WINES OF THE SCRIPTURES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 169, 18 July 1908, Page 7

WINES OF THE SCRIPTURES.

/TO THE EDITOR,

jSir,—Mr, Heffer's letter of July Bth has just reached me, and-with your' kind permission, I will try to make clear to every unprejudiced .mind the difference, between "clean and unclean," "holy and unholy," which Mr Heffer evidently has not been able to perceive. Ist The holy. In the Bible there are mahyi different beverages classed under the name of "wine." Some were boiled raisin water, fresh pressed grape juice, s boiled grape —"Pharoah's cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed the grapes into the cup{ and gave the'cup to Pharoah." Gen. 10-11. Here we find pure unfermented grape -guice the drink of the Eastern monarch. Again in Deut. 32-14. While the Lord alone, did lead him, he drank the pure blood of the grape." In Isaiah 65-8: "Thus saiththe Lord: As tKe new wine is fQund in the cluster." Again our\ Savious spoke of "new wine in new! bottles" free irom fermentation. If the new wine were pu,t into old bottles, fermentation would begin and the bottles would burst and the wine be lost. * At the Ararat vineyard, Victoria, Mr Andrew Jackson makes' nothing but unfermented wine. He turns tons and tons of grapes into a delicious, thirst-quench-ing, y strengthening beverage, simply by sterilising by/heat, according to Pasteur's plan. These splendid wines are obtainable, in New Zealand. In California-they make tons of-grape essence free" from alcohol in their vineyards, and the same in Southern France and Italy. Now having proved that pure unintoxicating winje was known to the ancients, as it is well known in our own day. I .turn to the other side, the "unclean", the "unholy." Grape juice that is fermented produces two deadly poisons, —alcohol and carbonic acid gas—as Mr Heffer truly says, and here is what God's Holy Word says about such wine:—;" Their wine is the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps." Duet., 32-33. "Look not thou upon , the jvine . . . When it

■moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." ' Proy:; 23, 31-32. The words "moveth itself aright" fheans fermentation, for the whole liquid is seething, bubbling, moving. In Habbakuk 2 we find the strongest words in our language used to typify intoxicating wine: "Hell and death." Again in Isaiah sth the same awful words; and in Isaiah 28th: "Hell and death are spoken of in I connection with the drunkenness of the people." In Jeremiah 35 th%, Rechabites were highly praised^ for refusing wine, and Paul said in Romans 11, 21: "It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor anything (beer, brandy, 'whisky, or anything) whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended or made weak." "We then, that a*e strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and / not to pleage ourselves." We willingly and gratefully accept the use of the good gifts of God, but when they "have gone through what Bacon Leibeg calls "Fermentation, the first process of rottenness and decay,"- and what Mr Heffer quotes as "decomposition," we take thevßible meanings and utterly refuse them. .Our brothers are made weak, the'-land is filled "with drunkenness, the Empire is injured,-the nation is physically deteriorating through drink, and we listen to the 16,700 doctors who plead for our children to be taught the effect of alcohol on the human body, and we refuse to be among those who call "bitter" "sweet" and ."evil" "good," but stand with the called of God to put the difference between the holy and unholy. Ih the/ name of our God, who wills not that t one poor weakwilled man should; perish, in the name of the^ dear little helpless children, in the name of our great Empire, in the name of all; that is beautiful, pure and prand, I Wk every voter to strike out the top line of the local option paper on polling day, and turn Mr Heffer from a brewer into a baker—Yours, etc,

BESSIE HARRISON LEE