feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now."-John ii., 7-10. Here Jesus makes wine at a marriage, and directs it when made to be drawn out for use, and wine which was accounted of the very best kind. "No man having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith the old is better."-Luke v., 39. There is no demonstration in Euclid more certain than the conclusion from these passages, that the Lord Jesus did drink wine, and made it for others to drink at a marriage, as a beverage; nor any corollary in it, than this-that if the Word be God, they who make it a sin to drink wine, and to furnish it to others to drink, blaspheme the Son of God.

We have seen, then, that this doctrine of total abstinence, as a moral obligation resulting from the tendencies of wine, is in total opposition to the representations of the Spirit of Truth, as given in inspired song, in history, in prophetic oracles, in solemn and significant religious ordinances, sacrifices, and the Lord's Supper; that it is identical with a long since exploded and pernicious heresy; that in point of distinction between the religion of

the Lord Jesus Christ and that of Mahomet, it gives its strong and decided preference for the false prophet of Mecca; that it calumniates the holiest men that have ever lived, as Melchisedek, and Abraham, and David, and Daniel, and the church of God in general in the days of inspiration, and since; that it is a limb of Antichrist-a feature of the predicted apostacy of the latter days; that it turns into a working of human woe the most delightful invitations and promises of the glorious gospel; that coming under the assumed name of Temperance, it is a deceiver; and that by obvious and necessary implication it blasphemes the Son of God. It is, therefore, no part of the grace of temperance, or of any other grace, but a deceiver and an Antichrist.

Any one of these positions, which have been established by abundant evidence, if there be any proper reverence for the authority of Holy Writ, would be perfectly sufficient for the exploding of so manifest and gross a heresy; but all of them taken together afford such a body of evidence, that if they are not sufficient to prove the schism of total abstinence as a matter of moral obligation to be unscriptural and anti-Christian, I defy any man to prove anything out of the Word of God. And I charge every person in this assembly, on the authority of the God of the Bible, to look at this subject as the Scriptures speak of it-to believe, and feel, and act, according to their teachings, and not according to the traditions of men who are turned from the truth, and are

turned aside unto fables. "O, send out thy light and thy truth; let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles; then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy."

III.

"The fruit of the Spirit is... temperance."-GAL. v., 22, 23.

THE

HE conclusion to which we are brought by the preceding argument is rather confirmed than impaired by the attempts that are made to escape from it. If words are to be understood in the sense which uniform scriptural usage has affixed to them; if a question, once settled by numerous decisions of infallible authority, upon the very point, is not to be disturbed by general expressions in immediate connection with other points; and if the word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the perfect as well as infallible rule of faith and of practice,-then the position taken by the American Temperance Convention can not be defended in any consistency with due respect for the oracles of God. "Let God be true but every man a liar; as it is written, that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged." The first attempt to escape from this conclusion is to invent a distinction between wine that would intoxicate, and that which would not. This key is thought by some to unlock every difficulty. When wine was mentioned in connection with intoxication, and as its cause, then intoxicating.

21.

fermented, or alcoholic wine was meant; but when its use was mentioned with approbation, then unfermented wine was meant. As to the former class, there can be no dispute. "And Noah began to be a husbandman and he planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine and was drunken."-Gen. ix., 20, "Therefore, Eli thought she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee." If there be anything in this distinction, words expressing such essential difference must not be used indiscriminately. The word which expresses the wine which intoxicates must not be used to denote that which may be used with Divine approbation. Let us see. In Ps. civ., 15, the "wine which maketh glad his (man's) heart," is celebrated as an expression of the Divine beneficence. So, also, Isaiah lv., 1: "Buy wine and milk without money, and without price." What is the difference in the terms? there is none in the translation. Is there any in the original? None at all. The very same word, '', is used in all these cases. If names, then, are the representatives of things, the very same thing which is intoxicating is used as a beverage with Divine approbation. This distinction, therefore, which the distressed advocates of the heresy of the Encratians have invented, is contradicted by the Divine testimony. No such distinction exists in the Bible. The translators of the Bible were sciolists, and they have used the common term, wine, for all the various terms used in the origi