Fruit of the Vine, vs. Wine.
By J. H. Waggoner
The wine makers are very ambitious to magnify their office, and they object to having their compounds discarded from the communion tables of the churches. But their compounds are alcoholic, and we doubt the propriety of admitting that which “bitteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder,” to the table of the sacred ordinance of the gospel. We have always recommended our brethren to secure pure juice of grapes for this service. And this is easily done. But a wine-dealer ridiculed the idea. He said, “That is not wine at all.” Suppose it is not, and what then? The Scriptures do not say wine was used at the Lord’s supper, but, “the fruit of the vine.” Who will say that sugar and water converted into alcohol, with perhaps an addition of drugs as is often the case, is “the fruit of the vine?” It is a vile intoxicating compound, not fit for any table, much less for the Lord’s table. We read this day in a prominent California paper that wine drinkers are not drunkards. In 1837 Louis Philippe, the “King of the French,” said, “The drunkenness of France is on wine.” Many a young man has formed the appetite on wine which carried him to a drunkard’s grave. “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine.” Here is a sufficient reason for heeding the injunction to “Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup.” It is a flattering seducer; a lurking foe. Avoid it. When Satan came among the sons of God as they presented themselves before the Lord, then evil befell the righteous. See Job 1. Wine is an instrument of Satan. Suffer it not in your midst when you come before the Lord in his ordinances, for by its means evil has befallen many who presented themselves before the Lord to worship. J. H. WAGGONER.