Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/192

 "it isn't our God. The Church hasn't really defined its position, and of course some of the bishops are very liberal. But don't the dissenters in this country take a very firm stand in favor of prohibition? Most Americans are dissenters, aren't they? If so, then I should think you would call prohibition itself a religious movement."

"It has long been identified with the popular evangelical churches," I said.

"Don't talk to me about the evangelical churches," cried Willys. "The 'uplift' has hit the churches till they are nothing but community-improvement societies, with no more religion in them than the municipal waterworks. There is no more real relation between religion and prohibition than there is between signing the pledge and seeing the Beatific Vision. Wine is as much a part of our traditional religion as it was of the Greek religion. The Jews still drink their Passover wine. Why shouldn't they? What do you make of that passage in the Old Testament about the winecup in the hand of God? What do you make of the wine at the marriage feast in the New Testament? Or the wine in the Holy Grail? Or the sacramental wine, drunk by all the faithful, till the spirit of mystical fellowship evaporated