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PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.

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THE following COMMENTARY on certain passages of Holy Writ has been undertaken for the elucidation and development of important and practical, but long-neglected, portions of Divine truth. It is desirable, at starting, that readers who, like the noble Bereans, are willing to search for the truth in the love of it, should understand the special object of the inquiry, and the principles upon which we propose to conduct it. We repudiate entirely every species of Authority,' properly so called. Faith, indeed, must accept the facts of Revelation, just as philosophy must accept the facts of Nature-using there, however, all reasonable care in the examination;-but, after that, no mortal intellect can have a monopoly of judgment, or, without presumption, pretend to an infallibility of interpretation. One only rule will hold then,-" Prove all things: hold fast to that which is " true. As we do not see with the eyes of other men, neither do we claim that other men should see with ours. But what we do assert is, that while the Divine objective Truth is one, not various, so the subjective faculty of Reason is one, working by common laws to common and invincible conclusions. This is the sole guarantee of truth being either possible or actual; and therefore evidence is everything, and bare 'opinion' nothing. On that evidence alone we place our reliance: if it is invalid our inference falls; if otherwise, it will stand; but no imaginable amount of unbelief and dogmatic denial can disturb or overturn it. As the acute Professor Mansel has observed, "it is of little importance to what authority we appeal, so long as the evidence itself will not bear criticism." Were a lawyer, in defending a client, to decline putting facts and evidence before the jury, and content himself with referring to a number of 'learned opinions,' both judge and jury would regard his defense either as imbecility calling for pity, or as impudence meriting contempt. But criticism ought to be governed by laws of evidence as strict and unbending as those which are observed in our law courts; and mere 'opinion' ought to be held quite as cheap.

I. The first proposition to be established is one of a purely philological and matter-of-fact character, namely,―That there is nothing in the nature and usage of the words for Wine, etc., in the Bible, which at all teaches that the use of intoxicating drink is in harmony

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with the Divine will. This proposition will be proved just as conclusively on the hypothesis that the Bible is a book of simple history, as on the conception of its containing a Divine revelation. The following are the thirteen words of the Original Scriptures which, unfortunately for the English reader, have all been commingled and confused under the translation of the single term WINE, either with or without an adjective of qualification, such as 'new,' 'sweet,' 'mixed,' or 'strong,'-namely:-in Hebrew, Yayın, Khamar, Shakar, Mesek, Alsis, Soveh, Tirosh, Ashishah, Shemarim; in Greek, Oinos, Gleukos, Oxos, and Akraton. There are, besides, closely associated with these words, two others-the Hebrew adjective Khemer (foaming), and Khometz, translated vinegar.' When persons attempt to argue, from the Authorized Version, the merits of the wine question, no wonder they fall into inextricable difficulties and pernicious delusions. Mr De Quincey's observation, in his article on The Philosophy of Herodotus,' is exceedingly apposite:-"How often do we hear people commenting on the Scriptures, and raising up aerial edifices of argument, in which every iota of the logic rests, unconsciously to themselves, upon the accidental words of the English version, and melts away when applied to the original text! so that, in fact, the whole has no more strength than if it were built upon a pun or an 'équivoque." Nor is it the unlearned alone who are apt to fall into this fallacy. Even so good a Hebraist as Professor Murphy, in referring to Prov. iii. 10 and Joel ii. 24, has distorted the meaning of yeqev and tirosh in order to accommodate their sense to the English mistranslations burst-out and overflow.' Long ago, Dr S. Lee, Hebrew Professor at Cambridge, in the preface to his 'Hebrew Lexicon,' pointed out this teeming source of error:-" As to Noldius and the same may be said of lexicographers but too generally, his practice evinces no endeavor beyond that of offering a signification-well suited, as he thought, to each place-which eventually resolves itself into a system of mere conjecture, and one, moreover, which takes for granted that the particular signification he ascribed to every other word in such passage was above all suspicion correct." Thus in the article Wine,' in Dr Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,' the writer permits the supposed association of tirosh with a liquid in the famous triad, 'corn, wine, and oil'-to influence his judgment as to the term translated wine,' when, in reality, the proper word for 'oil' (shemen) does not occur there as stated; and, moreover, the word translated oil' is clearly a mistranslation, the proper meaning of yitzhar being orchard-fruit,' if etymology, induction, and context are to have any weight in determining the meaning of language. It is thus under the conjoint influence of prejudice, carelessness, and false conjecture, that errors increase and multiply, and one blunder is made the buttress and bulwark of another.

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Mr John Stuart Mill, in his 'System of Logic,' has well laid down an important law of speech:-"Language is the depository of the accumulated experience to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come. It may

be good to alter the meaning of a word, but it is bad to let any part of the meaning drop. Whoever seeks to introduce a more correct use of a term should be required to possess an accurate acquaintance with the history of the particular word. To be qualified to define the name, we must know all that has ever been known of the properties of the class of objects which are, or originally were, denoted by it. A generic term is always liable to become limited to a single species, if people have occasion to think and speak of that species much oftener than of anything else contained in the genus. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there."

This species of fallacy would be seen through at once if it were used in reference to matters not touching our appetites or interests. For example, who would be deceived by the allegation that as "Prevent' now signifies to 'hinder' or 'oppose', therefore it signifies the same in the Collect, Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings, with Thy most gracious favor'"? The answer would be, that, at the time the prayer was published, 'prevent' had the etymological sense of going before; that a modern use has nothing necessarily to do with an ancient use of a word; and that the later sense arose, as explained by Mr Mill, from the fact that obstacles-things before us-are more frequently 'hindrances' than 'helps.' Or should it be alleged that "villains are foul rogues: but in the Middle Ages farm-laborers and peasants were chiefly villains, therefore very bad men,"-should we not laugh in the face of the verbal trickster? In what respect, however, does this differ from the way in which, by the abuse of the word 'Wine,' the same paralogism is attempted to be palmed upon us? Men-and sometimes people professing to be 'scholars'-go to a technical dictionary of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, quote an exclusive definition of wine as 'the fermented juice of the grape,' and ask us to jump with them to the crooked conclusion, "Therefore wine, 2,coo years ago, never signified anything less or anything more"! When perversity has attained to this point it serves to illustrate the truth of a remark once made by an 'Eclectic Reviewer,' that "the understanding may be so blinded by circumstance, or by prejudice, as to meet with darkness in the daytime, and to grope at noonday as in night." It is high time that such fallacies of the dictionary' should be remitted to the nursery or the asylum. This very word, by the way, is another illustration; but should the day ever come when the conventional sense of house for lunatics' shall have absorbed all other senses, will that prove that during a series of ages it had not the broader sense of 'refuge'?

When we speak of the various senses of such words as wine, man, spirit, wife, angel, let us not be misunderstood. A word of this sort is vaguely descriptive and broadly general. There is no single word of this kind with any definite sense; the special sense is derived from the application,-i. e. from the context. If we say, 'In heaven there are Angels, and also, In hell there are Angels,-while the word 'angel' is the same, the objects connoted are, in specific quality, as

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distinct as the opposing spheres. The 'fallacy of the lexicon' is very common, whereby the sense of the context is imported into the innocent word. The figure 3 expresses a distinct relation as a symbol, but it may be applied to plums or potatoes; still the qualities of the things do not attach to the figure. So with words. "Wine' primarily expressed the relation of 'liquid offspring to the vine-cluster'; but it does not, never did, nor, in the nature of things, ever can mark out the later, and for thousands of years obscure, relationship of 'fermentation.' The Jewish rabbins, we are distinctly told, had a peculiar theory that the juices of fruits did not ferment,- -so little did they know of the occult process that is now assumed to have been the origin of the name for wine! In fact, all the ancients knew of the matter was, that grape-juice 'foamed' and 'boiled,' like the froth of the sea, boiling water, or bitumen; and this idea is the sole one expressed by the words yavan and khamer, from which verbs the Hebrew and Chaldee words for wine are usually derived.*

As angel' denotes the relation of 'messenger' to some sovereign. master, but cannot express the kind and quality of mastership or service, whether of devil or Deity, so the word 'wine' expresses the relationship of the blood of the vine,' but cannot possibly signalize the special state into which it has got-whether it is pure khemer, or mustum, or soveh, or whether it is the juice transformed, by fermentation, into intoxicating drink. In accordance with this principle are the facts of Hebrew literature. When yayin became generic by usage, the Jews had to resort in later time to specific words, such as ahsis and soveh, just as the Greeks with their gleukos and the Latins with their mustum, when oinos and vinum respectively had become too vague and general. As to the 'particular history' of the words for Wine, the body of this work contains scores of illustrations of the fact, that in Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Latin, and English, the words for wine, in all these languages, are originally, and always inclusively, applied to the blood of the grape' in its primitive and natural condition, as well subsequently, as to that juice both boiled and fermented. It is true that one or two quasi-scientific writers, such as Pliny in ancient times (A. D. 60), and Neumann in later (1740), have endeavored to override the popular use of the word wine,' and to fabricate a technical definition of it. The attempt, however, has not only been a total failure in itself, but it may be alleged that, had it been ever so successful, it could not in the slightest degree have affected the past historical use of the word in the Bible, or in dead languages and obsolete idioms. Neither Pliny nor Neumann, however, are consistent; for both concede that, notwithstanding their closet definitions, unfermented preparations

Hear the language of LIEBIG:-" Vegetable juices in general become turbid when in contact with the air, BEFORE FERMENTATION COMMENCES." (Chemistry of Agriculture, 3d Ed.) Thus, it appears, foam or turbidness (what the Hebrews called khemer, and applied to the foaming blood of the grape') is no proof of alcohol being present.

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reckoned, not only among wines (vina), but among sweets (dulcia) also ;" and that "several of the Italian wines of this sort are called vino-cotto, or boiled wine." The objection, however, is altogether impertinent for another reason-namely, that the Bible is not a book of Science, dictated in technical and scholastic language, but a BOOK OF LIFE, written for common and wayfaring persons, in the language of daily life, of national history, of popular apologue, and of glowing prophetic poetry. Its speech is the very antipodes of cutand-dried science; it is the speech of the people and the age, and can only be correctly understood by being interpreted in the light of the customs and facts by which both Instructors and Instructed prophets and people-were environed, and of the thoughts in which they were alike immersed. On other topics the folly of this objection can be seen plainly enough. Who, for example, cares for the Colenso quibble, that, in order to generate a contradiction between Scripture and Science, would force upon the Mosaic phrase applied to the 'hare'-chewing the cud (Lev. xi. 6)—the modern technical, anatomical definition? Yet anti-Temperance critics, to serve their controversial ends, harp upon the same discordant string.

In this connection we may note a kindred fallacy concerning 'the proper use of terms.' The phrase is not felicitous. All terms, however applied, which convey the meaning of the writer to the person addressed, are equally 'proper,' since to do that is the sole end of speech. There may be degrees of clearness, certainly, but that is all; and this does not involve the question of the primary, secondary, figurative, or poetical use of the word. The Bible, like any other book, may have all these varied uses.

In the controversy on the Pentateuch, Dr Colenso asks his critic, "With what pretense does Dr McCaul undertake to censure me as being ignorant of Hebrew, for saying that the proper signification of the word Succah is 'booths made of boughs and branches,' and that when it is used of tents, etc., it is used improperly? His language would lead his readers to suppose that the word is used freely for all kinds of habitations, lions' lairs, pavilions, tabernacles, etc. The real fact is, that the word occurs twenty-three times in the sense of booth, or inclosure made of boughs, five times metaphorically, and thrice only for tents" (Notes, pp. 8, 9). A precisely parallel argument has been formed as to yayin, with the view of narrowing its proper meaning to intoxicating wine, with this difference, that the alleged metaphorical' uses are more numerous than the so-called 'proper' ones? But no matter as to that: the point to be settled is, whether the element of number of times a word is used can determine the proper sense of it or not. Is it a fact to be settled by counting majorities? Now Dr Kalisch, one of the authorities' quoted by the bishop on the same page, distinctly goes against him, for he says, "The context alone can decide whether that noun is used in its (narrow) original or its wider sense." When it is said that the ark was in 'Succoth,' the sense is clearly shown to be wider than 'booth' or 'branch,' and this has nothing to do with the number of times it is so used. The

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