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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
“red-ribbon club” that savors not of the Spirit of Christ, and your
feelings of bitterness have not helped you or anyone else.
You have taken the testimonies given in reference to our people’s
mingling with the temperance societies to the detriment of their spiri-
tual interest, and by perverting them have used them to oppress and
burden souls. By this treatment of the light given you have brought
my work into disrepute. There was not the least necessity for this, and
some of you have a work to do to make this matter right. You would
make an iron bedstead for others; if too short, they must be stretched;
if too long, they must be cut off. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
After you had taken a decided stand in opposition to active partici-
pation in the work of the temperance societies, you might still have
retained an influence over others for good, had you acted conscien-
tiously in accordance with the holy faith which you profess; but by
engaging in the manufacture of cider you have hurt your influence very
much; and what is worse, you have brought reproach upon the truth,
and your own souls have been injured. You have been building up a
barrier between yourselves and the temperance cause. Your course led
unbelievers to question your principles. You are not making straight
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paths for your feet, and the lame are halting and stumbling over you to
perdition.
I cannot see how, in the light of the law of God, Christians can
conscientiously engage in the raising of hops or in the manufacture of
wine or cider for the market. All these articles may be put to a good
use and prove a blessing, or they may be put to a wrong use and prove a
temptation and a curse. Cider and wine may be canned when fresh and
kept sweet a long time, and if used in an unfermented state they will
not dethrone reason. But those who manufacture apples into cider for
the market are not careful as to the condition of the fruit used, and in
many cases the juice of decayed apples is expressed. Those who would
not think of using the poisonous rotten apples in any other way will
drink the cider made from them and call it a luxury; but the microscope
would reveal the fact that this pleasant beverage is often unfit for the
human stomach, even when fresh from the press. If it is boiled, and
care is taken to remove the impurities, it is less objectionable.
I have often heard people say: “Oh! this is only sweet cider; it
is perfectly harmless, and even healthful.” Several quarts, perhaps
gallons, are carried home. For a few days it is sweet; then fermentation