WINE AT THE COMMUNION.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 6, Issue 309, 30 November 1883, Page 5

WINE AT THE COMMUNION.

The use of wine at the communion table is one of the phases of the teni-. peranoe question now agitated by theadvooates of total abstinence. It has ; brought/up the much discussed topic : of the kind of wine which is mentioned in the New Testament as used when , the miracle at the wedding of Oana was performed and the last supper was celebrated. There is a njarked division of opinion on this point among JW testant theologians, some maintaining that it was the unfermented juice of the grape; othera believing it to be actual intoxicating wine. If it was unfermented juice, the duty of all Christians who believe that th,e example of the fou.nd.er of that religion should be literally followed is very clear. Unfermented wine is, under those circumstances, clearly the sort to be get put upon the communion table. $ut tp those wh.o are convinced that the wine was not some harmless beverage, but the article whioh everybody reoognises as wine — alcoholic and more or le.~! stimulating — their duty is by no means simple. There comes a conflict between their obligations tp follow the example of Christ and their total abstinence principles. The Methodist Church has recognised, the difficulty by prespvibing unfejv. mended wjne at the lord's supper, i whenever practicable. This, however, by allowing a discretion in. the matter, doeg not settle- it. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union has taken up the subject and made some investigations. So far as has been ascertained, while many churches use unfermented juice, there are gtiU large number* who use wine, Qne of the objections to Its use is the danger that it may excite the appetite for drink in some one who can only subdue his appetite by never tasting liquor ; but it is the general testimony of clergymen so far as they have been asked that while there is, of course, danger of this resmlt they Jiav© never known any such instances. In England, however, Archdeacon 1 Jeffries declares that the danger is real, and Dr\ Richardson, tb* great EtttflUh authority ou aluoho io aj •

stinence, says he' knows' teli person's who dare not accept the communion forjfear of falling back into ways from which they have been rescued. One temperance tract on the subject says : " What men acknowledge .will kill the body: is still used as a. fit emblem of that' which giveth life to the soiil." " "What they consider too vile and dangerous to have oh their own tables they place upon the table of the . Lord." "It sends the office bearers of the Christian church to the rum shop." The position taken by many of the church people is that even if the beverage of the New Testament was wine that intoxicates, it is better for people who believe in total abstinence to totally abstain. — 'Detroit Free Press.'