The Nazarite, it is claimed, was commanded to abstain from wine. Yes, but only during the period of his separation. "After that the Nazarite may drink wine" (Num. vi, 20). God commanded Jeremiah to tempt with wine those who abstained from its use: "Go unto the house of the Rechabites and speak with them, and bring them into the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink" (Jer. xxxv, 2). Christ spoke as follows: "John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine.... The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber" (Luke, vii, 33, 34). This censure was evidently not unmerited. The first act in Christ's ministerial career was to manufacture three barrels of wine for a wedding feast; his last recorded act was a benediction upon the wine cup. Theology being no longer in demand, the Protestant clergy, contrary to the teachings of the Bible, and the traditions of the church, now find it popular and profitable to espouse the cause of temperance. But in championing one rational virtue they employ two Christian vices, hypocrisy and intolerance. The most inconsistent, the most uncharitable opponents of the liquor traffic to-day are these fresh converts who profess to be doing their master's will and who claim that his Word is the advocate of total abstinence and prohibitory laws. With fierce invective they declaim against the old God Bacchus, yet every anathema they hurl at him will apply with equal justice to their God and Christ. One of the most unscrupulous arguments ever adduced in support of any cause is that now advanced by some Christian temperance advocates to the effect that the wine sanctioned in the Bible was not intoxicating. With the same ease that they declare that in the Bible "black" means "white," that "hate" means "love," and "day" means "age," they declare that Bible wine does not mean wine, but unfermented grape juice. The Rev. Dr. W. M. Thompson, Rev. William Wright, Rev. S. H. Calhoun, Rev. C. V. A. Van Dyke, and other able Hebrew and Sanscrit scholars of Western Asia, who have made the history and customs of its people both ancient and modern a life study, affirm that such a thing as non-intoxicating wine was unknown, that the unfermented juice of the grape was never recognized as wine. Dr. Philip Schaff, the foremost Bible scholar of this country, affirms the same: "The wine of the Bible was no doubt pure and unadulterated.... It was genuine and real wine, and, like all wine in use in grape-growing countries, exhilarating. To lay down the principle that the use of intoxicating drink as a beverage is a sin--per se--is to condemn the greater part of Christendom, to contradict the Bible, and to impeach Christ himself, who drank wine and made wine by miracle to supply the marriage guests."