prohibition the sole object of which was to remind the Jews of the haste of the original passover. Paul’s language in 1 Cor. 11:21 (see note there) makes it evident that fermented wine was used by the primitive church in the administration of the Lord’s Supper; and the Rabbinical rule, requiring water to be mixed with the wine at the paschal feast (see Lightfoot on Matt. 26:27), lest drunkenness should disgrace it, makes it equally evident that wine was used in the original O. T. festival. There is nothing in the language of the N. T. to indicate any discrimination between fermented and unfermented wines; Christ himself never directly or indirectly discriminates between them; neither do any of his apostles; and it is apparently indicated if not necessarily implied in the account here, and in other passages, that it was the ordinary fermented wine which Christ employed; see especially Matt. 11:19, “Behold a glutton and a wine-bibber,” and Matt. 9:17, “No man having drunk old (_fermented_) wine, straightway desireth new (_that of the last vintage and unfermented_), for he saith the old is better.” The language of Mark 14:25, “I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine,” etc., plainly implies that he had been accustomed to drink it freely and as a beverage with his followers. I judge then that Christ here made, and throughout his life ordinarily used, fermented wine; and this is the nearly unanimous judgment of the best unprejudiced Biblical scholars. The opposite opinion is of later origin, an after-thought, the product not of impartial Biblical research, but of the temperance reformation. (2) _Significance of these facts._ It appears to me clear, in the light of these facts, that neither Christ’s precept nor his example can be cited in favor of the doctrine of total abstinence, as a universal and permanent obligation from all use of wine, even as a beverage; that it rather indicates that he recognizes the right and propriety of so using it; and that the doctrine and practice of total abstinence must be maintained, if at all, not by any specific precept, nor by the general course of Christ’s life, but from local and perhaps temporary considerations, and solely on the ground that the Christian must always be willing to surrender a lawful gratification for the sake of a higher good, either to himself or to others (Matt. 5:29, 30; Rom. 14:21; 1 Cor. 6:12). It is equally clear that neither Christ’s precepts nor his example justifies the ordinary drinking usages of American society of to-day, with its bars, its wine-shops, its beer-gardens, its fiery wines and strong liquors, and all its attendant evils. The ordinary wine of to-day is a very different article from that in Christ’s day. The _word_ is the same, the _thing_ is different. And the usages are equally different. It is not my province here to enter into a general discussion of the temperance question, or even of the Bible teaching on the subject; but for the