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The Ministry of Healing
cider may still be made the same way. But where cider is produced
under sanitary conditions, using good, sound fruit, obviously the
objections disappear.—Publishers.
]
Intoxication is just as really produced by wine, beer, and cider
as by stronger drinks. The use of these drinks awakens the taste
for those that are stronger, and thus the liquor habit is established.
Moderate drinking is the school in which men are educated for
the drunkard’s career. Yet so insidious is the work of these milder
stimulants that the highway to drunkenness is entered before the
victim suspects his danger.
Some who are never considered really drunk are always under
the influence of mild intoxicants. They are feverish, unstable in
mind, unbalanced. Imagining themselves secure, they go on and
on, until every barrier is broken down, every principle sacrificed.
The strongest resolutions are undermined, the highest considerations
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are not sufficient to keep the debased appetite under the control of
reason.
The Bible nowhere sanctions the use of intoxicating wine. The
wine that Christ made from water at the marriage feast of Cana was
the pure juice of the grape. This is the “new wine ... found in the
cluster,” of which the Scripture says, “Destroy it not; for a blessing
is in it.”
Isaiah 65:8
.
It was Christ who, in the Old Testament, gave the warning to
Israel, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is
deceived thereby is not wise.”
Proverbs 20:1
. He Himself provided
no such beverage. Satan tempts men to indulgence that will becloud
reason and benumb the spiritual perceptions, but Christ teaches us to
bring the lower nature into subjection. He never places before men
that which would be a temptation. His whole life was an example
of self-denial. It was to break the power of appetite that in the forty
days’ fast in the wilderness He suffered in our behalf the severest
test that humanity could endure. It was Christ who directed that John
the Baptist should drink neither wine nor strong drink. It was He
who enjoined similar abstinence upon the wife of Manoah. Christ
did not contradict His own teaching. The unfermented wine that He
provided for the wedding guests was a wholesome and refreshing
drink. This is the wine that was used by our Saviour and His disciples
in the first Communion. It is the wine that should always be used