoroughly mixed or drugged with medicaments as to make those, who partook of it largely, reeling drunk. Science has shown us that the alcoholic wines of Palestine, if they did exist at all, were too weak to make persons reel, and therefore, when they had this effect, they must have been drugged. Sava is never recommended in scripture.

to שכר Shacar, from the verb שכר .8

satisfy, to please, to make merry, or yield perfect satisfaction. It is highly probable that the term originally meant what was sweet or delightful either to the body, or the mind. We have before stated that the Hebrew shacar, the Arabic, saccharon, the Greek, sachar, the Latin saccharum, the French sucre, and the English sugar, have all sprung from the same original root, and have all the same primary meaning; for in each language sweetness is the primitive idea. In Arabic, both "honey," and palm wine, which, when first made, or before it becomes acid, is as sweet as honey, were called "saccharon." The Greeks called it saxa, a word evidently introduced by Dioscorides and Arrian from the Arabs and Phoenicians: hence the Romans also obtained their saccharum, and we our words saccharine, and sugar. The idea of sweetness is also conveyed to us by the various uses of the verb. It is said that Joseph's brethren did eat and drink with him and were "yishacaro, merry with him;'

not

"were drunk" with him; the wine drunk at that time by Pharaoh himself was the juice squeezed from the grapes into his cup, and consequently could not be fermented or intoxicating drink; and it is therefore a query whether Joseph, at that time, possessed the means of making his brethren drunk with alcoholic wine, even had he wished to do so. Besides, we would not reflect so deeply on Joseph and his brethren as to suppose that the liquor drunk, and not the pleasure of their happy meeting, was the cause of their being merry. Modern tipplers may have neither mind, heart, nor soul, except what they get from the wine bottle, but I cannot think that Joseph and his brethren were thus destitute of human feelings. The idea conveyed here

which they realised in the mutual exchange of affection. Shacar often refers to wages, and how "sweet to the labourer after toiling hard is the hire or reward which he receives. Leah said, "God hath given me my hire, or wages, and she called his name, Is-sachar, or wages." Again, nothing so perfectly satisfies or cloys as sugar, honey, or "sweets," and hence the idea of perfect satiety, or of being drenched as it were; and accordingly shacar sometimes means to be completely filled with liquor, or to be drunk; and exactly accords with a very common signification of the word "v in Greek, which often means to be filled with drink or any thing else, rather than to be drunk or poisoned with liquor. All lexicographers allow that to be filled, satiated, or drenched, is a common acceptation of "shacar, and μibu." I have made these remarks to show that our translators had no warrant for rendering the word "shacar," in every text where it refers to liquors, by the terms "strong drink." Had they used the words, "sweet drink" they would have approached much nearer to the truth; for there is not the shadow of a doubt that shacar meant a sweet, luscious, satisfying liquor. Theodoret and Chrysostom, both Syrians, and therefore good witnesses, assert that shakar was "palm wine," and Dr. Shaw says, that "this liquor is of a more luscious sweetness than honey." The Arabs still call "palm wine," and palm juice, Saccharon, and also apply to it the name dispse, dipse, or dibs, terms of the same origin as the Hebrew 7, Dabesh or Dibs, which is rendered honey in the scripture, and is the name of the honey, or rather sweet grape, or palm juice, which Jacob sent as a present to Joseph. Honey was no rarity in Egypt, but this sweet juice being far more delicious than honey, was doubtless a luxury, and therefore esteemed a costly present. It is worthy of remark, that dates, whence palm wine is made, are called by the Arabs, "Dabash, honey or sweet fruit." That sachar in scripture was sweet, is evident from the contrast expressed in Isaiah, xxiv. 9, "Strong drink shall become bitter;" rather "sweet drink shall become bitter;" Lowth translates the verse, "The palm wine shall be bitter;" and paraphrases it, "All enjoyment shall cease, the sweetest wine shall become bitter;" the contrast between shacar, "sweet," and the term "bitter," is here placed in striking opposition. That shacar, or strong drink, means wine is demonstrated from a comparison of Exod. xxix. 40. with Num. xxviii. 7. When the ordinance was instituted, God commanded "that the fourth part of a hin of wine should be the drink offering; but this yayin or wine is called, in Num. xxviii. 7, shacar, "sweet drink or palm