In the _Christian Union_ for July 11, 1891, will be found an article written by a clergyman which should not be allowed to go unnoticed. The reverend gentleman assumes in that article that "the life and teaching of Jesus Christ constitute a Divine standard for all His followers." And so do I most unequivocally; but I also claim that we should not be blinded by either strong confirmations or sensual appetites in favor of false views and evil habits, so that, having eyes, we see not the truth and consequently cannot lead a life in accordance with the truth. The writer truly says: "Christ is not to be blindly, but intelligently, followed." In other words, I would say the light afforded by science, by well-known facts and ancient history, must be allowed to shine upon such an important question as the one under consideration. Then again, the testimony of distinguished scholars who have devoted years to a careful consideration of the wine question in the light of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, of ancient history and science, should not be ignored, and statements made which have repeatedly been shown to have no foundation in truth, but which are contradicted by facts which at this day should be known by every man who attempts to write upon such an important question. In the consideration of this question the above writer appears to utterly confound good and truth with the evil and false, which, it is manifest, should never be done. His whole argument is based upon assumptions which we shall find, the more carefully we examine them, have no foundation in truth. He assumes that fermented wine is a good and useful article to be used as a beverage, and, after admitting that he thinks the law of Christian love requires a general abstinence at the present day, he says:-- "But I trust that this necessity belongs simply to the present epoch, and I am not without hope that we shall yet come to a time--though not in my day--when a pure wine can be used by society with no more seriously evil results than now are produced by the use of tea and coffee." By pure wine he means fermented wine. He apparently thinks that tea and coffee are harmless drinks. Of this more hereafter. Again he says:-- "Any permanent temperance reform, however great emphasis it may lay on a Christian duty of total abstinence, must draw sharply and maintain stoutly the distinction between total abstinence and temperance, between drunkenness and drinking. It must recognize drunkenness to be everywhere and always a sin, drinking to be made so only by the circumstances; temperance to be always and everywhere a duty, total abstinence to be only a means now to be employed for promoting temperance." Now let us examine this assumption in the light of science, facts, and history.