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The Ministry of Health and Healing
for those that are stronger, and thus the liquor habit is established.
Moderate drinking is the school in which people are educated to be
drunkards. Yet so insidious is the work of these milder stimulants
that the highway to drunkenness is entered before the victim suspects
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 undermined. The highest considerations
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, ““‘Do not destroy it, 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, intoxicating drink arouses brawling, and
whoever is led astray by it is not wise.”
Proverbs 20:1
.
He Himself provided no such beverage. Satan tempts people to
indulgence that will becloud reason and benumb the spiritual percep-
tions, but Christ teaches us to bring the lower nature into subjection.
He never places before us 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 Savior
and His disciples in the first Communion. It is the wine that should
always be used on the Communion table as a symbol of the Savior’s
blood. The sacramental service is designed to be soul-refreshing and
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life-giving. Nothing is to be connected with it that could minister to
evil.