Speaking for myself and of myself, although a very moderate and small drinker, I am not an abstainer. {16} But though believing that many persons may take a small quantity of fermented liquor without being the worse for it, I also know that to many persons even a small quantity is more or less injurious; whilst as to others, I can but repeat what has been so often said before, and I do it with the greatest possible emphasis, that to many alcohol is a positive poison, unsuited to their temperaments, destructive to their health, and productive of the worst evils, both morally and physically. It is curious to notice, in passing, not only that the use of wine is alluded to through a large part of the Bible history, but also that the injurious effects of it seem always to have been precisely the same in character as those which are so much dilated on in the present day. Dr. Richardson, perhaps the greatest living exponent of the physiological properties of alcohol, and the greatest denouncer of its habitual use, speaks of its effects according to the increased quantities in which it is used. He describes its influence thus:—“In the first stage of alcoholism,” _i.e._, in small quantity, he says, “it tends to paralyse the minute blood vessels, producing their relaxation and distension, illustrated by the flush seen on the face of those who have (in familiar language) been drinking, by the redness of the eyes and nose,” etc., etc. This stage of excitement, he describes as being followed—if the quantity be increased—by some loss of muscular power, with disturbance of the reasoning powers and of the will; whilst again a further quantity produces a complete collapse of nervous function, when the drunken man, who previously, perhaps, had been excited, talking loud, and staggering in his walk, becomes stupid, helpless, and falls into a heavy sleep. And are we not all familiar with the quotations:—“His eyes shall be red with wine”; “Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging”; “They are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment”; “They shall drink and make a noise as through wine”; “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine.” “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”