and interlace with the Roman Civil Codes, he will see that the earlier German, French and Anglo-Saxon "witan," or wise men, legislated, in all their generations, against fermented wines. Yet, more, the reasoning which is presented as justifying and demanding legislation, as to wines and fermented liquors, is testimony that experience in modern Europe as to the demoralizing and ruinous influence of wines, is just that ascribed to them by the ancients.

To this discussion, much has been contributed by the published treatises and addresses of Honorable Messrs. William E. Dodge, William B. Spooner, and Neal Dow; and of Messrs. A. M. Powell, J. W. Ray, B. D. Townsend, J. L. Baily, and J. Black; as also by Rev. Drs. A. A. Miner and B. St. James Fry, and by Rev. Messrs. E. H. Pratt and W. F. Crafts; who have discussed the economical and social interests involved.

Here the work of Honorable Robert C. Pitman, LL.D., Associate Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, just issued, and entitled "The Problem of Law as to the Liquor Traffic," comes in with its special testimony. While most of the volume is devoted to the evils of distilled intoxicants, the 19th Chapter, entitled the "Milder Alcoholics," brings an array of testimony by careful ob

out

Wine-Drinking in France.

299

servers quite unlike that of casual tourists in Europe. Of these gathered testimonies, the following are specimens: In France, Montalembert said, in the National Assembly, as early as 1850, "Where there is a wine-shop, there are the elements of disease, and the frightful source of all that is at enmity with the interests of the workman." In 1872, the French Government appointed a committee to report on the national vice of wine-drinking. In the report of their Secretary, they say, after citing the fearful demoralization produced by wine before, during, and after the war with Prussia: "There is one point on which the French Assembly thought and felt alike. To restore France to her right position, their moral and physical powers must be given back to her people. . . . To combat a propensity, which has long been regarded as venial, because it seemed to debase and corrupt only the individual, but the prodigious extension of which has resulted in a menace to society at large and to the temporary humiliation of the country, seemed incumbent on the men to whom that country has entrusted the task of investigating, and remedying its evils." In Switzerland, Dr. Guillaume, of the National Society for Penitentiary Reform, states, in 1872, that "the liberty of the wine-traffic, and intoxication therefrom,

is the source of fifty per cent. of the crimes committed."

In Italy, Cardinal Acton, late Supreme-Judge at Rome, has stated that nearly all the crimes at Rome "originated in the use of wine." Recorder Hill, appointed to gather facts abroad, to influence British legislation, reported in 1858, "Each of the governors of State prisons in Baden and Bavaria, assured me that it was wine in the one country, and beer in the other, which filled their jails." American legislation as to wines and beers, is but following modern as well as ancient experience; for all the dangers attending the use of distilled liquors are linked to the use of fermented wines.

WINE IN RECENT CHURCH REFORM.

As just intimated, that peculiar proviso of the most advanced American legislation, which, in forbidding the local prohibition of the sale of "intoxicating wines" for certain for certain "necessary uses, as "medicinal and sacramental purposes,' is the hinge of thought on which, for ages, good men have sought the light of truth. Their con. victions have centered about two points: first, the fact that Gospel "temperance" implies and requires abstinence from intoxicating beverages; second, that it is the duty of the Chris

Wine in Recent Church Reform. 301

tian Church to seek, if it may be found, an unfermented and unintoxicating wine.

It should be observed, that among earnest Christian workers, in City Missions especially, many reformed inebriates have been brought into Christian Churches, both in Great Britain and in America. In the recent large increase of this number, the danger of reviving, at the Lord's Supper, a craving for intoxicating drink, has become an alarming reality. Men, like Mr. Moody, who never knew the power of this habit, have supposed, that by regeneration the thirst for intoxicants is eradicated. Others, like Mr. Gough, who have had personal experience, attest that "the law in the members" is never eradicated; that the struggle to give the preponderance to the "law of the mind" is lifelong; and that it is presumption, not faith, that would require an intoxicating wine to be used at the Lord's Supper; as it would have been presumption, not faith, a tempting," not a trusting God, in Jesus, to have violated the law of nature by leaping from the pinnacle of the temple. Hence, reformed inebriates, with one voice, have asked for an unintoxicating wine at the Lord's Supper; and, when this provision has been thought impossible, they have conscientiously abstained often from partaking of

the cup.

In meeting this demand of Christian conviction, a large addition to the number of advocates for abstinence as temperance has been called forth; while many have united in seeking an unintoxicating wine. This drift of popular religious conviction has been so strong, as to reach men of eminence in every branch of the Christian Church.

Four years ago it found expression in the Roman Catholic Church. While in Cincinnati, Ohio, Archbishop Purcell commended temperance among German and Irish Catholics, yet declared that beer was needed to give strength to the laborer, quoting, but misinterpreting, Psalm civ. 15 and 2 Macc. xv. 39; in New York city, Archbishop, now Cardinal McCloskey, declared that abstinence from intoxicants was the only true temperance; and he cited Christ's abstinence in the agonies of death as teaching the doctrine. At the same time, in England, Archbishop Manning, as the representative of Roman Catholi cism in Great Britain, urged that entire abstinence from all intoxicants was the only hope of saving the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic races from physical and spiritual degeneracy.

In the English Episcopal Church a louder and more united voice has been heard. Some two years since, some conscientious clergymen in the diocese of the Bishop of Lincoln, having em