friends. His companions in the associations which made him what he is, and by whom his moderate drinking had been encouraged by example, until he fell by the snare they had laid both for themselves and him, and by which they are still entangled; these all avoid and disown him as a fellow not fit to live.' If they speak of him in his absence, it is as of one lost, utterly beyond recovery, as for ever lost. Or even if among his former friends there be any semblance of commiseration over his unhappy fate, while they express their emotions of pity, or even find it in their hearts to make prayer in his behalf, both the one and the other are accompanied with all unbelief, and despair in his case is universally felt and expressed. A brother's and a sister's love, a father's paternal regard, a mother's compassion, and even a wife's deep fountains of affection are, alas! too often sealed, and toward the hapless wanderer, all, all are without natural affection,' and his name is seldom mentioned but with a feeling allied to execration.

6

"Is he met in the street, or in public places, after he has become known as a drunkard? Even his own familiar friend will pass him without a look of recognition, and possibly not content with thus slighting him, will even outrage his forlorn condition by a visible expression of scorn or derision; and his immediate relatives, if they speak to him at all, do so in terms of rebuke and contempt, perhaps accompanied by upbraiding and reproachful epithets. They look upon him as an outlaw from all the ties of kindred; a living pestilence, for whom there is no hope. Not only is he shut out from all the redeeming influences of the domestic circle, but his company, and even his presence is shunned, nor is any effort made to reclaim or restore him, prompted either by parental, filial, fraternal, or even conjugal love. Thus abandoned by all, and constrained to feel the unutterable anguish of his cruel exile, he becomes given up to self-abandonment, and exclaims, in the desolation of his spirit, 'No one cares for my soul !' The last ray of light and hope is thus, alas! too often extinguished, and the hapless exile, now only the sad remnant of what he was, regarding himself doomed to infamy and execration, soon yields to his destiny, and his immortal spirit is ingulfed in the whirlpool of perdition."

To strengthen our author's plea, he contends that the habitual drunkard is a monomaniac: and that drunkenness is a disease just as really as is delirium arising from any other cause. While, therefore, he is unsparing in his condemnation of the moderate drinker, he views the confirmed drunkard as an object of pity rather than of blame. His sin consisted in drinking at first moderately it is his misfortune that he is now a monomaniac. It is not for us to call in question the pathological accuracy of our author in this matter. He is a physician eminent in his profession, and not likely to hazard his reputation by publicly advocating an untenable position. To ourselves, and we doubt not to the generality of readers, this gives to the whole phase of intemperance a

new aspect. It presents the confirmed drunkard not only as a brother, but as a brother in distress. It claims for him the same sympathy, the same kindness, the same efforts as are now extended to the diseased, the blind, and the insane. The celebrated Dr. Rush appears to have had a somewhat similar idea when he urged so long and perseveringly upon the public authorities the necessity of providing a hospital for the cure of the intemperate. Why, if habitual drunkenness be a species of mania, why should there not be an asylum for its victims, as well as for other varieties of madness?

Our author denies, in toto, and combats with energy, the commonly received opinion that moderate drinking is innocent, and that drunkenness is the evidence and effect of excess. He says,―

"It is not true, in any sense, that the grossly intemperate are such because of the excessive quantity they drink. On the contrary, no habitual drunkard can be found who drinks a moiety of the daily quantity which he used to drink while he was regarded a moderate drinker, and before he had become a drunkard. It is wholly a mistake to suppose that the most desperate drunkard is the man who drinks the greatest quantity of intoxicating liquors, or that the degree of drunkenness, in any given case, is proportionate to the quantity drank. For, when once intoxication has become habitual, any quantity, however small, is sufficient to perpetuate it, if taken before the system has recovered from the inebriation."

And hence, he continues :

"If there be innocence and excellence in moderate drinking, the drunkards are better entitled to our respect and admiration than those who despise them; for the worst drunkard is the most moderate drinker in the whole fraternity. For while moderate drinkers, so called because not known to be drunken, will often drink a pint of brandy in a day, or a bottle of wine at dinner, and another at night, any drunkard in the land can be kept drunk the year round by half the quantity, after he is once fully intoxicated. And though it may have required a quart of fourth-proof brandy, taken in twenty-four hours, to have fully intoxicated him at first, yet, now the mischief has been done, a single glass of wine, porter, beer, or even cider, if repeated every few hours, and before he has fully recovered from his intoxication, will keep him drunk until he dies, the victim, not of excess, but of 'moderate, very moderate drinking.' Nor would any man ever recover from a fit of intoxication if he did not, by a physical necessity, totally abstain; for he would be drunk till he died, if he continued to drink any intoxicating liquor, however moderately. And it is equally certain that no drunkard was ever reformed except by total abstinence, for the same reason a single glass, even of the weakest kind of intoxicating liquor, being sufficient to perpetuate drunkenness, by reproducing it indefinitely.

"In reprobating excessive drinking, then, while extenuating moderate drinking, we fail to reach the conscience of the drunkard; for he knows that he is now only a moderate drinker, though he can revert to the time when he did drink to excess, and since which he has been conscious of a physical disability of drinking to the same extent, for he now becomes drunk long before he passes the line of moderation. Nor can such a man ever be reformed, until he feels that the origin and source of his drunkenness, as well as its present continuance, is moderation, and not excess. The public mind, moreover, must be taught that to abandon the drunkard to his fate, because of his present excessive drinking, is abominable injustice and wrong, since no drunkard is guilty of any present excess, his only crime now being moderate drinking, and much more moderate than he formerly practiced, with the approval and companionship of those who now cast him off as worthy of death, a fellow not fit to live.'”

The personal and persevering efforts of every individual who has a drunken relative or friend, will, in most instances, result in his restoration to health. The prescription of our author has had, he tells us, the benefit of experience. It requires, on the part of the physician, kindness, firmness, hope. On that of the patient, one thing only-abstinence, total, entire. Into the minutiae of details, spread out by the author, this is not the place to enter. The "Plea" will, doubtless, have a wide circulation. Its vigorous style will commend it to the admirer of pure idiomatic English, and its glowing benevolence will find way to the hearts of all who would labor to convert a sinner from the error of his way. F.

ART. VII.-Biblical Knowledge.

An Essay read before the Literary and Theological Association of Chenango District, and published by their request.

BY REV. NELSON ROUNDS, A. M.,
Of the Oneida Conference.

THE Bible is the word of God. God speaks to all men through the medium of conscience; and he is every moment teaching us the great principles of duty by the constitution and course of nature, and by the tendencies and results of human conduct. But he nowhere addresses us in language except in the Bible. In this book we see his hand-writing. Here we listen to his voice. Here he talks with us face to face. This volume, and this alone, we believe contains the words of eternal life. We make it the foundation of our preaching. We appeal to it as the standard of all

correct faith and practice. We read it to some extent; but do we study it as closely and with as much interest as the foregoing facts would justify and require? Would not the interrogatory of Philip, "Understandest thou what thou readest," be as applicable to some of us as it was to the Ethiopian? Do we understand the Scriptures as fully as we ought, in view of the means we have to do so, the solemn and important character of their contents, and the repeated injunctions laid upon us to be faithful in their perusal? If these questions were proposed to our people, I am confident they would answer them in the negative, and if proposed to some of us, their spiritual guides, I apprehend we should have reason to feel embarrassed. Let us, then, consider some of the helps to a knowledge of the Bible, and some of the motives that should incite us to the pursuit of such knowledge.

First, The helps, or means. And I. Spiritual mindedness. However much we perfect ourselves in the letter of the Scriptures, unless we comprehend their spirit they are of little use to us. The ancient Israelites understood the letter of the Old Testament better than we do; but they were ignorant of its spirit. "And to this day, when Moses is read, the vail is on their heart." "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things." In order that we may rightly and fully understand the Scriptures we must be enlightened by the same Spirit by which they were originally indited. We should always read them with a prayerful mind, and frequently, like the devoted Stoner, upon our knees before God.

II. We shall derive no inconsiderable aid in understanding the Bible by attention to the marginal references. The references, particularly in the polyglot editions, are of the greatest importance, as they throw light upon obscure passages, and also as they give us a clear view of the uniformity of the divine administration under the several dispensations, and the substantial harmony of the sacred writers. By reading the Scriptures in this connected, systematic way, we shall, like Isaiah in his vision, behold Jehovah sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, his train filling the temple, and the sacred penmen, like the seraphim, covering themselves, and crying one to another, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory." One would scarcely believe, before making the trial, what proficiency may be made in the knowledge of the word of God by this "comparing spiritual things with spiritual;" and without any other commentary or exposition

than what the different parts of the sacred volume mutually furnish for each other. To illustrate on the doctrine of the possibility of falling from grace, we find several passages like these: "If they shall fall away," &c. Heb. vi, 6. "For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome," &c. 2 Peter ii, 20. But these passages, says one, are no argument in favor of the possibility of falling from grace, for they are merely hypothetical; the apostle is only making a supposition; the word if in these places implies an impossibility. But if so, we answer, the word if must imply an impossibility in all the passages where it occurs, or only in a part of them. If the latter, it would follow that the word of God warns us in some places against possibilities, and in some places against impossibilities; that is, in some places the Bible means something, and in others it means nothing. Or if the former, that is, if the word if always implies an impossibility wherever it occurs, then what shall we say of such passages as the following: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself," &c. Matt. xvi, 24. "Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any man will hear my voice," &c. Rev. iii, 20. "If thou seek him, [the Lord,] he will be found of thee, but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever." Now, to make the if in each of these passages the sign of an impossibility, would effect an overturn in theology, greater, we apprehend, than even the friends of the theory would be prepared to abide. Here, then, by a comparison of scripture with scripture, an important class of passages are placed in their true light, and the doctrine of the possibility of falling from grace is sustained.

III. Further light is shed upon the Scriptures by studying them in the languages in which they were originally written. 1. And here, perhaps, some are ready to reply, We have not time to acquire a knowledge of these languages. True, we have not the time which those ministers have who are exempt from the amount of travel which the itinerant system imposes upon us. But by method much time can be redeemed; and besides, much of the time bestowed upon the Greek and Hebrew must, if they be not studied, be spent in searching in other channels for that information which an acquaintance with these tongues would bestow. Look at the vast literary labors of Mr. Wesley, Dr. Clarke, and Richard Watson. Yet these labors were performed while they were in the itinerant field. Think of the astonishing acquirements of Thomas Walsh, whom Mr. Wesley declares to have been the

* See Pref. to Eng. Vers. of Polyglot Bible.