hearer must be convinced that it is not himself, but his sins or errors that are assailed, else the gateway of all moral influence-candid attention-will be fast closed. Tact and good temper are never thrown away in conciliating those whose conversion is desired.

CHAPTER XXV. VERSE IO.

Then said Paul, I stand at Cæsar's judgment seat, where I ought to be judged to the Jews have I done no wrong, as thou very well knowest.

The Cæsar here referred to, also styled Augustus (chap. xxvi. 21, 25), was the successor of Claudius, the infamous Nero, who reigned as Roman emperor A.D. 54-69. In the early part of his career he was accustomed to visit taverns in disguise, and then ramble about the city as a marauder. Finding this 'sport' too dangerous, he abandoned it, but his revels lasted, we are told by Suetonius, from mid-day to midnight. Before him Paul appeared, and describes him as 'the lion' (2 Tim. iv. 17); and well did he deserve the name, both on account of his savage qualities, and because he was accustomed, dressed up as a wild beast, to act in a vile and abominable manner toward men and women tied to stakes in the arena.

THE EPISTLE OF

ST PAUL TO THE ROMANS.

CHAPTER VI. VERSES 12, 13.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

The apostle, without giving any countenance to the dogma that identified moral evil with matter, earnestly enjoined a control of the bodily members necessary to hinder them from becoming the 'servants of sin.' This control, if it is to be effectual, demands the exclusion of whatever tends to convert those members into 'instruments of unrighteousness'; but who can name such an agency at all comparable to intoxicating drink? Comparatively small quantities of these liquors will often exert a distinctly vitiating influence, and their slightest sensible effect is unfavorable to the perfect control of the animal by the spiritual nature. The ordinary social use of alcoholics, as all experience attests, stimulates every irregular and depraved desire. Christian prudence cannot but approve the rejection of such incentives to vice; and if any one should say that they have not proved so to him. self, he is bound to consider whether he may not have suffered some loss without a perception of it; whether he is justified in risking the many mischiefs that intoxicating liquors are capable of inflicting; and whether he acts advisedly and kindly in sanctioning the use of articles by which so many persons around him are tempted, betrayed, and undone.

I

CHAPTER XIII. VERSES I, 3.

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. . . 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.

Most explicitly is it here affirmed that Civil Government is in its essence a Divine institution, and entrusted by God with powers of prohibition and punishment that

ought not to lie in abeyance where preventible evil is concerned. True, Nero was a monster; yet the fact that even he was the legal head of the Roman empire did not weaken the apostolic argument; and in whatever degree representative government is superior to arbitrary rule and tyranny, the moral authority of human law becomes the more binding and exalted. But where any government permits and sanctions pursuits that deprave, impoverish, and destroy its subjects by wholesale, it is neglecting its proper function, and frustrating those great ends of social security and progress for which government, and society itself, exist. In the patronage extended by the British Government to the traffic in strong drink, this social anomaly and contradiction is seen upon a scale of colossal magnitude; and the enormous revenues (upward of twenty millions of pounds annually) raised from the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors, make it the more needful that this illegitimate connection should be exposed. The very least that should be done under such circumstances is, that legally defined districts should be enabled to determine whether a business so anti-social in its results should be licensed and tolerated. A local veto-power of this kind would permit districts to protest against the national policy, while it would protect them against the consequences of a legislation so caustically described by the poet Cowper :

"Pass where we may, through city or through town,

Village, or hamlet, of this merry land,

Though lean and beggared, every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff

Of stale debauch, as makes temperance reel."

CHAPTER XIII. VERSE 10.

Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Love embodied in the Christian, will effectually prevent him 'working ill to his neighbor,' whether by carrying on occupations that seduce and deprave, or by extending his sanction to dangerous and evil customs. On the contrary, 'love is the fulfilling of the law,'—viz. of that second department of the law which comprehends all a man's relations to his fellow-creatures. As love is an ever-active, ever-operative principle, if it does not work evil, it works out the welfare of all within its own reach; and it does this not least by removing from their path all that can delude and betray. To this love the Temperance cause appeals for aid in the war against the causes of intemperance, whether residing objectively in the properties of strong drink, and in its general circulation and public sale, or subjectively in the fallacies and false tastes excited by its consumption as a beverage. Love cannot behold without grief the ravages of intoxicating liquors; and when enlightened as to the true nature of such drinks, it must prompt to efforts for their exclusion from the home, the place of public concourse, and the Church of Christ. Love will ever do, as well as desire, what is best for the cure and prevention of intemperance

CHAPTER XIII. VERSE 13.

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

HONESTLY] Euscheemonus, 'becomingly' (from eu, 'well,' and scheema, 'deportment' or 'condition')= in a manner well-suited to moral obligation and Christian character.

NOT IN RIOTING] Mee kōmois, 'not in revelries.' Wiclif has 'not in superflue feestis.' Tyndale and Cranmer have not in eatynge;' the Geneva V., 'not in glotonie'; the Rheims V., 'not in banketings.' Comus, the god of revelry, is represented as a young man wearing a garland, and with a torch falling from his hand, or burning his side, as he lies in a drunken sleep. The kōmos was either a festival in his honor, or a private feast, when the revellers were accustomed to sally out after supper, attired as bacchanals, and behaving themselves as such.

AND DRUNKENNESS] Kai methais, and in intemperances'—all intemperate indulgences of the appetite, whether in food or drink, whether attended by intoxication or not. A great error is committed by those who regard 'drunkenness,' in the scriptural sense, as synonymous with mad or helpless intoxication. Philosophy likewise teaches that the sin of drinking is not in the mere physical degree of disturbance, but in the motive-in the relation of the mind of the drinker to the law of God. Another apostle taught that he who breaks one law breaks all, so far as God is concerned; and it is a mere commonplace that the law of honesty is equally violated in stealing a penny as in stealing a pound. Drinking for pleasure, in defiance of need and fitness, is the essence of the vice of drunkenness."

CHAPTER XIV. VERSE 13.

Let us not therefore judge one another any more but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.

A STUMBLING-BLOCK] Proskomma, ‘a stumbling' = a cause of stumbling. Codex B omits this word, and Codex C, instead of proskomma, reads proskosma. Wiclif has 'hirtynge.'

OR AN OCCASION TO FALL] Ee skandalon, or snare' [see Note on Matt. v. 30]. The meaning of the passage is, that Christians are not hastily to pass judg ments upon one another, and are to be exceedingly careful not to do aught that may cause a brother to fall or be ensnared. Whether this command has any appli cation to the drinking customs of our country must depend upon the reply to the question, whether these customs do prove a stumbling-block and snare to Christian brethren. If they do-and he must be strangely ignorant who should deny it,any sanction of the customs must be at variance with the apostolic precept. Nor is it any excuse to say, 'Such customs are not causes of evil to me,' for it is not for his own sake, but for his brother's, that the Christian is here enjoined to be disconnected from stumbling-blocks and snares. The danger to others is to be as carefully avoided by him as if it were danger to himself. In this, as in all respects, he is to do to others as he would wish them to do to him, were their circumstances mutually reversed. If he is to be willing to 'lay down his life for the brethren,' the least he can do for them is not to bring them, by act of his, into temptation and transgression; yet, to carry out this negative principle of Christian fraternity, there must be thoughtfulness and intelligence; for evil, wrought by ignorance and inconsideration, is not wrought without sin to the unintentional doer. If he who will not 'know to do good' is not innocent, still less is he blameless who does evil because he will not learn to do well.'

Aristotle's Ethics. "The intemperate man desires all things pleasant, and is led by his mere desire to choose these things."

CHAPTER XIV. VERSE 14.

I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.

The apostle is not discussing the question whether some things are unfit for food. He is proceeding on the supposition that this fitness exists, and then affirms that there is nothing koinon, unclean,' of itself: in other words, that ceremonial uncleanness, however defined, is not identical with moral uncleanness; consequently, that no moral guilt is contracted by the use of food. Yet he allows that if even food is regarded as unclean by any one, it becomes to him unclean in such a sense that he would contract guilt by using it, seeing that he would be doing what he believed was an unclean action.

CHAPTER XIV. VERSE 15.

But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.

The argument of the apostle may be thus paraphrased :—"No food (properly so called) is unclean, but if on account of food (broma)—that is, any particular kind or preparation of food (in the A. V. 'thy' is aptly supplied)—thy brother is grieved-feels distressed or aggrieved by it as unclean,-now walkest thou not charitably, if thou puttest it in his way and temptest him to eat it. Do not with thy food destroy him for whom Christ died. If he transgresses his conscience, and so falls away through your example, you will be chargeable with his loss, though you never intended it." How affecting is the apostle's appeal!-"Let not your meat be his destruction to whom the Lord has given His body as spiritual meat and His blood as spiritual drink. If Christ died for him, you ought to abstain— in his presence at least-from the meat which to him is unclean."

CHAPTER XIV. VERSES 16, 17.

16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of: 17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

You, continues the apostle, may partake of such food with a good conscience, but if your act is liable to be evil spoken of (blaspheemeisthō, 'blasphemed'), and is an act not positively required by Christian duty, leave it undone. Your personal benefit is small, the injury to the cause of Christ may be great. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink (brõsis kai posis); but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Neither directly nor indirectly ought 'what shall we eat?' to be balanced in the scale with what concerns the advancement of the Divine kingdom upon earth.