And we find in Exodus a still more explicit license, not only for drinking, but for buying and selling, intoxicating drinks It is proclaimed, upon the authority of Jehovah, "Thou shalt spend thy money for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after" (Dent, xiv. 26). We are sometimes told, but without reliable authority, that the wine here referred to did not possess very intoxicating properties. But it will be observed that the text did not stop at wine, but "strong drink;" thus leaving no doubt upon the mind of the reader but that they used strong liquors, even if we were warranted in assuming the wine was not of this character, which, however, we are not, and which we know is not true: for, although like the wine of the grape in other countries, it would not intoxicate while new, yet in that warm climate, as travelers affirm, it will ferment in a few hours. It is evident, then, that wine was one of their intoxicating beverages in addition to "strong drinks." And here we find a license for buying and selling and using both in a book which the orthodox churches would have us adopt as "the fountain of our laws, and the supreme rule of our conduct," ostensibly for the improvement of the morals of the people; when it is known to unbiased investigators of the subject that these and similar texts have been a stumbling-block in the progress of the temperance reform among that class of people who take the Bible as it reads without studying the art of extracting the old meaning with the clerical force-pump, and coining a new meaning of their own especially adapted to the occasion,--an art studied and practiced by the spiritually blinded devotees of all "the Holy Bibles" which God is assumed to have inspired for the salvation of the human race. I will cite one case in proof of the statement that a Bible containing such texts as I have cited is calculated to do much mischief in the way of retarding the temperance reform by furnishing the plainest authority for drinking and trafficking in intoxicating liquors. A friend, upon whom I can rely, related to me the following case: