The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

Tiee.Jarri-iazac at Ct/ a.
turned into wine. (2) The supposition that the Lord
supplied twelve gallons of alcoholic wine for a village
wedding-feast, after the guests had exhausted a previous
supply, is one so gross that reverence for the Redeemer
would call for its rejection. If it is pleaded that his presence would guard against excess, the miracle ceases to
be an argument in favor of wine-drinking, without such a
protection at the present day. (3) The explanation furnished by St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and other eminent theologians, that the miracle consisted in doing instantaneously with the water in the firkins what is done,
by Divine power, gradually with the water in the grape
upon the vine, gives (on the theory of a transformation
of all the water) a satisfactory key to the miracle as revealing the Saviour's glory, averts all evil reflection fronm
him as the holy and blameless One, and disposes altogether of the theory that the wine so made must have
been of an intoxicating character. It may further be
remarked, that the merely external and physical acts of
Christ, as to eating, drinking, clothing, lodging, and the
like, are never proposed to us as examples for literal imitation. It is even obvious that many of those acts which
were suitable to him might be very unsuitable to us; and
it ought to require no words to show that to have the
spiTrit of Christ-not to repeat his external actions-is to
be really his, and to win his acceptance. The apostle
who refused to know Christ "after the flesh," would have
stood aghast at the indelicacy which holds up the Saviour
as a wine-drinker, in order to justify an indulgence which
prevents the rescue of souls from death, and the hiding
of multitudes of sins.
4. The sanoctz'oit of the afiostles is claiiized for /he use of it Ioxzical< dri'zks. It is said that Peter, when he and the
rest were accused of intoxication, did not say they were
total abstainers; and that Paul inculcated temperance in
all things; declared all creatures of God to be good, and
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