STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 205 



Is that so? Is all the wisdom of this continent assembled in this 

 hall? Will not this great American Republic knoNv as well as we know 

 what to think of Dr. SpaUlinsr's opinions, unless this infallible Society 

 first votes and instructs them what to think ? It may be the vote of this 

 Societv is infallible, but I doubt it. 



What then is Dr. Spalding's offense? precisely the same as the 

 oflense of the Savior of men on this same point : pure bread and pure 

 wine He continuously used himself. The only two things he wrought a 

 miracle to produce were pure bread and pure wine; better than tlie com- 

 mon sort, as our good doctor proposes; so much better that men craved 

 it, even after "they had well drunken " of the old. The only two things 

 He gave the world, as a perpetual memorial of Himself and of His pecu- 

 liar inspiring and regenerating power, for all ages past and to come, drunk 

 or sober, were pure bread and pure wine; and so long as I remember the 

 Savior of men I can not smite the author of this essay with a very hard 

 fist, or a yen' hard vote. 



I have well read and well considered all that miserable twaddle of 

 special pleading, by which we are to believe that the commended wine 

 of diose days was not intoxicating; an argument to prove that they did 

 not make bread of flour in those days, would be just as conclusive. 



A man's language, really and necessarily means only what he knows 

 it will be understood to mean, by his own hearers and in his own age. 



Now. for hundreds and thousands of years, by all the millions who 

 ever read the Greek Testament, this new intei-pretation of the text was 

 never dreamed of. Ditl the Savior of men then really and practically 

 lie to all these g'^nerations of men who have gone before us, in order that 

 He might teach our ultra-temperance men a doubtful truth now: This 

 is indeed, "a hard saying; who can hear it?" 



No : He meant that we should personally and individually meet this 

 gjeat danger of humarf life and necessaiy human responsibilits-, and per- 

 sonally vanquish it. each for himself alone, as He did. This is the 

 only possible solution either of His words or His acts. He drank wine, 

 but He did not get drunk; nor should we. He made and commended 

 pure bread and pure wine; and so may we. He neither made nor com- 

 mended bread with arsenic in it, or ^^•ine with str\chnine or rot-gut 

 whisky in it. neither may we; at least so says Dr. Spalding, and so I 

 say. Others may be of different opinion. 



But. after all, I must correct Dr. Spalding on one point. 



He talks about our foreign wines that come over the salt water. But. 

 Mr. President, not one-hundredth part of our "foreign wines" ever 

 smelled salt water. Tliey are manufactured out of our rot -gut whisky, 

 stn-chnine. l(\g-wood. etc., etc., in New York and our other great cities, 

 and put into foreign and counterfeit casks and sold for pure wine. Dr. 

 Spalding, no doubt knows this better than I do; and it is these vile and 

 miserable compounds that he proposes to supplant with our pure Ameri- 

 can wines, notwithstanding that the attempt, with our present depraved 

 American tastes and habits, may be and will be attended witli those 

 great and appalling dangers and evils which the resolution sug- 



