gay and merry with the rush of childhood, but quiet and pitiful, with pale faces, and thin lips, and frightened mien; old are they, though only a few summers have their little barks been afloat on life's rough sea. These, kind friends, are my constituents; 'tis for them I speak to-day.

The remarkable address of the reverend gentleman contains but a few salient points:

"The Bible does not teach total abstinence";

"The results of the investigations of science do not demand it";

"Human experience does not justify our plea for it"; Distilled liquors should be excluded from "common use as a beverage both by public opinion and by law";

The use of vinous and malt liquors should be under "wise regulation";

And that the great body of temperance advocates have employed very questionable, and in many instances highly objectionable, methods in the "total-abstinence crusade or propaganda."

These are the strategic points in this latest marshalling of forces against the home.

TREASON AGAINST THE STATE

consists in levying war against it, in adhering to its enemies or giving aid and comfort to them. The great chancellor would not make war upon the home; too often has he, in the performance of the duties of his sacred office, and by virtue of authority vested in him by the State, laid the foundations of the home at the holy marriage altar; too often have his hands been laid upon the heads of little babes whom proud and thankful parents have carly brought to the altars of religion; too often has he carried the comforts of our holy Christianity to homes where the sable wing of the death angel had left its dark shadow. Oh! no; he, a minister of the Lord Jesus-he would not assail the home, he would not levy war against it; but he has given aid and comfort to its enemies, and that is treason to the home. All over the land the hosts of sin rejoice; in the grog-shops they laugh and drink to his health; in the fashion

able club they smile and praise the wine of which they taste "in moderation"; in the home the poor old mother says to her wayward boy : "Promise me, son, sign this pledge, that I may be sure you'll never drink again," and he replies: "Tis unmanly, mother, a strait-jacket, and beneath my self-respect." From breaking hearts there comes the cry: "Noble sir, you have given aid and comfort to our enemies. Had it been an enemy we could have borne it, had it been he that hated us we would have hid ourselves; but it was thou, our guide and our acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in company." Surely we are wounded in the house of our friends.

Does the Bible teach total abstinence, directly or impliedly? We answer, in both ways. For the critical exegesis of the passages which in our King James's translation are rendered wine we refer the honest enquirer to the publications of the National Temperance Society, of which Hon. Wm. E. Dodge, of New York, is president, and which are supported by many eminent Christian ministers. This Society has collected the testimony of Hebrew and Greek scholars as to the meaning of the terms used; the weight of testimony is in support of the position taken by the leading temperance advocates of this country and of Great Britain-namely, that many words are used in the original tongues to express the many kinds of wine used in Bible times; that the words translated "wine," when it is spoken of as "good,” and as typical of God's grace, and a thing to be desired, refer to the grape still hanging on the vine, or to its expressed juice preserved from contact with the air, and thus free from fermentation; that the wine that is a "mocker," that "moveth itself aright," the strong drink that "is raging," is given in other words, as indeed it was quite another thing; that in passages where no condemnation or commendation of the wine is given, and where a generic term is used, which may, with no violence to the rules of interpretation, be understood to mean fermented or unfermented, then the harmony of Scriptures, the spirit of their teachings, must be studied, that the narrative may be rightly understood or the admonition received. This "two-wine theory" is not a trumped-up

"Scripture-twisting" to suit the purposes of special pleaders, or a "begging of the whole question," but is a calm view of the real meaning of terms used by men writing as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

But to the common English reader, who has not facilities of critical study at hand, there comes the argument of

THE GENERAL SPIRIT AND TEACHING

of God's word. Drunkenness is everywhere denounced, even the looking upon it (the wine) "when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright"; the curses pronounced upon drunken nations and upon him who giveth his neighbor drink; the fearful setting forth of the desolations of that people when priest and prophet err through strong drink, who "err in vision and stumble in judgment." Surely Isaiah's prophetic soul must have seen in vision this year of grace!

Did our Saviour use fermented wine? Let us walk softly here; let us not toss about opinions and arguments as children at play toss the snow-balls their own hands have made. He was our example. He came to fulfil the law. He wrought his first miracle at Cana to show forth his glory. He ate the Passover with his disciples, wherein nothing that had ferment of any sort might be allowed; 'twas thus he instituted the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, preserved in the church "in remembrance" of him through all the centuries since he went away. The very essence of the religion he taught is self-denial, self-renunciation for the good of others. But the temperance that is at the top round of the ladder of Christian graces enumerated by the apostle is not such as Dr. Crosby would fain have us believe is the consummation of all manliness; true temperance is the moderate use of good things and total abstinence from bad things. Alcoholic drinks are "bad things"-bad according to Scripture and science, and bad as shown by the testimony of human experience. How a man set apart to study God in his word and in his works, and then to lead the people as he himself shall be led, guided always by the great problems of

human destiny-how he can teach that the Bible looks with any degree of allowance upon even moderate drinking is explainable upon no other theory than that the old Scripture is again illustrated: "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”

Again: Do the investigations of science demand total abstinence? We answer: "Yes." No erudition is needed to show the sin and shame of drunkenness; everybody accepts the truth.

THE REAL NATURE OF ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

is not so well understood. Science, rightly interpreted, is always the handmaid of religion and the servant of man ; she has for half a century cried-not with the pleading tones of the philanthropist, or the trumpet-blasts of the watchman on Zion's walls, or the clear bugle-notes of the reformer, but with the hard, unfeeling voice of cold intellectuality" It is a poison! it is a poison!" Others have answered: ""Tis the abuse and not the use that makes such sad havoc with our poor humanity; if people only would stop when they have had enough there would be no need of all this onslaught." Again science answers: "One drop

is too much." It has been clearly shown that alcohol is not changed by chemical action in the laboratory of the human stomach; it did not itself contain any of the elements found in the fruit from whose decay it had its origin.

A great chemist says:

"Fermentation is nothing else than putrefaction of a substance containing no nitrogen. It is excited by the contact of all bodies the elements of which are in an active state of decomposition. It continues till the original compounds are wholly destroyed" (Turner's Chemistry).

Here I have another eminent witness:

"It did not require college training," writes Dr. A. H. McMurty, "but merely my sense of smell to tell me, what chemical analysis has so often demonstrated, that alcohol comes out of the body as it goes into it, which is a pretty suggestive hint that the body wants to have nothing to do with it, but treats it as an intruder, as it treats every other

foreign body, and gets rid of it as soon as possible" (Dr. A. H. McMurty in Medical Temperance Journal, January, 1871, p. 89).

IT DOES NOT REPAIR WASTE

and supply tissue, for it contains none of the elements of which the body is built up. I will quote another expert witness: "It has been admitted by those who differ from total-abstainers most largely that it cannot be proved that alcohol is able to evolve force in the body under any circumstances, or that it is capable of being changed or transmuted in any way within the system into an element of physical well-being" ("Stimulants and Strength," by Dr. H. S. Patterson).

"When alcohol is taken in small quantities repeated daily, the individual usually slowly increases in weight, not from increased nutrition, but from retarding the waste and retaining the old atoms longer in the tissues" ("Verdict of Science," by Dr. N. S. Davis, page 6).

Alcoholic drinks do not promote digestion. Dr. Cheyne says that nothing more effectively hinders digestion than alcohol; that many hours, and even a whole night, after a debauch in wine it is common enough to reject a part or whole of the dinner undigested. I hold that those who abstain from alcohol have the best digestion, and that more instances of indigestion, of flatulency, of acidity, and of depression of mind and body are produced by alcohol than by any other single cause ("Results and Researches on Alcohol," by Dr. B. W. Richardson, p. 13).

Alcoholic drinks do not protect the system from cold.

"Like ether and chloroform, its presence diminishes the sensibility of the nervous system and brain, thereby rendering the individual less conscious of all outward and exterior impressions. The alcohol does not relieve the individual from cold by increasing his temperature, nor from heat by cooling him, nor from weakness and exhaustion by nourishing bis tissues, nor yet from affliction by increasing nervepower; but simply by diminishing the sensibility of his nervestructures, and thereby lessening his consciousness of im