The Wine of the Bible, of Bible Lands, and of the Lord's Supper [pp. 564-595]

The Wine of the Bible,
sacred learning and scholarship. In the Bibliotheca Sacra for
January, 1869, is an able and candid article, entitled, "What
Wine shall we use at the Lord's Supper? " By Rev. T. Laurie,
D.D., formerly missionary of A. B. C. F. M. We shall have
occasion to refer to this at considerable length. Meanwhile it
is sufficient, just here, to quote his testimony in harmony with
that already adduced. Dr. Laurie practises total abstinence,
and at the polls votes for prohibitory laws against the sale of
intoxicating liquors.* He says:
"A remarkable instance of striving to commit the Bible to
the figment of an unfermented wine is found in the articles
under the words' Wine' and' Fruit,' in Kitto's Cyclovcedia of
Biblical Literature, written by Dr. F. R. Lees. But nothing
could be better fitted to prejudice an Oriental scholar against
the temperance reformation than to put these articles into his
hands. In the improved edition of this valuable Cyclopoedia,
just completed by Dr. W. Lindsay Alexander, Professor of
Theology to the Congregational Churches of Scotland, the
article of Dr. Lees is left out, and a mich more accurate and
reliable statement of the whole subject, by Rev. Isaac Jennings,
a Congregational minister in Kelvedon, Essex (England), is in serted in its stead.
"How can it be said that'the lawful use of wine in Scrip ture is always connected with tirosh, and that yayin is always
mentioned with disapproval?' No doubt'yayin is a mocker,
shaekar is raging, and whoso is deceived thereby is not wise'
(Prov. xx. 1), but it does not aid us in keeping men from being
so deceived to suppress a part of God's truth, or explain it
away. The end does not sanctify the means. No good cause
is promoted by unsound arguments. Our warnings are best
heeded when men see that we state the truth precisely as it is.
It is much better for the cause to follow reverently the teach
* Dr. Lee's Temperance Bible Commentary, with the usual candor and
charity of this class of writers, attributes this and other like productions to
"the instinct of conservatism, the motive of self-justification, and the bribery
of appetite."-Appeendix, p. 446. This, however, is not unworthy of one who
can argue that our Saviour did not make fermented wine at Cana, because
" the process of fermentation is one of decay" (p. 304). What, then, of the
miracle of the loaves?
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[OCTOBER,