"With a non-intoxicating wine. Jews never use fermented wine in their
synagogue services, and must not use it on the Passover, either for
synagogue or home purposes. Fermented liquor of any kind comes under the
category of 'leaven,' which is proscribed in so many well-known places in
the Old Testament. * * * I have recently read the passage in Matthew in
which the Paschal Supper is described. There can be no doubt whatever that
the wine used upon that occasion was unfermented. Jesus, as an observant
Jew, would not only not have drunk fermented wine on the Passover, but
would not have celebrated the Passover in any house from which everything
fermented had not been removed. I may mention that the wine I use in the
service at the synagogue is an infusion of raisins. You will allow me,
perhaps, to express my surprise that Christians, who profess to be
followers of Jesus of Nazareth, can take what He could not possibly have
taken as a Jew--intoxicating wine--at so sacred a service as the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper."
[Transcriber's Note: the asterisks in the preceding paragraph
are thus in the book.]
It is utterly impossible that Jesus Christ could have used fermented wine
as a symbol of His blood, for in its essential constituents, which are
alcohol, vinegar, etc., it bears not the slightest resemblance to blood;
whereas unfermented wine, in its essential constituents, which are albumen,
sugar, etc., bears the greatest resemblance to blood. This simple fact
ought to satisfy every intelligent man.
Then again, our Lord, when He took the cup and blessed and said, "Drink ye
all of it," knowing that fermented wine was included under the name of
wine, and as if foreseeing that His followers might mistake and use
intoxicating wine, carefully avoided the use of the word wine at all, and
called it the "fruit of the vine," which unfermented wine is and fermented
wine is not. It does seem that these facts should satisfy every
intelligent, Christian man. Can there be, my Christian brethren, a greater
profanation of a holy ordinance than the use of the drunkard's cup as a
communion wine, instead of the fruit of the vine? By the use of fermented
wine as a communion wine many a man who was struggling to reform his life
has been led back to drunkenness and death. I have known of some sad
instances.
It might be well for some of our clergy to hear and heed the warning voice
of the Sacred Scriptures:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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