from thee." Let it be observed, we affirm that this law is revealed in the Bible; but we believe the prevalent tyranny of alcohol in our day makes it more generally applicable. The following declaration of Paul is accepted by many as the only basis of the temperance cause: "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak." Romans xiv, 21. We doubt the pertinency of this text to the point it is brought to prove. We think the true explanation is, that the flesh and wine spoken of was such as might have been eaten without harm to the body, but having been offered to idols, could not be used without offending the scruples of some weak brother. We would not deny that we may rightfully put in this plea of holy charity for our cause, but we should not, for this, abandon a stronger position which we may rightfully hold. Let us not remain in the trenches when we may occupy the Malakoff. I would ask, in the name of God and of humanity, if we are to be put off with the plea of charity, when souls are slaughtered by thousands. This is not a brother made weak, or caused to stumble by a habit innocent in us, but multitudes murdered outright by connivance with the demon of

Are Christians at liberty to stand aloof from this great reform, and say to their brethren, Go on! your conduct is praiseworthy, you can take that course if you like, but I am under no obligation to follow? If this be true, then the rules of most evangelical Churches excluding rum-dealers and guzzling professors, are unnecessarily strict and extra-scriptural. But the Churches are right, for the growing prevalence of intemperance renders total abstinence a proper test of Christian discipleship. Some might be able innocently to press and drink the grape juice of their own vineyard; but this would constitute the exception and not the rule. We may view the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the light of these great principles. (1.) The pure unintoxicating grape juice (yɛvvημa τns аμлελov) is most proper for use at the Lord's Supper. (2.) The best wine of commerce may be used by Christians sacramentally, because, thus used, it will not intoxicate. For the sake of the tempted and the weak, unfermented wine is better. (3.) Wine diluted with water would be proper, since such was the common drink of the ancients, and might have been used by Jesus at the last supper. The intoxicating element affords no virtue, but rather vitiates the Divine appointment.

7. We may see the bearing of this argument on the legal prohibition of the liquor traffic. It is a matter of some consequence that drunkenness was subject to penalty under the Jewish theocratic law; that is, when the parents shall come forward and say, “This our

son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard, . . . all the men of his city shall stone him." Deuteronomy xxi, 20. "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also." If the drunkard is subject to civil penalties, and ultimately consigned to perdition, what should be the sentence pronounced on the drunkard maker? And what will be the doom of him who has snatched the key of heaven from another, and thrown it into a fiery ocean?

Having thus, as we believe, given the outlines of a true Bible temperance, let us turn to the examination of the book whose title stands at the head of this article. This volume we believe to be the first in which a successful attempt is made to set forth the temperance of the Bible in its scientific form. By scientific form I mean the statement of the doctrine just as it is brought out by the true laws of interpretation, in such a way as can be understood, and as will harmonize the Bible with itself. Dr. Nott was really in advance of the age when he wrote these admirable lectures. No better proof is needed that this book leads the sentiment of our times, than the fact of its republication with such success, after so many years.

We may be permitted, however, to suggest a few corrections to the publishers for the next edition. On page 56, Numbers xxviii, should be Numbers xviii. On page 57, Genesis xlviii, should be Jeremiah xlviii. In the same sentence, fall should be printed fail, and wine-press wine-presses. On page 57, Isaiah xxvii, 2, Hemer should be written instead of yayin. On page 59, transpose "thou not." On page 79, Joel i, 5, y for k, in awake. On page 80, 1 Chronicles xxvii, 27, “wine-sellers" should be "wine cellars. Perhaps, however, the difference is so slight it is hardly worth noticing. On page 48, note, "Accum or Culinary Poisons," query Accum on Culinary Poisons. In the table, page 85, Jeremiah xli, 7, should be Jeremiah li, 7. On page 86, Genesis xliv, 11, should be Genesis xlix, 11; Deuteronomy xxviii, 30, should be Deuteronomy xxviii, 39; Isaiah xxxvi, 15, should be Isaiah xxxvi, 17. In the table in the appendix, page 292, Proverbs xxxi, 44, should be Proverbs xxxi, 4. In the same table, page 294, Isaiah i, 22, seems to have got into the wrong place. Sobhe is improperly quoted as used with disapprobation, in connection with dross. The passage reads, "Thy silver is become dross, thy wine (sobhe) mixed with water." This is a parallelism, in which wine answers to silver, in representing the virtue of the people, and dross to water in representing their vice or depravity. The table, however, is generally so accurate that this error

must have been overlooked. We should be glad of space for further quotation from this excellent work, but we must refer to the book itself. Like Dr. Nott's Lectures to Young Men, it deserves to be in every family and in every library.

The temperance reform has suffered many reverses. It has to contend with appetite, interest, and error. "This vine-stock is the very vilest tyrant, at once an oppressor, a flatterer, and a hypocrite. The first draughts of his blood are sweetly relishing; but one drop incessantly entices another after it; they succeed each other like a necklace of pearls which one fears to pull apart."* But there is a noble band of champions in this cause, Lyman Beecher, Eliphalet Nott, Edward C. Delavan, Neal Dow, and others, whose renowned and venerable names were not born to die. Let us not be discouraged, although God suffers our efforts for oppressed humanity for a while to be thwarted. δει δε τους αγαθους ανδρας εγχειρειν μεν απασιν αει τοις καλοίς, την αγαθην προβαλλομένους ελπίδα, φερειν δ' ὅ τι αν ὁ θεος διδῷ γενναίως. These words of Demosthenes might express a Christian's faith: "Good men must needs glory always in every good cause, throwing out to steady them a generous hope, resolved to endure whatever Providence may send magnanimously." The importance of the Bible to the final success of temperance should be more generally recognized. The sword of the Spirit should not be left to slumber in its scabbard, as if we distrusted its power. As sure as the truth of God can never fail, our cause must succeed. But we cannot afford to rest now. We must work on, and fight on, until the spirit vender shall close up forever the last temple of fashionable death. Our work will only then be done, when we hear the coming of the millennial car of the Son of God. Then may we lay our armor by, and, safe from the clang of battle, rest in perpetual peace. Then may we feel content to see the star of temperance fade into the golden day of heaven.

ART. IX. THE RELATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY TO HUMANI

TARIAN EFFORT.

THERE was a stupendous power in the early forms of paganism, to mold and control the minds of men. The deities of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, though partaking of the rude and ferocious characteristics of their worshipers, developing mainly the passions

• Goethe.

of the brute man, and, by their bloodthirsty rites, extinguishing all emotions of mercy or sympathy in the human breast, had yet a stalwart energy inherent in them, which made those nations the incarnations of manly power and vigor.

While this brute force led to the commission of hideous crimes of lust and murder, yet, in the hands of Him "who is wonderful in working," it was turned to the furtherance of his great designs in the progress and development of the human race. The colossal temples of Nineveh, the vast structures of Babylon, the pyramids, columns, temples, and sphinxes which line the banks of the Nile, all evince the energizing influence of their early faith on nations whose deities were the impersonations of mere physical power.

Ages later, the intellectual development of the race had so far progressed, that the brutal and bloodthirsty deities of the earlier times were distasteful to the refined worshipers of Greece and Rome. Baal, Moloch, Saturn, the Titans, Hercules, Odin, and Thor were not the gods to whom they were disposed to pay hom age; their preference was for the intriguing Jupiter, the graceful Apollo, the adroit Mercury, the skillful Vulcan, or the commerceloving Neptune; and to these they added a host of female deities, whose various offices demonstrated the advancing culture and refinement of the race, and gave sad evidence, also, of its increasing depravity.

Under the sway of the earlier deities men had gathered into communities and nations, had carried on wars, and developed the mechanic arts necessary for their successful prosecution, had erected rude dwellings, and massive but uncouth temples, had made some advances toward the invention of letters, and, amid bloodshed and carnage, had left to the ages that followed, evidences so ample and profound of their robust vigor and energy, that only the fires of the final conflagration shall be able utterly to obliterate them.

The generations of the second era of paganism had lost something of the physical power of their ancestors, but intellectual supremacy was the controlling idea of their religion, and it was to some development of this, that every sentiment incarnated in their Pantheon tended. Wonderful was the potency of this idea. Under the plastic hands of the architects of Greece and Rome grew temples and shrines, whose beauty transcended all previous creations of genius, and which three thousand years of intellectual culture have not enabled the moderns to surpass. The sculptor and painter, alike inspired with the hope of an immortality of fame, developed from the marble or depicted upon the canvas, forms whose majestic grandeur, or exquisite loveliness, have defied the skill of all subFOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-30

sequent time to equal. In the very dawn of letters their poets depicted, with such graphic power, the passions and emotions of the human heart, that their compositions yet form some of our finest models.

Nor were they wanting in statesmanship. Throwing aside the stern and irresponsible despotisms of the earlier ages, they tried in turn every form of government with which our earth has been blessed or cursed; now rejoicing in a patriarchy, anon changing to an oligarchy; at one time placing all power in the hands of the people, and thus inaugurating, in its widest sense, a democracy; at another, by carefully contrived checks and balances, assimilating closely to modern ideas of a republican government; trying by turns presidents, governors, kings, and emperors; a limited and an absolute monarchy, an irresponsible dictatorship, and a government of consuls, tribunes, and censors.

Philosophers and moralists were not lacking among them; and knowing, as we do, the general looseness of morals and manners, we cannot but be astonished at the lofty tone of purity, and the almost inspired character of the precepts which fell from the lips of their wise men; precepts whose influence has been felt in every subsequent age.

But the time had come when paganism, as a vital principle in the development of humanity, must die. Its force was expended; it had accomplished something of good, but much more of evil in the world's history; the few truths it had drawn from the traditions of the early worship of Jehovah, though mingled with numberless errors, had aided it in maintaining its hold upon the human heart and conscience; a purer faith, divested of these errors, and introducing new and grand truths of whose existence paganism had never dreamed, but which were of vital importance to the race, was henceforth to sway mankind. The mission of paganism was ended. As a scheme of philosophy, not less than as a system of religion, it had failed, because it had recognized man only in the mass. The individual was not at all the object of its consideration; all had reference to the nation, the state, the city; it was the whole people, or at least the whole patrician portion of them, and not any particular individual, which law and religion alike regarded. Suffering, sorrow, disease, or misfortune, affecting the individual, excited no sympathy in the community, evoked no aid from neighbors or friends. As a corollary from this principle, the rights of the weak were not regarded, either in law or in fact. No Roman or Greek code, enacted prior to the Christian era, recognizes the legal rights of woman, of the sick, of the insane, the blind, the deaf-mute,