Excerpt from The Temperance, Bible-Commentary: Giving at One View, Version, Criticism, and Exposition, in Regard to All Passages of Holy Writ Bearing on 'Wine' and 'Strong Drink, ' or Illustrating the Principles of the Temperance Reformation Christians everywhere unite in accepting the saying of St Paul that all God-inspired Scripture is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). But the profit derived from Divine Truth will necessarily vary according to die degree of teachableness and soundness of judgment brought to its perusal. The Bible is not accountable for the multifarious errors and abuses it has been employed to support; yet it is occasion for lamentation that on not a few great questions, both of Science and Morals, the Living Oracles have been strangely misapprehended and misapplied. Not the illiterate and vicious alone, but successive generations of scholars and divines, have enunciated mischievous fallacies professedly extracted from the Scriptures. In Physical Science, the fixity and recent creation of the earth; in Political Philosophy, the right of arbitrary government and Negro slavery; in Social Economy, the excellence of Polygamy; in Ecclesiastical ethics, the duty of persecuting heretics, and the obligation of unlimited submission to the clergy: these and other baneful dogmas have been zealously propounded, not as speculative theories, but as the practical teachings of the Divine Word. That such conclusions are now commonly discarded is not due to any change in the Record, but to a marked improvement in the manner of reading it; and to a perception that there can be no real contradiction between one portion of Holy Scripture and another, or between the Revelation of God in Nature and in His Written Will. Not less obviously true is it, that social customs and personal habits of diet and indulgence, continued from childhood upwards, may induce a state of mind inconsistent with the unbiased interpretation of Holy Writ For example, let a man be accustomed to regard intoxicating liquor as a necessity, or even a valuable auxiliary, of life, and as an innocent vehicle of enjoyment and social entertainment; let him remain ignorant of all that can be said and has been proved to the contrary; let him consider the intemperance arising from strong drink to be one of the inevitable forms of natural depravity, and therefore to be classed in its origin as well as its results with other sins of the flesh; let him persuade himself that the ordinary means of Christian evangelization are sufficient to eradicate this prolific vice with its dismal progeny of social curses: let all this be done, and it will no longer appear surprising that many of the allusions contained in both the Old and New Testaments are construed in favor of the use of such drink, and that other passages, clearly opposite in their tendency, should be ignored or explained away. This may be done in perfect good faith, and without any consciousness of the process by which the one-sided exegesis is wrought out. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.