this heartless and self-indulgent course" when on earth he was living and acting in omniscient comprehension of every temptation to which each soul of man would be exposed in all coming ages. For it is Dr. Plumb who emphatically asserts, "The Lord Jesus Christ before he came to the earth perfectly knew all coming history; he clearly foresaw every exigency that could ever arise; he planned his own earthly life in every smallest particular and with reference to all the long future." That settles on his own principles whether or not Christ in the first century abstained for the sake of the tempted of this nineteenth century. Christ does not demand of his disciples any stricter self-denial for the sake of others than he himself practiced on their account. For us to claim that he did not set the example, and then ourselves to abstain from any scruples whatever, is to profess to be in advance of Christ; it is for the servant to set himself above the Master; it is to cast reflections on the character and conduct of our blessed Lord. If he drank alcoholic beverages we may do the same. Not that we must, but we may. There can be no obligation to abstain which he would not have recognized and enforced by his own example. If he indulged, indulgence is innocent. If we must abstain because of our influence, his is infinitely greater. If he has sanctioned the habit of wine-drinking by his practice, that fact must outweigh every other in a controversy upon the subject. If the charge which is brought against him of being a wine-bibber be sustained, then we have no invulnerable argument with which to urge the duty of total abstinence. In answer to the soundest objection which we may bring against the use of intoxicating liquors, it will be sufficient for every man to cite the example of Christ, and to claim its sanction for his indulgence, provided it be kept within the limits of moderation. And intrenched behind such scriptural defenses it will be impossible to dislodge the drinking customs of society. The cause of temperance will receive a blow from which it can never recover. That cause will not prosper unless it is built upon the will and word of God. The doctrine of total abstinence will not command the obedience of men unless it comes to them with a "Thus saith the Lord." Every thing that is vital to this great issue is determined by Christ's position upon the question. With tremulous interest, therefore, we proceed to inquire, Was Jesus Christ a wine-bibber? And let us consider II. THE CHARGE AND ITS AUTHORS. 1. What does the charge imply? It is all contained in the epithet "wine-bibber," which is so contemptuously applied to Christ. Webster defines the English term, "One who drinks much wine, a great drinker." Worcester defines, "One who drinks wine habitually or to excess, a tippler." The Greek term is oivoñóτηs. It is used only in this connection in the New Testament. The LXX used it to render the Hebrew, (sovai-yayin,) literally, "soakers of wine." (Prov. xxiii, 20.) It is also found in classic Greek, (Anacreon 72; Luc. Asin. 48; and Polybius xx, 8, 2.) In the version of Wycliffe (1380) it is rendered "drynker of wyne" in Matthew, and in Luke “drynkynge wiyn." Tyndale (1534) renders "drynker of wyne" in both Gospels. Beza translates vini-potor, "drinker of wine," in Matthew, and both Beza and the Vulgate bibens vinum, drinking wine," in Luke. In the Greek, as in the other tongues, "drinker" has an intensive force indicating the habitual repetition of the act. It gives emphasis to the habit rather than to the effect of the habit. The use of the connected term payos, accurately rendered "gluttonous," marks this sense. The charge of being an oivonóτηs did not necessarily imply that Jesus used wine for the purpose of stimulation rather than of nutrition, or that he drank stimulating wines to intoxication, although both may have been intended by the cavil. It does mean, however, that he used wine, whether intoxicating or not, customarily, and perhaps 'immoderately. And yet how much less such an accusation might imply than our nineteenth century conceptions of intemperance would suggest is indicated by a note of Dr. Gill on Deut. xxi, 20: "According to the Mishna, a glutton and a drunkard is one that eats half a pound of flesh and drinks half a log of Italian wine—a quarter of a pint-which would be at this day reckoned very little by our grandsons of Bacchus, as Snickard observes, but in an age of severer discipline, in the tender candidates of temperance it was reckoned too much." And then he adds, "The Jews seem to refer to this when they charged Christ with being a glutton * Quoted in "Temperance Bible Commentary," p. 57. and a wine-bibber." In substance the epithet was very nearly equivalent to our modern designation of "moderate drinker.” 2. Who made anciently this charge? The only clue we have to an answer is given in Christ's own words: "They say, (Aéyovo,) Behold, a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber," etc. "They say" is always untrustworthy authority. Candid men never accept its evidence. It is usually false, and oftentimes foully calumnious. The truth in any given instance is ordinarily to be reached only through an absolute reversal of its testimony. Mr. Patmore, in writing of the gifted William Hazlitt says: "Precisely because he was the most original thinker of his day we heard him held up a mere waiter upon the intellectual wealth of his acquaintances—a mere sucker of the brains of Charles Lamb and Coleridge. Precisely because his face was pale and clear like marble, we saw him pointed out as the 'Pimpled Hazlitt.' Precisely because he never tasted any thing but water, we saw him held up as an habitual gin-drinker and sot." Hazlitt himself said: "If I had been a dram-drinker the world would have called me a milksop." It would, undoubtedly, have done the same with Jesus. But, it is said, it is Christ himself who makes us acquainted with this charge. "He tells us that his drinking wine brought on him a railing accusation of the men of his generation," says Dr. Moore.+ But this was not a confession of judgment on his part. On the contrary, his language very clearly implied that his drinking, whatever it was-for he did not say "drinking wine," as Dr. Moore affirms-furnished no ground for the charge of being a "wine-bibber." It is true he attempted no explicit denial of the allegation; but neither did he deny that John had a devil, (Matt. xi, 18,) or that he was himself also a glutton and a sensualist. For this last accusation was contained in the assertion that he was (6 a friend of publicans and sinners." But why did he make no denial of these charges? Simply because he knew none was called for. His enemies perfectly well understood that they were false. They knew that he was not a wine-bibber in any such sense as the word was intended to convey. But they were bent on destroying his influence as a moral teacher and religious reformer. "My Friends and Acquaintances," London, 1854, vol. ii, p. 348. "Presbyterian Review," Jan., 1881, p. 88. They judged that they could do this most effectively by assailing his private character. So they fabricated and tried to fasten upon him the charge of reckless self-indulgence. But to all their calumnies he deigned only the simple answer, "Wisdom is justified by her children." (Matt. xi, 19.) My life and labors are my sufficient vindication. Those who know me need no denial from my lips; those who hate me would receive none. * The fact that his enemies put gluttony, and sensuality, and wine-bibbing on a par proves the estimation in which the latter habit was held. It was reckoned a disgrace in that day as it is in our own. And yet on the ground of these unscrupulous slanders we are asked to believe that Christ exposed himself to that disgrace. It would be just as reasonable to regard him as a blasphemer, because he was charged with that offense before the high court of Caiaphas. It is not improbable that he who came "to seek and to save that which was lost" sometimes found himself in the company of those who drank immoderately, and possibly to intoxication. But to argue from such a circumstance that he in like manner indulged would compel the further admission that he yielded to gluttony and sensuality. It is claimed, however, that "his example as a user of wine is expressly contrasted by himself with the example of his forerunner, John the Baptist, who, being a Nazarite, was an abstainer from wine." But this argument proves too much, if it proves any thing. If Jesus must have partaken of all kinds of wine, fermented and unfermented, because John abstained from all kinds, then, by parity of reasoning, he must have indulged in all the viands of Judea, since John ate only "locusts and wild honey." But the contrast in this case is neither universal nor specific, but general. John, as a Nazarite, was vowed to abstinence from all products of the vine, whether solid or liquid, "from the kernels even to the husk." (Num. vi, 1-4.) Jesus was not a Nazarite, and was under no such obligation. He was perfectly free to satisfy his natural wants with any of "the good creatures" which his Father in heaven had provided. And in fact we know that he did partake of "the fruit of the vine." (Matt. xxvi, 29, etc.) But that in any instance this was an intoxicating article is a wholly unwarranted and gratuitous assumption. * Prof. Bumstead, "Bibliotheca Sacra," Jan., 1881, p. 86. E We must now enlarge the sphere of our inquiry, and examine the grounds on which, at the present day, it is claimed that the example of Christ sanctions the use of alcoholic beverages. What are the alleged facts in support of which testimony is offered? Careful analysis reduce the specifications of the charge to three: (1) Jesus Christ made fermented wine; (2) Jesus Christ commended fermented wine; (3) Jesus Christ used fermented wine. Before we enter upon the detailed examination of these several specifications, some III. PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION will be necessary concerning an assumption which is common to them all, and which, if it be conceded, settles the whole question at once and affirmatively. It is the assumption that there was and is but one kind of wine, and that fermented, and, when taken in sufficient quantities, intoxicating. Chancellor Crosby says, "There is not a chemist or a classical scholar in the world who would dare risk his reputation on the assertion that there was ever an unfermented wine in common use, knowing well, that must preserved from fermentation is called wine only by a kind of courtesy (as the lump of unbaked dough might be called 'bread,') and that this could never, in the nature of things be a common drink." Prof. Bumstead makes similar assertions;† declaring that the theory "of an unfermented wine has failed to commend itself to the scholarship of the world." And Dr. Moore remarks, § "The history of the doctrine of unfermented Bible wine cannot be carried back beyond a few decades; and this fact furnishes a préjugé légitime against it." As to the argument from scholarship, it is sufficient to say, there are many and eminent authorities, inferior to none and superior to most in scholarship, who do un *"A Calm View of the Temperance Question." For instance, he speaks ("Bibliotheca Sacra," Jan., 1881, p. 109) of "the weakness. . . that has driven so many of the less scholarly advocates of the doctrine [total abstinence] to adopt the theory that Christ employed an unfermented wine." And again (ibid., p. 113) he alludes to "the fiction that Christ made and used an unfermented wine." "Bibliotheca Sacra," Jan., 1881, p. 115. |