“[Zech. 9 : 17]: ‘For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty; corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.’
“Rather a singular apportionment of his bounty, unless ‘corn’ means something stronger than wine.
“[Matt. 11 : 19]: ‘The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a man is gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.’ But are these her children who claim Jesus as very God and yet fly directly in the face of his precepts and practice? Or is it moral uprightness instead of wisdom that they lack?
“In [Mat. 21 : 33] to 41, and [Mark 12 : 1] to 9, Jesus gives us the parable of the vineyard and the husbandman, and in it all there is no hint that there was anything wrong in the business of winemaking.
“The thought that we find expressed in [Mat. 11 : 19], is given again in [Luke 7 : 33–4–5], where we read: ‘For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children.’
“Whoever uttered these words, man or god; whoever wrote them, John or some one else one hundred or more years later, there can be no disputing regarding the lesson which is taught. It is that each individual is to determine for himself or herself in all things pertaining to personal conduct and habits. ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind’ is the central idea of the various renderings. There is no rebuke, expressed or implied, of intemperance; there is nothing that can be tortured into a condemnation of wine-drinking or into an approval of the principle of total abstinence, or that of prohibition. Here was his opportunity to condemn the drinking of wine, to speak for that which is now called temperance; but from his lips fell no words of warning; to those gathered about him he said nothing in favor of the great reform which Christians of to-day, falsely assuming to speak in his name, declare finds its sanction and inspiration, its bulwark and tower of defense, in the Bible.
“It seems that the good Samaritan ([Luke 10 : 34]) had with him a supply of wine with which he dressed the wounds of the stranger.
“[John 2 : 3–11]: ‘And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the 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. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.’
“[John 4 : 46]: ‘So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine.’
“The first miracle which Jesus performed was to convert six pots of water into wine! And this feat convinced his disciples of his supernatural origin and powers! And he did this to manifest forth his glory! Either this is true or the Bible is false. Whether true or not, it has been a most powerful argument against abstinence; it has resulted directly in making drunkards, as it has indirectly in making hypocrites and Jesuitical sophists. I of course mean by this last sentence that the seeming necessity to prove the Bible a temperance work has made any number of Christian apologists resort to all kinds of specious arguments and make any number of false claims in order to make good their assertions. The assumption that this wine was not of an intoxicating nature is purely gratuitous. There is not even the ghost of a fact to be found in support of it. Hundreds of passages, which I have quoted under their appropriate heads, prove beyond a doubt that the wine so often mentioned in the Bible was intoxicating; the words of the governor prove that this miraculously produced portion of it certainly was of the very best, for it is against all reason to suppose that men accustomed to the taste and effects of wine would pronounce simple grape-juice to be better than all that had already been served to them at the feast; and, finally, the declaration that this act of Jesus was a miracle and that it made his disciples to ‘believe on him,’ gives the last stroke to the already nearly dead ‘non-intoxicating’ theory.