the temptation to make cheap liquor to sell at a high price! Well, gentlemen, in England they have a license law; and the testimony is that, "in 1865, 9,400 pounds of cocculus indicus was imported into Great Britain-enough to adulterate 120,000 barrels of beer. It is not employed as a medicine, and is known to possess most deleterious qualities."

The Legislature of Ohio, in March, 1855, directed Dr. Hiram Cox, a distinguished chemist of Cincinnati, to make a thorough examination of such liquors as were in the market. The following, from a letter to James Black, Esq., of Lancaster, Pa., gives some of the results of his investigations:

"I was appointed to the office of chemical inspector on the 19th day of March, 1855. Since then I have made upwards of 600 inspections of stores, and lots of liquors of every variety, and positively assert that 90 per cent. of all that I have analyzed, were adulterated with the most pernicious and poisonous ingredients. The business of inspecting against the will of men who are only governed by motives of cupidity, I have found an up-hill business. I have had more lawing, more squabbling and quarrelling with unprincipled things,' bearing the shape and form of men made after God's image, since I have been engaged in the capacity of inspector, than I had during half a century before. You may think I have heard it thunder some; well, so I have. I am sixty-six years old, but in all my recollection I have not heard thunder that had the same effect on my nervous system, nor anything

else to affect my sympathetic nerves so much as the sad effects of imbibing the miserable concoctions sold in our markets under the character of healthy beverages, with which cocktails, brandy-smashers, mint-juleps, &c., &c., are concocted, and which sent young men, all under thirty years old, and all sons of some of our most respectable citizens, to a premature grave, during the winter previous to my appointment; some of whom had not been drinking three months! Not only young men, but many old men of our city, who were not considered drunkards, died, during the same winter, the horrid death of the drunkard with the delirium tremens! These facts induced me to accept the unthankful appointment. Since the appointment, I have, as physician to the Probate Court, examined upwards of 400 insane cases, two-thirds of which number became insane from drinking the poisonous liquors sold at the doggeries and taverns of our city and country. Many of them were boys from nineteen to twenty years of age, some of whom were laboring under a hereditary taint-and perhaps in many of them the mental derangement would never have been developed, had they not drank of these poisonous decoctions."

Having thus shown that the evils of intoxication and effects of intoxicating liquors, are not compensated by any good they can do; having spoken of the drunkenness in wine countries and the character of the liquors, I would not pass on without noticing the argument, which I judge will be made, that the Bible sanctions the use of liquors. I regret that I cannot dwell on this point. I hold in my hand a

little work written expressly on this subject; and the testimony which the Rev. Mr. Ritchie has herein collected, will be far more valuable than any I could give you. I cannot detain I cannot detain you farther than to say that here is conclusive evidence that grapes in wine countries are much used as food in their solid form; that a wine pressed from the grape is used as a beverage, as milk is used in other countries-the unfermented juice of the grape; the wine thus prepared is kept by a certain process, preventing fermentation, for a long period; various authorities testify that this wine, unfermented, in Palestine and other wine-growing countries, is regarded as better wine than the fermented wine; there is evidence here, denied, or impliedly denied by the counsel on the other side, that the Jews did not use fermented wine in their Passover and other festivals, but, on the contrary, as they adhered religiously to unleavened bread, they adhered also to unfermented wine. Therefore, there is not the slightest evidence of the Scriptures giving any countenance whatever to the use of fermented liquors.

Let me give you a summary of the testimony of biblical scholars on this subject. There are in the Old Testament nine words translated wine. The first one, tirosh, occurs thirty-eight times and is

uniformly translated "wine," but is believed never to mean wine, but the solid grape. It occurs where corn, wine and oil are mentioned together, and where gathering the corn, wine and oil, is spoken of; where the material from which the wine is made, the solid grape, is referred to. This is uniformly pronounced a blessing, and is always spoken of in terms of commendation.

Then there is the word shechar, that occurs twenty-three times, and as a beverage is uniformly spoken of with warning and condemnation. It is used in the Scriptures, where "strong drink" is coupled with wine, but where there is, however, nothing answering to the word "strong." That is another kind of beverage made from dates, olives, and such kinds of fruits, bearing the same relation to wine that those fruits bear to the grape, and only stronger as they become so by fermentation. Now it is singular that, though this article, and wine when connected with this article, are spoken of in condemnation, they were not what we call "strong drinks."

Distilled liquors were

There were no drinks

unknown in those days. answering to the rum and whiskey of to-day. It is an entire mistake to regard such liquors as among the "strong drinks" mentioned in Scripture.

The third word, yain, which is found still more frequently in the Old Testament, and which is translated "wine," occurs one hundred and fortyone times. While tirosh is always spoken of as a good, and shechar, as a beverage, is always condemned, yain is of a generic character, sometimes approved and sometimes condemned, according as it is applied to unfermented or to fermented wine. While it is spoken of in a few instances approvingly, in a greater number it is mentioned with condemnation. There are six other

words, occurring altogether twenty-seven times, of a similar generic character, speaking of wine indefinitely. Thus, as far as appears, of the fermented and unfermented juices of the grape, of the whole two hundred and twenty-nine cases in which these terms occur,-two hundred and six are either certainly unfermented juice of the grape, if juice at all, or cases in which the term is used neutrally.

In the New Testament two words are given, occurring thirty-three times, which, in their sense, general use, and generic character, correspond to the term yain.

With these facts before us, is it not plain that because something called wine in the translation