With this purpose we may suppose that some friendly person, to enable the Saviour to endure the terrible sufferings of crucifixion, offered him this customary drink, namely, vinegar, or sour wine, into which myrrh and hemlock, called gall, had been put. In Mark xv. 23 myrrh is spoken of, but in Matt. xxvii. 34 the gall alone is mentioned. Of this our Lord refused to drink,—not on account of the bitterness of the draught, as one might suppose, but because the holy offering which he was about to make he intended to be complete and the sacrifice unmitigated in its pain,-which would not have been the case had he accepted the proffered opiate. He suffered as the Lamb of atonement with a full consciousness of every pain, so that nothing should occur to lessen the worthiness and costliness of the world's solemn offering. The offering of the drugged wine has frequently been confounded with the moistening of the lips of the dying Saviour by means of the vinegar on the sponge; but the acts were separated from each other by a considerable time, the former being intended as the drink which, as we have said, was customarily given before the punishment.

Large potions of this hemlock caused death, generally preceded by numbness. Of this poison it is supposed that Socrates died, having been condemned to drink the unmingled juice of the hemlock.

LABIATE.

༢

(Common Hyssop.)

Hyssopus Officinalis. BUNCH of the common hyssop, tied to a small stick and dipped in the water of purification, was used for centuries in the ceremonial of the early Christian Church, for the purpose of sprinkling places and persons to be purified; and in consequence of this early practice the brush used by priests in Roman Catholic churches is still in many places called the hyssop. The plant was early considered medicinal, and hence held an important place in the catalogues of medicinal plants: it was used as a remedy for coughs and for affections of the throat and chest. It has been very plausibly suggested that the hyssop upon which the sponge dipped in vinegar was put, at the crucifixion, was that used for purifying the people before the Sabbath came on, and that the same hyssop, attached to a reed, (which was probably a general name for the cedar stick to which the bunch might have been fastened,) had already been used in purifying the people for the coming Sabbath. For the hyssop, scarlet, (perhaps the scarlet thread,) and the cedar were conjoined in that purification for sin which appertained to the temple service, as seen in Num. xix. 6; and the hyssop was used in sprinkling every thing,—even the tent and vessels of the unclean. There was a solemn significance

in that act, wherein Christ received the hyssop and vinegar but refused the myrrh. The hyssop was the symbol of purification by the law, and when our Saviour received it, it was the last legal purification which the hyssop should ever make on earth. It had acted its part for fifteen hundred years, and millions had been purified by it. It was a necessary part of that wearisome and bloody ceremonial, which had so long typified the coming Saviour, the true Lamb of God, of whom all the lambs of Jewish sacrifice had been but the faint emblems. But the work was ended; the Lamb of God had completed his suffering and his sacrifice; henceforth the cross should be the Christian's purification; and, receiving the little floral symbol to his lips, he became "the end" as well as "the beginning" of the law, and exclaimed, "It is finished!" and, as if in sympathy with that solemn utterance, the veil of the temple, which covered the holiest that the law ever knew, was rent in twain. Henceforth Jesus and his blood should be the all-atoning sacrifice for sin the use of the hyssop and the bloody sprinkling should terminate in him, and in the power of the cross to cleanse and to atone forever.

It has been supposed that the capporis spinosa, or common caper, should be added to eighteen others mentioned by Celsius, as plants supposed at various times to be the hyssop; but there is not sufficient reason to differ from the prevalent opinion that the hyssop the name of which we have given is that spoken of in Scripture. It is a little plant, with long, lanceolate leaves and small flowers, and is represented in Plate IV.

LILIACEÆ.

Allium Porrum.

EEKS are found as natives of all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, especially in Egypt, where the cultivators of the soil consider them a pleasant article of food. Formerly they were sacred; but it frequently happens that articles offered in sacrifices, and considered sacred in that sense, were nevertheless allowed for food. The inhabitants of some districts of a country considered certain articles sacred which were not thus viewed by others. Hence no objection to the credibility of the account that the Israelites ate leeks can be found in the fact that they were held to be sacred in Egypt. Onions were adored at Pelusium, but were not considered equally holy at other places. This might have been the case with leeks.

The only passage in which this plant is mentioned is in Num. xi. 5, where it is associated with garlic and onions.

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