_To use wine in wine countries, therefore, is essentially the same thing as to use cider in cider countries_; and it does not appear that the one, in such cases, is much more productive of intemperance than the other. The fact is, the wines used in countries where they are manufactured, contain but little more then half as much alcohol as most of the wine sold in this country, where, as a very respectable authority states, "for every gallon of pure wine which is sold, there is perhaps a pipe, or fifty times the quantity of that, which is adulterated, and in various manners sophisticated--the whole, without exception, the source of a thousand disorders, and in many instances an active poison, imperfectly disguised." But after all, I am not obliged, in this place, to prove that God has forbidden the use of wine, though led into this digression from the desire to correct a general misapprehension of the Scriptures on this subject; for the inquiry now relates to ardent spirits. And what shall we say concerning the permission, above pointed out, for the Jews to use _strong drink_? I say, it was merely a permission to use wine; for the strong drink several times mentioned in the Bible was, in fact, _nothing more than a particular kind of wine_, made of dates and various sorts of seeds and roots, and called strong drink, merely to distinguish it from the wine made from grapes. Nor is there any evidence that it was in fact any stronger, in its intoxicating qualities, than common wine. The truth is, _ardent spirits were not known until many centuries after Christ_: not until the art of distillation was discovered, which was not certainly earlier than the dark ages. _Not a word, therefore, is said in the Bible concerning distilled spirits._ All its powerful descriptions of drunkenness, and awful denunciations against it, were founded upon the abuse men made of wine. How much louder its notes of remonstrance and terror would have risen, had distillation thus early taught men how to concentrate the poison, may be imagined by the reader. After these statements, I trust none of those whom I address will any longer resort to the Bible for proofs of a divine permission to manufacture or use ardent spirits. But do the principles of the Bible _condemn_ such use and manufacture?