alcohol exists in the newly expressed juice of the grape; nay, often even in the perfectly ripe grape itself; and yet maintains that "the fruit of the vine," in such a state, is both innocent and healthful. Combined as the alcohol is with other elements, and modified by them as it is in the ripe grape and the recently expressed juice, he alledges it to be utterly insufficient to produce intoxication. Nor is this mere speculation; it is matter of fact. No one was ever known to be inebriated by eating ripe grapes, or drinking wine as it ran from the press. Dr. Nott asserts this fact; and hence maintains that the Bible, in sanctioning the use of wine-sweet, original, unfermented wine-does not sanction the use of intoxicating liquors, in the strict and proper sense of that phrase. Here, then, everything is plain-everything consistent. The position eminently "justifies the ways of God to man;" instead of resolving, as Mr. Marsh seems inclined to do, the Bible permission to drink wineassuming it to be intoxicating wine-into the sovereignty of God!

But the lecturer by no means leaves the matter here. He maintains that, on the ground of expediency, even unalcoholic wines, could we obtain them, should not now be used as a beverage. For the same reason that St. Paul was willing to abstain from "meat," -the reason that eating it might cause his brother to "offend,” that is, stumble or fall,-Dr. Nott thinks all who wish well to their fellow-men should wholly refraim from drinking wine, however innocent the practice in itself, or however free the article consumed from the intoxicating principle. The practice might be of dangerous tendency. Our weak brother would possibly be offended. Under cover of our example, and failing to discriminate between what is innocent and what is otherwise, he might "stumble" and ruin himself for ever.

Thus we understand Dr. Nott; and, so understanding him, we cannot sympathize in the fears expressed by the American Temperance Journal. We believe them to be utterly groundless. They are justified by no sound reasons, either of philosophy or ethics. The editor assails what he can never demolish. These Lectures will remain a monument of the learning, the eloquence, and the truly Christian philanthropy of their venerable author, long, long after he is gathered to his fathers. Destined to no ephemeral existence, they will be read and admired by generations yet unborn. Their extensive publication at this day cannot fail to do an incalculable amount of good; and if Mr. Delavan accomplishes but half what he has undertaken in this way, the friends of the temperance cause will be under infinite obligations to him. We are the more certain in this estimate of the Lectures under review, as

it is supported by the published opinions of gentlemen whose intelligence and devotion to the interests of temperance entitle them to the greatest confidence. Chancelor Walworth, in a letter to the editor of the Temperance Journal, says, "I think you have unintentionally erred in supposing that there is any abandonment of correct temperance principles in Dr. Nott's Lectures, or that they are not calculated greatly to aid us in persuading others to abstain totally from the use, as a beverage, of anything that can intoxicate. .... He has succeeded in showing that the pen of inspiration, under the dictation of the unerring wisdom of the Most High, only commends as good the pure and unintoxicating blood of the grape, before the vinous fermentation has progressed so far as to render it inebriating and absolutely hurtful to man. And he also shows that the same unerring wisdom has denounced all intoxicating wine, or other inebriating drinks, as a curse instead of a blessing to mankind. "In a case," continues the chancelor, "which recently came. before the court of dernier resort for decision, I had occasion to examine the question, and expressed the opinion that a beverage cannot properly be considered as a strong or inebriating liquor, if none of those who use it ever get intoxicated by such use, or when it is impossible for any one to drink a sufficient quantity to produce such an effect..... Taking them together,"-Dr. Nott's Lectures, -"it will be seen that he has done much to rescue the language of inspired wisdom from the unhallowed uses to which many had attempted to pervert it, for the purpose of vindicating the drinking usages of society. He has also done much to relieve the minds of sincere Christians from error, who had been taught to believe their Saviour had sanctioned the use of intoxicating wine as a beverage. And I think his Lectures will be found not to contain anything to encourage the use of wines, or of any liquor produced by fermentation, as a common drink, in any stages of their fermentation."

These views of Chancelor Walworth are indorsed by the "New-York Central Temperance Committee," which committee is composed of gentlemen of the highest distinction, both for mental discr mination and ardent zeal for the temperance cause. The Executive Committee of the New-York State Temperance Society, composed of gentlemen equally well known and equally distinguished, say, in an address "To the Executive Committee of the American Temperance Union:" "We have regretted to perceive, in several late numbers of the Journal of Temperance, that your editor disapproves of Dr. Nott's teaching, and Mr. Delavan's circulating, the opinion that wine is rightfully distinguished into intoxicating and unintoxicating beverage, and that the former

is the wine styled the 'mocker,' and condemned in the Bible, and the latter (the pure blood of the grape) the wine pronounced a blessing, and granted to Jacob for a beverage. We are led to address you by reason of the distinction taken and the doctrines taught in these Lectures, being the same which have been taken and taught in works sanctioned and published by ourselves, and because we firmly believe this distinction to be intelligible and sound, and the only one which avoids a conflict with the unyielding laws of nature or the infallible word of God. Considering these Lectures as a pre-eminently able and convincing argument against the use of all intoxicating liquors, especially against the use of wine of every sort as a beverage, among the more wealthy and fashionable classes of community, we cannot but approve of the course Mr. Delavan has taken, and hope he will persevere in his endeavors to give them a wide circulation And we take the liberty of soliciting your careful attention to these Lectures,-to their richness in scientific and historical facts and illustrations, their kindness, force, candor, and eloquence of argument, and their peculiar fitness to disabuse the mind of the Christian public of those perversions of Scripture, from which the cause of temperance has suffered so much in times past."

To the preceding we will only add the approval of one of the most distinguished Biblical critics of the age. Professor Moses Stewart, writing to Mr. Delavan, says: "I have read the discourses," (of Dr. Nott,) "and have no hesitation in saying that they are powerful, eloquent, argumentative, candid, and kind, without exaggeration, and without any timid shrinking from a fulllength portrait. If Dr. Nott had been raised up for nothing else, it would have been a great end to be accomplished, to write these discourses. My compliments and my earnest congratulations to him on the ground of his complete success in his noble and benevolent undertaking. Sero in cælum redeat, even a sober heathen would say to him; that is, Late may he return to glory! or, in other words, Long may he live! The criticisms that I should have to make in the way of calling in question, would be 'few and far between.' I deem them unnecessary-my meed of praise is in full measure, 'heaped up and running over.' Yes, give as many wings as you can to such a messenger, and let him visit the whole English world. God has given you an opportunity to do more good than many kings and princes have: use it to your utmost, and then ascribe all the glory to him."

We have adduced the preceding commendations, both to show the estimate in which these Lectures are held by the clearest heads

and purest hearts of our country, and to aid, as far as possible, in giving them circulation. It will have been seen that we have confined our remarks, chiefly, to those parts of the book under review which relate to the Scripture bearings of the question of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. If we have not noticed other parts of it, it was simply because it did not fall within our design to do so, and not because we do not deem them exceedingly valuable and interesting. The volume is worthy of the serious perusal and careful study of all classes, and is especially commended to the attention of those who, by an incorrect generalization, have fallen into either of the two opposite errors upon "the wine question." They will in this case, as in most others, find that the truth lies between the two extremes. P.

ART. IV.-1. Methodist Quarterly Review for April, 1847. Art. I. Phrenology and Revelation. A Review of Fowler on Religion. By Rev. D. W. CLARK.

2. The British Quarterly Review: Phrenology tested. A Review of Contributions to the Mathematics of Phrenology. By JAMES STRATTON. Also, The Brain and its Physiology; a Critical Disquisition on the Methods of determining the Relations between the Structure and Functions of the Encephalon. By DANIEL NOBLE, M. R. C. S. Eng. London, 1846. Eclectic Magazine, February, 1847.

SUPERFICIAL men often find their favorite hypotheses, which they have dignified by the name of science, in direct contact with the most ancient and thoroughly established truths. The history of one such Utopian reformer is the history of all. He never infers the probable error of his own scheme, but decides at once that the time-honored system is unsound merely because it is opposed to his! Regardless alike of the teachings of experience in relation to the fate of such men, and of the importance of the truths he attempts to overthrow, he proceeds forthwith to proclaim the baselessness of these venerable principles, and to show how clearly this discovery follows from his own demonstrable science. With no very special regard to the graces or forms of modesty, he proceeds immediately to prefer his claims to the gratitude and respect of mankind as their deliverer from the thraldom of custom, and from the delusion of happiness in the enjoyment of their holiest institutions. The very extent and apparent impracticability of the

revolutions he proposes, rather encourage than alarm him. There is something so flattering to natural vanity in the idea of standing out before the world as the fearless opposer of what even general experience has found to be true; something so noble and manly in being, de facto, in the place of " Athanasius contra mundum," that he throws himself, with the most reckless daring and enthusiasm, against even the impregnable walls of truth; and such is his delirium of joy in these assaults, that he really seems not to know when he has dashed out his own brains! At the very moment in which he has just succeeded in drawing sufficient attention to himself to expose the ridiculousness of his attempts, and provoke a smile at their folly, he is waiting, with suppressed breath and "erectis oribis," to catch the universal acclamations of praise and eternal obligation for the glorious deliverances he has wrought out for oppressed humanity.

In no instance is the truth of these remarks more evident than in the history of phrenological discoverers. Having caught a glimpse of a supposed relation between craniology and psychology, they have jumped at once into the broad daylight of the science of phrenology! They have discovered a universal law by noticing a few slight or striking coincidences, which may, however, be easily accounted for without the existence of any such law. They have generalized without competent facts, and been content with conjecture and assumption nearly endless, as the basis of a splendid

science.

But phrenology assumed as true, and what follows? Why, the established principles of metaphysical philosophy are all false. Locke, Reid, Stewart, and Brown, are all wrong in asserting the indivisible unity of mind. The clearest distinctions are confounded. The ablest philosophers are treated with contempt, and men are kindly notified to beware of such blind guides, and to rely upon phrenologists as the true wonder-working spirits in the philosophy of mind. From them we must receive the key of metaphysical knowledge, and the pure principles of that philosophy which shows, plainly enough, all philosophy to be not merely false, but simply ridiculous.

The Christian religion, too, is directly in the way of this furious science. But it must go through, and will. No use to remonstrate. And what then, but to run over, trample down, and stamp into the earth, this old, and, no doubt, superannuated system? Consolation to our doting hearts if then we can gather up so much as a fragment, as a relic of its former greatness and power! Ten years-not more than ten years, certainly, will be ample to esta