as far as I can learn, in all the East, there is no wine preserved unfermented, and they never make wine of raisins; but they do make dibs, or molasses, of raisins, and they ferment them and make arak of them by distillation; but they could not keep grape-juice or raisin-water unfermented; it would become either wine or vinegar in a few days, or go into the putrefactive ferment." He adds: "The native Evangelical Churches, also the Maronite, Greek, Coptic and Armenian all use fermented wine at the Communion. They have no other; and have no idea of any other." Again, he states: "The Jews not only use fermented wine at their feasts, but use it to great excess, especially at the Feast of Purim. At the Passover only fermented wine is used." Quoting again Dr. Van Dyck, he says: "As the result of extensive and protracted inquiry, he is decided in the opinion that such a thing as unfermented wine was never known in Syria." In reviewing the products of the grape he quotes Gesenius' derivation of "tirosh," but not his definitions; which are inconsistent, as we have seen, with his derivation.

No one who knows Dr. Laurie, can help esteeming his piety and sincerity. It will at once occur to his readers that the few Persian products of the grape, like Rev. E. Smith's statement thirteen years before as to Syria, show the same

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degeneracy in the arts; that the Syriac language and customs now existing are to be compared with the earlier day of the Syriac translation; that the customs of the degenerate Spanish Jews and Oriental Churches are in perfect harmony with the survey taken in this historic treatise; and especially that the "opinion" as to the past and primitive customs of the Church planted by the apostles in Syria, has been formed without knowledge of the historic facts, which have been so overlooked since the era of the Reformation. It was natural that this paper, of such a character and so obtained, should be noticed by the three professors of the College at Belfast, Ireland, in 1875, under the title " Yayin, or the Bible Wine Question."

Subsequently to this, in 1877, Rev. A. M. Wilson, of London, wrote a volume on "The Wines of the Bible," designed to refute the "Unfermented Wine Theory." It is stored with unarranged quotations from authors cited in this volume, and indicates great patience not only in gathering from other collators, but also, in personal translation. It lacks, however, the three unities, of time, place and logical connection; and its citations are so confused, and often contradictory in sentiment, as any scholarly student will on every page observe, that the ordinary reader can form no opinion as to

the point at issue. Most of all, it entirely omits the citations from Hebrew, Greek, Roman and early Christian authors, which demonstrate the existence and careful use of unfermented wine, and the avoidance of fermented wine in religious rites, so generally recognized in human history. The writer's favorite author is Athenæus; and he, certainly, is like that busy Greek, an untiring and learned gatherer; quite in contrast, however, to the practical Pliny; who, in the century succeeding Christ's Apostles, and preceding Athenæus, had recognized principles in his study of wines far in advance of modern Christian attainment.

LITERARY GENIUS EXEMPLIFYING THE LAW OF

WINES.

The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded poets as prophets. Paul, the Christian apostle, recognized the force, if not the full truth of this impression, when he appealed to the Greek poets as the specially inspired teachers of truth in natural religion; calling them, in his address to the cultured Athenian Senate (Acts xvii. 28), by the name "poets or creators, and in writing to the head of the Christian Church, among the rude Cretans (Tit. i. 12), giving them the title of "prophets," or inspired teachers. As there have been inconsistent in

Epic Poets and Wines.

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terpreters of the revealed law of God, men controlled now by the "law of the mind" and now by the law in the members," so it has been among men of true literary genius, the special moral guides of nations and ages.

Little do the admirers of such writers as the Roman Horace, and the English Byron, of the Scottish Burns, and Irish Moore, fathom the depth of their profound convictions; since they do not even study the drift of the current that appears on the surface. The higher poets, and men of genius, who have left the more lasting gems of literature, must be first understood, and then these supposed anomalies will assume consistency.

of wines.

The epic poets, and even the dramatists, as distinct from the lyric bards and romancers, have always been prophets pointing out the real law The poems of Solomon, as we have seen, were parables, veiling truth as to wines. All through the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the careful student may trace the deepest philosophy; which comes out especially in their pictures of the two vices, against which Solomon anticipated the blind old Grecian bard in warning men who seek eminence by superior merit. The power of the intoxicating cup, presented by Circe, made brutes of the companions of the wise Ulysses, while he stood firm; but

the wooing song of the Sirens would have tempted him to effeminacy, the sister vice, but for his own injunction to his companions to bind him fast to the mast before they passed the isle of the enchantresses. Virgil but repeats the counsel for the ages taught in his experience, like that of wise Ulysses; while he also, as we have seen, pictures the happy home where "the must is boiled," that it may not ferment. The hero, who is also a sage, may, indeed, by his own power of self-control, resist the temptation of the cup, when proffered by women vainly aspiring amid the seductions of fashion to maintain the claim to virtue; and by this same inward power he may resist, when coming in this open form, the temptation to make himself a brute by drinking of the intoxicating cup. That same man, however, falling gradually into inaction, lapses into lust, like Solomon, the noblest of the Hebrew kings, and thence into effeminacy; and then nothing but bonds imposed from without, by companions, will save him from being "drowned in destruction and perdition." This seems to be the secret of the power of Temperance Associations, and of the Total Abstinence pledge.

Among the higher poets, in the epic and drama, Shakspeare is a discerner and embodier of the law of abstinence taught in history.