NOAH.
Noah did the best and the worst thing for the world. He built an ark against the deluge of water, but he also introduced a deluge against which the human race has ever since been trying to build an ark—the deluge of drunkenness.
In the opening chapters of the Bible we can hear his staggering steps.
Shem and Japhet tried to cover up the disgrace, but there is Noah—drunk on wine at a time in the history of the world when, to say the least, there was no lack of water.
Inebriation, having flooded the world, has never receded.
Abigail, the fair and heroic wife who saved the flocks of Nabal, her husband, from confiscation by invaders, goes home at night and finds him so intoxicated she can not tell him the story of his narrow escape.
Uriah came to see David, and David got him drunk, and paved the way for the despoliation of his household.
Even the church bishops needed to be charged to be sober and not given to too much wine; and so familiar were the people of Bible times with the staggering and falling motions of the inebriate, that Isaiah, when he comes to describe the final dislocation of worlds, says: “The Earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard.”