original meaning of 'candle-stick' is seen on the face of the phrase itself; and when it was so used, for centuries, it properly meant 'a stick that holds a candle'; but now, for many ages, it has been used in a wider sense, but still an equally proper sense, to signify a candleholder,' whether the instrument be made of brass, pot, tin, silver, gold, or wood. To assert that the Bible word 'golden-candlestick is a metaphorical term, would be the climax of silliness. On p. 15, however, Dr Colenso certainly corrects his critic, but virtually abandons his other position. Dr McCaul had said that bechor meant 'firstborn' of both father and mother,' instead of 'either,' leaving the meaning a little ambiguous. Dr Colenso replies, "No doubt the word is usually employed to express 'firstborn son' of the father; but it does not mean only this, but may be used when needed to express either 'firstborn' of the mother, or 'first-begotten' of the father." Both the critics here fall into a bog, for the word itself does not, and cannot, express anything about either father or mother. They are importing the sense of the context into one of the terms ! Dr Kalisch, immediately cited, puts the matter in the right light when he speaks of "the generic appellation bechor. It occurs predominantly (i. e. oftenest) in the sense (rather, application to) first-begotten of the father; yet we find 'firstborn of the handmaid' (Exod. xi. 5), 'firstborn which she shall bear' (Deut. xxv. 6)." Surely no one will fancy that 'firstborn,' in these texts, is either metaphorical' or 'improper,' because that mode of use is in a minority. On the same page Dr Colenso again corrects his critic, and confutes his own absurdity about 'usual' and 'proper use.' Dr McCaul having translated khaggim by 'periodical feasts-thereby importing into the generic word a specific element,— his opponent says, "Here, again, Dr McCaul is mistaken; the Hebrew word has no such RESTRICTED MEANING; it expresses simply 'feast' or 'festival'; and though it may of course be applied to either of the three great feasts, it is used in Exod. x. 9 in the ordinary sense before any periodical feast was instituted." This is very sound, but then it has nothing to do with 'counting' texts, nor with exclusive meanings, nor with metaphors-but only with the context and the nature of things gathered from it.* Let the same course be adopted in regard to words for wine, and the bulk of critical defenses of drinking will disperse into thinnest air.

The late Canon Stowell, in his sermon preached before the British Association for the Promotion of Science, observes that "superficial men create a seeming discord, and then find fault with God's work

Curious to say, Dr Colenso is here arguing against 'the usual sense,' as he calls it; for khag is twice as often applied to sacred as to common feasts. Dean Stanley, in Commentary on I Cor. xi. 21, has fallen into the same fallacy concerning methuei. He says, It need not be always taken of intoxication, but this is its natural meaning in most passages." That a word for 'fulness' should have the meaning of the effect of being full of one special kind of thing seems anything but natural. Further, what has the meaning of 'most passages to do with its meaning in a passage not included in the most? When the word 'man' is used in Kaffirland, it is oftenest in connection with Kaffirs; but does it, therefore, acquire the natural meaning' of 'black man'?

instead of their own." This is particularly applicable to the question under consideration, where the grossest absurdities have been adopted as principles of interpretation. The initial and central fallacy is this: "The word wine is undeniably applied in the Bible to a drink that intoxicated men: therefore the word always and necessarily means intoxicating liquor"! We do not here enter into an elaborate refutation of this absurd statement, but we must, in some measure, remove it out of the way of the impartial consideration of the terms for wine, awaiting inquiry; since the principle, if allowed, at once begins and ends the whole matter. If there is but one kind of winei. e. intoxicating,-criticism and argument are at an end, since the use of wine of some sort is palpably sanctioned by God in the Bible, and not merely permitted. The fact that words are symbols of wide and various application makes it chiefly the business of criticism to ascertain what the sense or meaning is in particular passages. The very word 'meaning' refers to the idea which it is the medium of reaching, and that is not always one object, or one quality, much less one class of objects without specific differences. St Jerome, one of the earliest of Christian critics, after explaining that bar, while it signifies a son,' may also be used to designate 'corn' (barley), as well as to denote 'pure,' adds,-" Wherein, then, have I erred, if I have translated a term of ambiguous signification in two different ways?-showing my readers how variously a Hebrew word may be translated." ('Apologia adv. Ruff. tome i. col. 729.) The philosopher Herschel, in his 'Discourse' (1830), says, "What is worst of all, some, nay, most words have two or three meanings distinct from each other, (so as) to make a proposition true in one sense and false in another, or even false altogether" (p. 21). Alexander Carson, D.D., in his work on 'Inspiration,' says, "A word may have two senses, or more, in different situations, but not two senses in the same occurrence." Dr Davidson, in his 'Text of the Old Testament' (Ed. 1856, p. 211), is even more explicit in contradicting the foolish canon of the anti-Temperance critic:

"The science of words has much uncertainty and vagueness, especially in relation to the languages of Scripture; for it must ever be difficult to fix with precision a leading idea, abstract and complex as it usually is. One might suppose that a Dictionary would render the work very easy, inasmuch as it gives the signification of words. But all dictionaries are liable to error, and should be followed with discrimination. Besides, they can only furnish the general signification, whereas the Interpreter wants the precise sense, with its exact shade, as determined by the particular position in which it stands."

Dr W. Freund, in his ' Worterbuch der Lateinischen Sprache' (1834), gives an admirable illustration of the difference of context and etymo

"If we confound the sufferance of events with the Divine sanction of them, we are guilty of teaching that God consecrates sin."-( Dr Cumming: 'God in History, p. 9. 1854.) + Webster gives, for example, twenty-one meanings to the word 'spirit.'

logy. "The substantive arena changes its sense in the four following passages (1) Magnus congestus arena, Lucr. 6, 724; (2) Missum in arenam aprum jaculis desuper petiit, Suet. Tibb. 72; (3) Vectio Prisco, quantum plurimum potuero, præstabo, præsertim in arena mea, hoc est, apud Centum veros, Plin. Ep. 6, 12, 2; (4) Quid faces, Enone? Quid arena semina mandas? Ovid. Her. 5, 115.

In the first passage it is actual sand; in the second, the amphitheater; in the third, the sphere of one's calling; in the fourth, a proverbial expression for something unfruitful"—i. e. something in that respect like sand. But it is evident, that while a lexicon-maker may arrange these words in a certain order of mental relationship-as (1) literal sand; (2) the sanded place of contest; (3) any place of contest or activity; (4) what is barren as sand-may give what four names he pleases to the words-metonymy, trope, etc., yet that will make no difference as to the plain meaning and intention of the speaker in 'using' these words. The mode in which they are formed does not affect their meaning' or use. When Bland, translating the lines of Ibycus concerning oinanthides and oinareois, says,—

'And new-born clusters teem with wine
Beneath the shadowy foliage of the vine,'

the idea which 'wine' conveys is as certainly that of 'grape-juice' as if it had been expressed by that phrase. It is used 'proverbially,' and hence comes in the principle laid down by Freund,-" The word arena, in the proverbial phrase-arena seminam mandere, 'commit seed to the sand'-must always mean 'sand'; but in the words of Vectio Prisco-præstabo in arena mea-cannot mean 'in my sand.' It must remain an indifferent thing for the judgment, what verdict the lexicon gives on the word, so long as the whole thought, through its application to something not of the nature of husbandry, has deviated from the literal [or original] sense."

The power of the context operates in various ways to modify the sense of a passage, or to limit the application of particular words. The nature of the subject is part of the context. Drink of the cup' must be modified, by the nature of the case, into either Drink out of the cup the liquor in it, or Cup must be understood as a 'figure' for its contents; as 'the sword' or instrument is put for 'war' itself. But under the nature of the subject is really comprehended the purpose of the writer or speaker-the special end he has in view in his utterance, and we cannot be justified in stretching his language beyond that point as determined by all the circumstances. The phrase occurring in 1 Cor. x., relative to meats offered to idols, supplies a clear example:-'Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, eat' (ver. 25). It would evidence mental disorder were this to be given as a literal command to one's housekeeper in the purchase of beef or mutton in the market. People are not to buy inferior or bad meat, still less are they to consume what is unwholesome, or may disagree with them. When the apostle adds, ‘Asking no questions on account of conscience,' a limitation is put upon the command; since the purpose of the

instruction is opened out,-and that purpose does not concern the qualities of physical things, and the consequent rules that regulate their use or disuse, but the quality or state of the mind. To transfer the text from the moral to the material sphere is plainly to pervert it.

We now proceed to give a summary exposition of the chief Hebrew terms concerned in this inquiry, based upon a careful induction and comparison of Text, Context, and Circumstance, allowing but a secondary weight to the remote, vague, and uncertain element of etymology.

I.

6

1.722 YAYIN, 'wine,' occurs 141 times in the Bible. Various derivations have been sought for it, likely and unlikely. Some lexicon-makers have referred it to an obsolete root signifying 'boiling,' and hence fermenting'; others to a kindred Arabic word, yavan, in the sense of molle, 'soft'; others to yaven, mire,' 'dirt,' 'obscurity'; others to another Arabic form of the word, denoting 'dullness.' As Dindorf, however, says, yavan and the kindred Arabic denote boiling,' 'foaming,' spuming,'-and hence the derivative yayin would fitly apply to the fresh-expressed and foaming' blood of the grape. This is confirmed by the Chaldee term for wine, khamar, being undoubtedly derived from khemer, 'froth' or 'foam,' which is applied equally to the froth of the sea, to boiling bitumen, and to red fluids. It is certain that many vegetable juices become red by boiling, as wine does by fermenting. The Penny Cyclopædia (Art. Wine') observes, "Vegetable juices in general become turbid when in contact with air before fermentation commences." New names, when first imposed, are always expressive of some simple and obvious appearance, never of latent properties or scientific relations; and hence, while the foaming' appearance of grape-juice accounts for the original application of the term yayin to it, it would be absurd to suppose that the idea of 'fermentation,' the nature of which has only been understood during the last century as a scientific process, formed any part of the original connotation of the word. The Jewish Rabbins, in fact, were so ignorant on this point, that they held a foolish theory to the effect that 'grape-juice did not ferment' in the same sense as bread, whereas, in fact, the principle and process, and the agents and materials concerned, are identical. A word, however, like yayin, originally applied to foaming grape-juice, would gradually become significant of the juice in the subsequent conditions in which it was found, and, by a kind of mental retrospection, to the wine confined in the grape. In Neh. v. 18 we have the phrase all sorts of wine.' As a generic term. therefore, yayin became applicable to wine of four species:

(a) It is used sometimes in the sense of the vinum pendens of the Latins. As Cato speaks of the 'hanging-wine' (De Re Rustica. cxlvii.), so Deut. xxviii. 39 refers to yayin as a thing to be gathered by men or eaten by worms. In Isa. xvi. 10 and Jer. xlviii. it is used for the grapes to be trodden in the vat (see Gesenius

d

under). In Psa. civ. 15; Jer. xl. 10, 12; possibly in Isa. lv. 1; probably in Deut. xiv. 26, it is applied to the grape in the cluster.' The Rabbins have a similar use of the word. Baal Hatturim, in Deut. xvi. 11, says, "At Pentecost, when corn is reaped, and wine is now in the grapes." In wine countries, the common language applied to the growing grapes is, 'the wine-blooms.' The grape-cure is called the 'wein cur.' In Spain they say, una buena cosecha de vino, a good gathering of wine.'-(Father Connelly's Diccionario Nuevo, Madrid, 1798.) A traveler in the Pyrenees says, "Flocks of sheep and goats enliven the hills; corn and wine, flax and oil, hang on the slopes." (Collin's Voyages, 1796, p. 82.)

(b) Yayin as used very frequently for the foaming blood of the grape' was, as we have said, probably applied to the expressed juice because of its turbid appearance. Perhaps the claret-grape, which has red juice, suggested the metaphor, "He washed his garments in yayin, his clothes in the blood-of-grapes." (Compare Gen. xlix. 12 with Isa. lxiii. 1-3.) In Job xxxii. 19 the word is applied to the must-wine, translated by the Septuagint gleukos. Cant. v. I (compared with vii. 9) refers to a sweet, innocent yayin, which might be drunk abundantly' by young women. A peculiar use of the corresponding Chaldee term, khamar, is occasionally found in the Targums. Wine reserved in its grapes' (Targum on Cant. viii. 2). On Cant. i. 14 we fall back on the other sense: 'They took clusters of grapes and pressed wine out of them.'

(c) In Prov. ix. 2, 5, yayin seems to point to a boiled-wine, or syrup, the thickness of which made it needful to mingle water with it before drinking; while, unmixed with fluid, it was probably consumed with milk (Isa. lv. 1; compare vii. 22; Ezek. xxvii. 17). "To the honey of raisins," says Baron Bode, "the Persians give the name of shire." According to D'Herbelot (1680), the words sirop, sherbet, etc., came from the Arabic shir-ab ['sweet water'], applied to any kind of drink in general.-(Bibliotheque Orientale: Art. Sirop.) In the East, sherab to this day includes ail sorts of wine,' sherab-jee signifying 'wine-seller'; but the sense of sirop with us undeniably proves the existence of a syrup-wine formerly. The Mishna (Terumoth, xi.) shows that, anciently, wine so preserved was used in the offerings. "Wine (yayin) of the heave-offering must not be boiled, because it lessens it." Bartenora, in a note, says, " For people drink less of it," which is true, since boiling renders it richer and more cloying. The Mishna adds, "Rabbi Yehuda permits it, because it improves it." Such a wine Wisdom prepares, and, on the day of her feast, is aptly represented as mingling with water for her guests.

(d) There was also the yayin mixed with drugs, of various sorts: the mixed-wine' of the sensualist, spiced and inebriating; a cup of still stronger ingredients, used as the emblem of Divine judgments, the cup of malediction' (Psa. lxxv. 8); the 'turbid-wine,' full of poison. As Dindorf (Lexicon et Comment., 1804) says, " Yayin khamar, vinum fermentescit-calici vino turbido et venenato pleno, a cup full