Personal Experience of a Physician Part 8

"There is abundance of evidence," says the Rev. Dr. Patton, "that the ancients mixed their wines with water; not because they were so strong with alcohol as to require dilution, but because, being rich syrups, they needed water to prepare them for drinking. The quant.i.ty of water was regulated by the richness of the wine and the time of year."

"Aristotle (born about B. C. 384) testifies that the _wines of Arcadia_ were so thick that they dried up in goat-skins, and that it was the practice to sc.r.a.pe them off and dissolve the sc.r.a.pings in water."

(Meteorology, iv, 10.)--"Temperance Bible Commentary."

We know very well that these ancient wines, which were called wine in those days, which did not intoxicate, and others that were as thick as honey, were not fermented wines; for fermented wines do intoxicate, and wines as thick as honey cannot be made from fermented wine, for the alb.u.minous and other substances which make condensed wines thick are cast down or out, or destroyed by fermentation. I have four samples of such condensed wines, or grape-juice, which are as thick as honey. One I obtained at Buda-Pesth, Hungary; one in Cairo, Egypt; one in Damascus, Asia; and the fourth was condensed and sent to me by a gentleman then residing in California. I have had these samples now over six years.

Why should the writer in the _Christian Union_ quote from another writer, and thus try to make it appear that the ancient condensed wines were nothing but "grape jellies"? Does he not know that they are very different preparations, and prepared by different methods? Condensed wines are prepared by crushing and pressing the juice from the pulp, skins, and seeds, and then boiling or otherwise evaporating the water until the juice is as thick as honey, so that it can be easily preserved from fermentation?

whereas grape jellies are made by boiling the grapes until they are well cooked, then rubbing or squeezing all the pulp and skins practicable through a colander, sieve, or coa.r.s.ely-woven strainer; and then sugar is added to sweeten and aid in forming a jelly. Condensed wines will dissolve in water as we are told the ancient thick wines did, but grape jellies will do so only very imperfectly, for they are composed largely of the pulp of the grape.

The writer in the _Christian Union_ tells us, in a pa.s.sage already quoted, speaking of fermented wine:--

"This was the wine Christ made, drank, blessed."

And again he says:--

"He (Christ) commenced His public ministry by making, by a miracle, wine in considerable quant.i.ty, and this apparently only to add to the joyous festivities of a wedding. He apparently used wine customarily, if not habitually. When He was about to die, He chose wine as the symbol of His blood, shed for many for the remission of sins, asked His Father's blessing on a cup containing wine, pa.s.sed it to His disciples with the direction, 'Drink ye all of it.'"

Now, intelligent Christian reader, what are we to think of the above statements? Let us look at these statements in the light of reason, common sense, science, and revelation. Is it probable, is it possible, that at that wedding feast, after the guests had drank freely of an intoxicating wine, that our blessed Lord, guided by love and wisdom, would create a large quant.i.ty more of an intoxicating wine for them to drink? It is not possible; and the a.s.sumption is flatly contradicted by the Governor of the feast, who p.r.o.nounced the wine created as the "best wine." Place to the lips of a child of parents who do not use intoxicating drinks, or to a man or woman who never drinks such drinks, two gla.s.ses, one containing a well-fermented wine, and the other containing the sweet, delicious juice of good ripe grapes, and there is not the slightest doubt as to which would be chosen and p.r.o.nounced "best" every time--try it.

Then again, is it possible that, on that occasion, a kind of wine was made of which the Lord has never created a single drop in the fruit of the vine?

Fermented wine is a product of leaven or ferment and of man's ingenuity; and its chief and essential const.i.tuent, alcohol, for which men drink it, is an effete product, and holds a similar relation to the leaven that urine does to the animal body. As Pasteur says, "ferment eats, as it were," or consumes the nourishing and useful ingredients in the juice of the grapes, decomposes them, and casts out excretions, as man does when he eats grapes.

Consequently, fermented wine is an utterly unclean fluid, and it fills man, when he drinks it, with all manner of uncleanness, mentally and physically, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, as we well know. It is preeminently a leavened substance, for it is never purified by heat, as is leavened bread. We have an abundance of testimony, which the reverend writer of the article ignores, that the Orthodox Jews have regarded, in all ages, and do to-day as a rule regard, fermented wine as coming under the restrictions placed upon leavened things.

The celebrated Jewish Rabbi, S. M. Isaacs, said in 1869: "The Jews do not use in their feasts for sacred purposes fermented drinks of any kind. The marriage feast is a sacrament with us."

In a recent work (1879) written by a Jewish Rabbi, the Rev. E. M. Myers, ent.i.tled "The Jews, their Customs and Ceremonies, with a full account of all their Religious Observances from the Cradle to the Grave," we read that among the strictly orthodox Jews, "During the entire festival (of the Pa.s.sover) no leavened food nor fermented liquors are permitted to be used, in accordance with Scriptural injunctions." (Ex. xii, 15, 19, 20; Deut.

xvii, 3, 4.) This, we think, settles the question so far as the Orthodox Jews are concerned; and their customs, without much question, represent those prevailing at the time of our Lord's advent.

The editor of the London _Methodist Times_ lately witnessed the celebration of the Jewish Pa.s.sover in that city, and at the close of the services said to the Rabbi: "May I ask with what _kind_ of wine you have celebrated the Pa.s.sover this evening?" The answer promptly given was:--

"With a non-intoxicating wine. Jews never use fermented wine in their synagogue services, and must not use it on the Pa.s.sover, either for synagogue or home purposes. Fermented liquor of any kind comes under the category of 'leaven,' which is proscribed in so many well-known places in the Old Testament. * * * I have recently read the pa.s.sage in Matthew in which the Paschal Supper is described. There can be no doubt whatever that the wine used upon that occasion was unfermented. Jesus, as an observant Jew, would not only not have drunk fermented wine on the Pa.s.sover, but would not have celebrated the Pa.s.sover in any house from which everything fermented had not been removed. I may mention that the wine I use in the service at the synagogue is an infusion of raisins. You will allow me, perhaps, to express my surprise that Christians, who profess to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, can take what He could not possibly have taken as a Jew--intoxicating wine--at so sacred a service as the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper."

[Transcriber's Note: the asterisks in the preceding paragraph are thus in the book.]

It is utterly impossible that Jesus Christ could have used fermented wine as a symbol of His blood, for in its essential const.i.tuents, which are alcohol, vinegar, etc., it bears not the slightest resemblance to blood; whereas unfermented wine, in its essential const.i.tuents, which are alb.u.men, sugar, etc., bears the greatest resemblance to blood. This simple fact ought to satisfy every intelligent man.

Then again, our Lord, when He took the cup and blessed and said, "Drink ye all of it," knowing that fermented wine was included under the name of wine, and as if foreseeing that His followers might mistake and use intoxicating wine, carefully avoided the use of the word wine at all, and called it the "fruit of the vine," which unfermented wine is and fermented wine is not. It does seem that these facts should satisfy every intelligent, Christian man. Can there be, my Christian brethren, a greater profanation of a holy ordinance than the use of the drunkard's cup as a communion wine, instead of the fruit of the vine? By the use of fermented wine as a communion wine many a man who was struggling to reform his life has been led back to drunkenness and death. I have known of some sad instances.

It might be well for some of our clergy to hear and heed the warning voice of the Sacred Scriptures:--

"'It is not for kings to drink wine, nor princes strong drink, lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the judgment of the afflicted.' Here is abstinence enjoined, and the reason for it plainly given. Again (Lev. x, 8-11), _it is required of the priests_: 'And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations: That ye may put a difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; and that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.'"

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise."--Prov. xx, i.

No one questions that the wine referred to above as unholy and a mocker and unclean, is fermented wine, and no one supposes for a moment that it is unfermented wine. "But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean." (Isa. xxviii, 7,8.)

How correctly and literally do the above words represent the effects of drinking fermented wine and strong drinks, seen today as of old. O gentlemen of the clergy! beware! beware! "Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink; that putteth thy bottle to him." (Hab. ii, 5,15.) You have young and inexperienced men and women and even boys under your charge. May the Lord protect them!

CANON WILBERFORCE ON SACRAMENTAL WINES.

Canon Wilberforce is reported by the London _Temperance Record_ as saying at a recent meeting in England: "He believed if people desired to go back literally and absolutely to the days of the inst.i.tution of the Sacrament, it would be a most difficult thing, if not impossible, to prove that the particular cup which their Master took in His hand in that solemn crisis of His life when He inst.i.tuted the Holy Eucharist was fermented at all. There was abundant testimony to prove it was not. Some went back to primitive authorities. He should like to read one or two which might have weight with them. Take for example the testimony of St. Cyprian, who wrote in A. D. 230:--

"'When the Lord gives the name of His body to bread, composed of the union of many particles, He indicates that our people, whose sins He bore, are united. And when He calls wine squeezed out from bunches of grapes His blood, He intimates that our flocks are similarly joined by the varied admixture of a united mult.i.tude."

"This distinctly implied, for all he knew, squeezing bunches of grapes. But there was more important testimony from one man who was considered by a certain party in the Church of great value--St. Thomas Aquinas, a great father of the 13th century. He said:--

"'The juice of ripe grapes, on the other hand, has already the form of wine; for its sweet taste evidences a mellowing change, which is its completion by natural heat (as it is said in the "Meteorologica," iv, 3, not far from the beginning), and for that reason this Sacrament can be fulfilled by the juice of grapes.'"

While in Egypt in 1884 I visited the American missionaries, and asked them what kind of wine they used as a communion wine in their churches. They told me that almost all of their members were from among the Copts, who are the descendants from the early Christians of Egypt, who have been comparatively isolated and separated from the Christian world for many centuries, and when they told them that the Western Christians used fermented wine, or "shop wine," as they called it, they were horrified at the idea, and would not partake of it; so they steeped or soaked raisins in water, and then pressed the juice from them and used that, as has been done by the Orthodox Jews when they could not obtain pure unfermented wine. I visited the Grand Patriarch of the Coptic Church, and through an interpreter he told me that he did the same, and that it was suitable for use the moment that it was pressed from the raisins. The day is not far distant when the members of the Western Christian churches will be as much horrified at the idea of using fermented wine as a sacramental wine as are the unperverted Christians of Egypt, and this will occur when our clergy and laity cease to be controlled by either strong confirmations or preconceived ideas or by sensual appet.i.tes, and can study the Sacred Scriptures and ancient history, and science and well-established facts, in the light of reason and common sense, instead of a.s.suming everything which accords with their desires, and ignoring everything which conflicts therewith.

Again, the writer of the article I am reviewing says:--

"Drunkenness is always and everywhere a sin; whether drinking is a sin depends upon circ.u.mstances; and whether the circ.u.mstances are such as to make drinking sinful, each individual must decide for himself, and answer for his decision, not to a priesthood, a society, or a newspaper press, but to his own conscience and his G.o.d."

While drunk the drunkard is insane, and when not drunk he is an abject slave. His appet.i.te controls him, soul and body; he will sacrifice his property, his reputation, and the comfort of wife and children to gratify it. If, gentle reader, you have witnessed the struggles which some have witnessed of men striving earnestly to break loose from that habit, you would not be so ready to p.r.o.nounce drunkenness always a sin; you would hardly dare thus to judge the poor victim. G.o.d alone can realize what he suffers. I ask the intelligent reader, in the light of reason and common sense and of the Word of G.o.d, which is the greater sinner, the man who, after he has witnessed all the wretchedness, sorrows, drunkenness, and deaths which we see around us, deliberately takes his first gla.s.s of the fluid which has caused this misery, or continues to drink after he has once commenced, while he has the ability in freedom to restrain his appet.i.te, or the man who, by thus drinking, has lost his freedom and reason, and then drinks to drunkenness? If either is a sinner, can there be any doubt as to which is the greatest sinner? A far greater number, die from steady drinking than from drunkenness; they die from an inability to withstand the ordinary causes of disease, or to resist diseased action when attacked, and vast mult.i.tudes die from diseases caused by so-called temperate drinking, short of drunkenness. The statistics of insurance companies show that the average duration of adult human lives is shortened from seventeen to twenty-four per cent. Is it no sin to enter upon or to continue such a life? Is such deliberate self-murder no sin? And again, no man living who commences and continues drinking can have any a.s.surance that he will not become a drunkard. I well remember when a young man, perhaps eighteen years old, standing on my native New England hills, working upon the highway with a young man three or four years older than myself. I said to him that I thought it was well to make up our minds never to drink intoxicating drinks during health, and to join a temperance society; he differed from me, and he said that when he was tired, or went out in the cold and wet and got chilled, he thought that a little "cider brandy" did him good. "But," he exclaimed with great energy, "the man who cannot restrain his appet.i.te is a fool! If you ever hear of my getting drunk, tell me, and I will quit drinking." I intimated to him that it then might be too late. Alas! alas for that young man! he became a drunkard; he spent the farm left by his father; his wife died; his children were scattered among friends; and years after, when I returned to my native town, I was told that he was a pauper at the poorhouse.

We are told by the reverend gentleman in the _Christian Union_ that nature produces alcohol in the juices, as though its production was by a natural and orderly process. The process of fermentation is just as natural as the putrefaction of meat, when not prevented by care, and from an altogether similar cause; and as orderly as the eating of grain by rats if no care is taken to prevent it; and it is a no more natural or orderly process. The writer tells us that:--

"Whether the community can properly, without infringing on the liberty of the individual, prohibit all manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors, is a political question, on which the life and teachings of Christ throw no light."

A strange statement, indeed! Is it not right to prohibit theft, highway robbery, and other evil acts? Do Christ's teachings throw no light upon such questions? "Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself." In our country the government is by the people and for the people, and voters are responsible for the laws made or unmade; and they should be governed by Christ's precepts and not by political cliques. We do not hesitate to enact laws to prohibit druggists and others from selling other well-known poisons to people without the prescription of a physician, for fear they may possibly be used by the purchasers to harm either themselves or others; and I presume the reverend writer does not seriously question the justice and propriety of such laws; yet, strange to say, we license men, and thus give the sanction of the law, to sell fermented wine, beer, and other intoxicating drinks, and allow them to sell tobacco, all deadly poisons, when they know the purchasers will use them to harm themselves and others, and often destroy their lives. Yes, we thus license men to sell when we know that these poisons are sold to men and women who are controlled by an unnatural appet.i.te instead of by reason; when it is known that they have harmed and killed more of the human family than all other poisons put together, and that many of the purchasers, to say the least, will certainly use them to destroy health, reason, and their own lives, and to render their own families and all intimately a.s.sociated with them unspeakably wretched and unhappy. And yet, exclaims the above writer, whether the community can prohibit such sales of alcoholic liquors or not, without infringing on the liberty of the individual, "is a political question, on which the life and teachings of Christ throw no light." And the inference is that Christians, preachers, and our religious press have nothing to do with this question. "O consistency! thou art a jewel." Let stealing become as universal as the selling of intoxicants, and wives and children thereby be deprived of their means of support as extensively as they are by the selling of intoxicants, would the reverend gentleman stand aloof, and represent that the life and teachings of Christ throw no light upon the question of prohibiting such a violation of the Divine commandments? Shall Christians stand aloof from enacting laws to prohibit stealing for fear of infringing on the liberty of individual thieves? Can crimes be prevented without interfering with the "personal liberty" of criminals to commit crimes?

What is stealing when compared to the selling of intoxicating drinks and tobacco as they are sold in our streets, and all over our own and other lands? Kind Christian parents, which in your estimation would be the greatest crime, and which would you prefer, that a thief should steal from your boy or son, before he is twenty-one years of age, or after you cease to be responsible for him, his money, or that a man should sell cigarettes, beer, fermented wine, or other intoxicants unbeknown to you, and take his money, giving these poisons instead, and thus leading him on step by step, until an unnatural appet.i.te is formed, and he becomes a slave to the use of a poison often before he has reached the age when his rational faculties are fully developed; and when by the use of these poisons the full development of his body is prevented, and his prospects for enjoying good health thereafter and of living to the allotted age of man are most materially lessened. In both instances his money is taken, and we know, by the poverty-stricken men and women and young men we see visiting our saloons, that some of the saloonists, as well as the thief, will take his last penny. Which is the greatest crime, to steal a man's money who is under bondage to a perverted appet.i.te, and consequently comparatively irresponsible for his acts, or to sell him the above named poisons, which so seriously prevent development and endanger his health, reason, and life, and which bring such wretchedness and sorrow to so many homes? In both instances the man's money is gone, his wife and children are deprived of the benefit which might result from its legitimate use; but in the one case the man returns to his family a sober, loving husband and father--in the other, perchance, drunk, or on the direct road that leads to drunkenness.

In reply to his intimation that the Bible permits Christians to use fermented wine, but the Koran does not allow Mohammedans to use it, I would simply intimate to the reverend gentleman that the Lord, in His good Providence, has permitted, through the Koran, the Mohammedans to be protected from the drinking of fermented wine and other intoxicating drinks, as He has attempted to protect Christians directly by the numerous warnings in His Word; but the difference lies right here--the former have heeded the warnings, while the latter have not, and hence the fearful drunkenness prevalent in Christian countries. And we see the people of Christian countries sending their whiskey into heathen or Gentile lands with their missionaries. Alas! alas! Which is better--to be a good heathen or a drunken Christian?

A gentleman whom I desired to see resides at Constantinople. He is an Englishman, and when my wife and myself were there in 1885 he had resided there twenty-two years, and had run the largest flouring mill in Turkey. We visited his mill, which was about two miles up the Golden Horn, and he spent an evening with us at the hotel where we were stopping. During our conversation I said to him: "I would like to know about the Mohammedan Turks: what kind of men are they? In our country you can hardly call a man by a worse name than to call him a Turk." He replied that the Government officials and those who come much in contact with foreigners are apt to be corrupt enough. "But," he exclaimed with great emphasis, "the laboring Turk! the laboring Turk has a great future before him!! If I want a man to row me down the Golden Horn when the weather is rough, or to watch my mills when I am away and asleep, who I know will do his duty faithfully, I always choose a Turk instead of a Christian." He admitted that the fact that they never drink fermented wine or other intoxicating drinks was one of the causes of their greater reliability.

"Hon. Chauncey M. Depew will scarcely be accused of fanaticism on the question of liquor drinking. His opinion as a man of wide observation and knowledge of human nature is valuable even to those who would discount his opinions on the political methods of dealing with the evil. Here is Mr.

Depew's experience as stated in a speech before a company of railroad men:--

"'Twenty-five years ago I knew every man, woman, and child in Peekskill.

And it has been a study with me to mark boys who started in every grade of life with myself, to see what has become of them. I was up last fall and began to count them over, and it was an instructive exhibit. Some of them became clerks, merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, doctors. _It is remarkable that every one of those that drank is dead;_ not one living of my age. Barring a few who were taken off by sickness, _every one who proved a wreck and wrecked his family did it from rum and no other cause_. Of those who were church-going people, who were steady, industrious, and hard-working men, who were frugal and thrifty, every single one of them, without an exception, owns the house in which he lives and has something laid by, the interest on which, with his house, would carry him through many a rainy day. When a man becomes debased with gambling, rum, or drink, he does not care; all his finer feelings are crowded out. The poor women at home are the ones who suffer--suffer in their tenderest emotions; suffer in their affections for those whom they love better than life.'"--_The Voice_.

I think almost every man who is 75 years old, if he will look back and review carefully his youthful acquaintances, can bear almost if not equally as strong testimony as to the effects of intoxicating drinks on human life.

It is certain that but a small proportion of the drinkers who died prematurely were drunkards; they were simply what is called temperate drinkers.

I fully agree with the reverend writer in the _Christian Union_ that we should not judge others to be bad or evil men because they do not speak and act just as we think they should, for we cannot see the motives from which their words and acts spring--they are known to the Lord alone; but should we not judge whether a man's words and acts are true and useful and in accordance with the Divine Commandments, or whether they are false and evil and in violation of the commandments? For instance, when we clearly see that the arguments in favor of fermented wine are all based upon a.s.sumptions which the most careful investigations by scholars as competent as any in the world show have no foundation in truth, and when we find from historical records that in all ages its use has caused an immense amount of suffering, wretchedness, drunkenness, and an untold number of premature deaths; and we see the same results following its use all around us at this day; and when science teaches us that its use is entirely unnecessary during health, and a direct violation of the laws of health and life; and when in the Sacred Scriptures fermented wine is likened, as to its effects on man, to the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps, and Solomon tells us that at last "it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder;"--is it not clearly our duty to show to our fellow-men, and especially to the young, that to commence drinking fermented wine or beer, or to continue to drink so long as we have the power to resist the inclination to drink, is a violation of the commands, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d supremely, and not the gratification of a perverted appet.i.te; and should we not as clearly as possible point out the truth, and call men to repentance and to the shunning of such evils as sins against G.o.d? How else is the world to be reformed and elevated, and the life of the New Jerusalem to descend from G.o.d out of heaven, and find an abiding place among men?

The boy, the young man, and those of all ages, in whom the regenerate life has either not commenced or has barely commenced, cannot be expected to live and act up to the Pauline maxim--"if meat cause my brother to offend,"

etc. Satisfy such that fermented wine is not the "cup of devils," but that it derives its life from the Lord through heaven instead of through h.e.l.l, and that it is a good and useful drink, and that it is to be hoped the time will come when it can be safely drank, can they want any greater license for commencing and for continuing the life which leads to drunkenness? No one ever intends to become a drunkard or to destroy his life by drinking.

He only drinks enough to satisfy his perverted appet.i.te and to make him feel good; that is all.

Now, dear Christian reader, what can be more unfortunate for the Christian Church than for clergymen standing high in the Church, as do several who have written in favor of fermented wine, to write when they possess _only_ such an extremely superficial knowledge of the wine question, in its Biblical, historical, scientific, and medical aspects, as is manifested in the article under review, and several others which have been printed and circulated within a few years? And how unfortunate that such articles should ever be published in religious periodicals that enter the homes where dwell children, and the young and innocent as well as drinkers!

I thank the Lord that no religious paper bearing such seductive messages ever entered my father's house as I approached manhood.