64. 1Ti_4:4
1 Timothy 4:4, “Every creature of God is good,” etc. This text has no reference to drinks of any kind, but is directly connected with the meats named in 1 Timothy 4:3, and which some had forbidden to be eaten. These, the apostle says, are to be received and used, because they are the creatures of God, and by him given for the good of man. The original word broma occurs seventeen times, and is always rendered meat and meats, except once, victuals. Robinson, eatables, food, i.e., solid food opposed to milk. 1 Corinthians 3:2. It means food of all kinds proper to be eaten. But alcohol is not meat in any sense. It is not food; it will not assimilate, nor does it incorporate itself with any part of the body. Says Dr. Lionel S. Beale, Physician to King’s College Hospital, England, “Alcohol does not act as food; it does not nourish tissues.” Dr. James Edmunds, of London, says, “Alcohol is, in fact, treated by the human system not as food, but as an intruder and as a poison.” In keeping with this is the statement, 1 Samuel 25:37, “When the wine was gone out of Nabul.” This is singularly accurate, and accords with the most approved discoveries of science, viz., “that intoxication passes off because the alcohol goes out of the body—being expelled from it by all the excretory organs as an intruder into and disturber of the living house which God has fearfully and wonderfully made.” Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, has used the same illustration. The testimony of Dr. J.W. Beaumont, Lecturer on Materia Medica in Sheffield Medical School, England, is, “Alcoholic liquors are not nutritious, they are not a tonic, they are not beneficial in any sense of the word.” The original grant for food reads, Genesis 1:29, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Genesis 1:31 : “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.” The original grant extended only to vegetables. These were for meat, literally “for eating” or that which is to be eaten. Every direct product of the earth fit for food is here given to man. The design was to sustain life. Hence, whatever will not assimilate and repair the waste is not food, and not proper for the use of man. Who imagines, when the work of creation was finished, that alcohol could then be found in any living thing fresh from the hand of the Creator? God, by his direct act, does not make alcohol. The laws of nature, if left to themselves, do not produce it. By these laws, the grapes ripen; if not eaten, they rot and are decomposed. The manufacture of alcohol is wholly man’s device. The assertion that alcohol is in sugar, and in all unfermented saccharine substances which are nutritious, is contradicted by chemical science. The saccharine matter is nutritious, but fermentation changes the sugar into alcohol, by which process all the sugar is destroyed, and, as the alcohol contains no nitrogen, it cannot make blood or help to repair bodily waste. The testimony of eminent chemists is very decided. Sir Humphry Davy, in his Agricultural Chemistry, says of alcohol, “It has never been found ready formed in plants.” Count Chaptal, the great French chemist, says, “Nature never forms spirituous liquors; she rots the grape upon the branches, but it is art which converts the juice into (alcoholic) wine.”
Professor Turner, in his Chemistry, affirms the non-natural character of alcohol, “It does not exist ready formed in plants, but is a product of the vinous fermentation—a process which must be initiated, superintended, and, at a certain state, arrested by art”—Bib. Com. p. 370.
Dr. Henry Morrison, of England, in his Lecture on Medical Jurisprudence, says, “Alcohol is nowhere to be found in any product of nature, was never created by God, but is essentially an artificial thing prepared by man through the destructive process of fermentation.” The four following experiments tell their own tale:
“1. One pound of fully ripe grapes (black Hamburgs) were put into a glass retort, with half a pint of water, and distilled very slowly, until three fluid-ounces had passed into the receiver. This product had no alcoholic smell. It was put into a small glass retort, with an ounce of fused chloride of calcium, and distilled very slowly, till a quarter fluid-ounce was drawn; this second educt had no smell of alcohol; nor was it, in the slightest degree, inflammable.
“2 and 3. A flask was filled with grapes, none of which had been deprived of their stalks, and it was inverted in mercury. Another flask was filled with grapes from which the stalks had been pulled, and many of them otherwise were bruised. This flask was also inverted in mercury. The flasks were placed, for five days, in a room of the average temperature of about 70°.
“In the perfect grapes no change was perceivable. In the bruised grapes, putrefaction had proceeded to an extent, in each grape, proportionate to the degree of injury it had sustained; the sound parts of each continued unchanged.
“4. The grapes were now removed from the flasks, and the juice expressed from each. The juice from the bruised grapes had not an alcoholic, but a putrescent flavor. The juice from the sound grapes was perfectly sweet.
“Both these juices were placed in tightly corked phials half-filled, and subjected to a proper fermenting temperature. It was three days before the commencement of fermentation, in each, was indicated by the evolution of carbonic acid gas, as also by the color of the alcohol, and of the aromatic oils always generated in such cases. I, therefore, still believe it to be a fact that grapes do not produce alcohol; that it can result only where the juice has been expressed from them, and then not suddenly; and that, where the hand of man interferes not, alcohol is never formed”—S. Spence, Chemist to the Yorkshire Agricultural Society; F.R. Lees, Appendix B, pp. 198 and 199.
These justify the statement of Dr. Lees, that “neither ripened nor rotting grapes ever contain alcohol.” For the views of Professor Liebig on fermentation, see “Fermentation,” in this treatise.
“Lo, this have I found,” saith the wise man (Ecclesiastes 7:29), “that God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions.” The things created for food, and which are to be received with thanksgiving, are those which are in their natural and wholesome condition, and which nourish and strengthen the body, and not those which are in the process of decomposition. Rotten fruits of all kinds are rejected as innutritious and unwholesome. So also are decaying meats. It is a strange perversion of all science, as well as of common sense, to rank among the good creatures of God alcohol, which is found in no living plant, but which is to be found only after the death of the fruit, and is the product of decomposition. The analysis of wines, as published in the Lancet, Oct. 26, 1867, shows that, in one thousand grains of the wines named, there was only one and one-half grains of albuminous matter, while in the same amount of raw beef there were two hundred and seven grains, that is, one hundred and fifty-six times more nourishment in the same quantity of beef than in wine—Bib. Com. p. 370. The analysis of the beer in common use proves that there is more nourishment in one small loaf of wheat bread than in many gallons of beer. Medical men testify that the flesh of habitual beer-drinkers becomes so poisoned that slight wounds become incurable, and result often in speedy death.