It would tire the reader’s patience to extract from the Old Testament many proofs of the existence of drunkenness and its evil effects upon the ancient Hebrews; and although it is but due to them to say that their purer faith was accompanied by greater morality than we find in some other ancient races, still drunkenness, with all its attendant vices and crimes, must have prevailed to a great extent then, as it does in modern society, and it was denounced with equal vehemence. The same results accompanied or followed a drinking bout in the days of Solomon as in every other age. “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babblings? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine. They that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon wine when it is red, when it giveth colour to the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At last, it biteth like a serpent; it stingeth like an adder.”[122] “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink, that continue until night, until wine inflame them.”[123] The same heart-burnings existed, and the same grief to parents when their sons went to the bad, in those days as now. The same leniency, too, was manifested towards them, and similar means were used to wean them from their evil courses. “A king had a son whom he daily discovered carousing with dissolute companions, eating and drinking. ‘Eat at my table,’ said the king; ‘eat and drink, my son, even as pleaseth thee, but let it be at my table, and not with dissolute companions.’”[124] What a text is the following for a temperance discourse:—“And they have cast lots for my people, and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.”[125] In this short verse, the foulest depravities of ancient and modern days have been concentrated. The practice of nameless vices, the tears and wailing of the child torn away from its parent, reminding one of the wretch who, in our days, will barter his wife for a pot of beer; the deserted home, the last shred gone to pawn, and all “that they might drink.” Surely no straining of texts, no misconstruction of words, is needed by the temperance advocate whilst such lessons as this may be read from the Sacred Book.