WINE IS A MOCKER | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 10, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 57.

"WINE IS A MOCKER."

WHAT is a mocker?—One that imitates in contempt or derision. To pretend to soothe an aching heart, when in fact embittering its pain—that is mocking. To set a table, laden with food and drink, outside the cell of a man who is starving and famishing, but just beyond his reach—that is mocking. To bid a drunken man be strong—that's mockery. To ask his broken-hearted wife to be cheery—that's mockery. But listen: "And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand, and they bowed the knee before Him, and mocked Him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon Him, and took the reed, and smote Him on the head." Matt. 27: 29, 30, and also verses 40, 42, 43. They were mockers.

Does wine do like that?—Let us see.

How does it mock?—Just the way a monkey, a man, or a devil does; by imitating, in derision, in the moral world, the physical chemistry of useful and legitimate alcohol. The chemist will tell you that alcohol is a colorless liquid, having very high refractive power, great affinity for water, great solvent power, and great antiseptic power. It has other properties; but these four, its refractive, absorbent, solvent, and antiseptic qualities, are those which distinctly characterize it.

Wine is a pauper and a vagrant in the world of art and science, but in the realm of morals, a sneering, mocking pretender to a throne. Alcohol exhibits great refractive power, that is, the power to make rays of light point wrong. Let me explain that opticians have discovered that when a beam of light travels from a rare medium, such as the pure ether of the upper sky, into a denser medium, such as the atmosphere, it is bent downward. For instance, if we go out to-night into the open air and look up at a star, we would say, "That star is right there." And we would suppose that if we had a rifle of sufficient range, a perfectly true eye, and perfectly steady hands, we could send a bullet into its very center. But the astronomer knows he would miss the whole thing by millions of miles, though it was as large as the sun. So when he points his telescope at it, he says, "That is the apparent place of the star." Why apparent?—Because the denser, lower air has broken the rays of light, so that they mislead the eye and project the star upon the sky in a false position. The true position is obtained by calculating the amount of refraction.

Wine mimics this quality in the moral sky, and sets it all awry from zenith to horizon. Alcoholize a man and every ray of truth that shines into his soul will be bent toward falsehood, and the sun of rightness will appear to be where it is not. The wrong will often appear the right, and vice versa; the emotional beauty will often change place with mere lust; the false will seem the true, the brutish will seem the manly, the ribald will seem the humorous.

Let me illustrate: Take a man of pure mind, with a keen sense of humor, but no taste for impurity. Can you make him relish a dirty story?—Certainly. Alcoholize him. Isn't that true? Take a young man of clean life, whose ideas of women have been formed by association with his mother and sisters. Can you make him harbor an insulting thought of a young girl passing him unprotected on the streets at night?—Oh, yes! Alcoholize him, and he will think it funny if his drunken companion leers into her face an insult. Sober, he would consider him a cur to guard all women from. Isn't that true? Let a young man marry a woman whom he loves perfectly, and her love will shine into his life straight from her heart to his, and guide his duty sweetly on right lines. Can the star of his love and duty be displaced without any change in her?—Oh, yes! Alcoholize him and the love ray will be bent down toward his baser being, and he will come to think it shines from a baleful and darkling asteroid of selfishness and peevishness; and in his duty he will grow devious, if not false. Isn't that true?

I sat one Sunday night beside the bed of a drunkard who was a scholar and, as the world estimates, a gentleman. He declined to consider Jesus Christ's old-fashioned remedy, but put forth his hand and said, "There's my hand and my promise never to drink again."

"But," I said, "you will break your word."

He flashed, "Do you say I am not a man of my word?"

I answered: "Yes, you are a persistent promise breaker. Your life is one long lie. You promised your wife this morning never to drink again, and steered straight to a saloon, and drank the Sunday through, and now you insult her by appearing to be true, and insult me by expecting me to believe you when I know you would lie now to shield the dramseller who forfeited his license by selling you drink to-day."

"Do you say I do not love my wife?" he said.

I replied: "No, but I say your lust for drink is greater than your love for anything. You think your wife suspicious and exacting when she is only loving and honest. You have spent her money for drink; that is larceny so mean the law has never thought of defining it. You have been seeing things wrongly. You are a victim of the refractive power of alcohol. Go back twenty years and look at your wife, your word, yourself; then look at them now. Get the parallax, and thank me for being honest with you."

The next morning he came to tell me he had found the Light of the World. Wine has great refractive power in the moral world. It is a mocker.—Selected.