Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

"O Times!

I laughed him out of patience; and that night
I laughed him into paticnce. The next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drank him into bed."

Tertullian (A. D. 200 to 220) speaks of the prohibition of wine to Roman women as in his time obsolete; and the prevalent desire for it among women was one of the greatest trials of St. Monica.

ANCIENT ABSTAINERS.

In all these ancient times there was not wanting those who

[blocks in formation]

abstained from the use of wine and other strong drinks. Indeed, temperance is older than intemperance. The Old Testatament abounds in examples of temperance. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were men of abstemious habits. Hagar, when sent by Abraham against her will into the wilderness, received from him bread and a bottle, not of wine, but of water. The priests were commanded to drink no wine nor strong drink, neither they nor enjoined as a "statute forever The reason assigned is very

[graphic]

PROV XXII 31.32.

their sons with them; and it was throughout their generations." significant: "That ye may put a difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean."

The Nazarites were total abstinence men; for we read, "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow the vow of a Nazarite, to separate

themselves unto the Lord; he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried." These men were teetotalers, emblems of purity. In such high esteem were they held that Jeremiah says of them: "They were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire."

Samson was a teetotaler. Before his birth his mother drank no wine nor strong drink, and he was set apart to be a Nazarite unto God, from the womb to the day of his death. He was a total abstinence man of the strictest kind.

The Bible affords the most striking proof of the corrupting influence of wine on the Jewish people, and of its own condemnation of such customs:

'Woe to them that are valiant to drink wine,

And men of might to drink strong drink!

For they have cast away the law of Jehovah of hosts,
And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”

"It is not for kings to drink wine,

-Isa. v, 22-24.

Nor for princes to desire strong drink;

Lest they drink and forget the law,

And pervert the rights of any of the afflicted.”

—Prov. xxxi, 4, 5.

"Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning to follow strong drink;

Who tarry until night that wine may inflame them!

And the lyre, and the harp, . . . and wine are in their feasts;

But they regard not the work of Jehovah,

And the doings of his hands they do not perceive.

Therefore shall my people be led into captivity."-Isa. v, 11.

How unmistakable is this language!

The Rechabites were temperance men. Jonadab, their father, was a man of exalted piety. Living in a very wicked age, this godly man determined to guard those over whom he .possessed an influence from the evils of intoxication, at that time

[graphic]

CONVEYING WINE IN GOAT-SKINS FROM THE SPANISH VINEYARDS.

[graphic][merged small]

CHAPTER IV.

WESTERN AND NORTHERN EUROPE.

TRABO relates that the ancient Spaniards were very hos

STRA

pitable, delighting in entertainments, treating liberally with ale, “their usual beverage," and with what little wine they had, "sometimes exhausting a whole vintage in a single night." He further says, the only wines in ancient Gaul being on the south coast, and the people more inland being very fond of it, it furnished the means of traffic to Italian merchants, who carried it up the Rhine, and frequently exchanged a vessel containing about eighteen gallons for a young slave. Some of the Gallic tribes rigorously excluded wine, as the Suevi, of whom Cæsar (Bk. iv, sec. 2) says, "They do not permit wine to be imported to themselves at all, because, by this thing, in respect to enduring labor, they believe men to be softened and made more effeminate."

Some authors assert that the vine was introduced into Gaul by the Romans, while others are confident that it was cultivated long before their arrival, even before the advent of the Phoceans. It is related that "on the occasion of the marriage of Eumenes, chief of the Phoceans, with Palta, the daughter of Nemeus, king of the Salii, who inhabited the coasts of Provence, this princess, following the custom of the country, presented to her chosen bridegroom a tankard full of wine and water. Cato the Elder informs us that, in his day, vine plants were brought into Italy from Gaul; and Cicero, in his speech in behalf of Fonteius, refers to the great trade in wine carried on by the Gauls."

"Domitian ordered all the vines in Champagne to be uprooted and destroyed. He had an idea that the culture of the vine caused people to neglect that of cereals and general agriculture, and he also feared that the desire for drinking wine would

attract the barbarians to the country." They were not replaced until the time of the Emperor Probus, (A. D. 280.)

Allusions to Champagne wines are found in the will of St. Remy, near the close of the fifth century, who left to various churches the vineyards he owned at Rheims and Laon, together with the villeins employed in their cultivation. The incessant wars of the succeeding centuries in this district greatly reduced this cultivation. It was subsequently revived under the patronage of Bishop Pardulus of Laon. Under Francis I. and Henry II. the wine grown on the banks of the Marne came first into court favor; and it is said that Charles V., Henry VIII., and Leo X., all had agents at Ay to procure the best vintage wine.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

The Anglo-Saxons, in their ancient home on the Continent, prior to their invasion of England, were hard drinkers, as well as hard toilers. "The 'ale-feast' was the center of their social life." "But coarse," says Green,' "as the revel might seem to modern eyes, the scene within the timbered hall, which rose in the midst of their villages, was often Homeric in its simplicity and dignity. Queen or earl's wife, with a train of maidens, bore ale-bowl or mead-bowl round the hall, from the high settle of king or ealderman, in the midst to the mead-benches ranged round its walls, while the gleeman sang the hero songs of his race."

THE DANES.

The Danes or Northmen were desperate drunkards. In their own country they led a wild and venturesome life. They carried their habits of intoxication to such an excess that even their religious ceremonies were systematically concluded with drunken orgies. When their sacrifices were ended, they filled and emptied a stoup of liquor in honor of Odin, the god of victory; others to the goddess of love and fertility; others to Braji, the god of eloquence; and then continued to drink in

"History of the English People,” vol. i, p. 16.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »