"I Don't Want to Catch Anybody *Not* Drinking..."

Just had to pass this on...

(hat tip to Paul at Spike is Best...)

From a blog new to me, called Owl of the Remove, comes this pithy sermon from Hilaire Belloc on the evils of not drinking;

"For who can be properly nourished, if indeed he be of human stock, without wine? St. Paul said to someone who had consulted him (without remembering that, unlike St. Luke, he was no physician), 'Take a little wine for your stomach's sake.' But I say, take plenty of it for the sake of your soul and all that appertains to the soul: scholarship; verse; social memory and the continuity of all culture. There may be excess in wine; as there certainly is in spirits and champagne, but in wine one rarely comes across it; for it seems to me that true wine rings a bell and tells you when you have had enough. But there is certainly such a thing as a deficiency of wine; and such a deficiency is one of the most awful ravenous beasts that can fasten upon a living soul..."

The title of this post references this classic Monty Python sketch (brought to you through the courtesy of the Philosophy Department of Australia's University of Woolloomooloo).

Comments

[professio]

Cheers!

[J.R. Stoodley]

Ha ha! An excellent post to read when drinking wine and surfing the net at 2 in the morning.

[The Masked Chicken]

I hate to be a party pooper, but Belloc is writing very much for his times. Alcoholics, pregnant mothers, people taking most medications (especially mood-altering or blood pressure-altering ones), and those people having a few other rare medical conditions, should NEVER take wine or anything containing ethanol. Most of these conditions (pregnancy, aside) did not exist or were not known to Belloc or St. Paul, for that matter.
Pity the poor person on hypertensive medication who also has celiac disease and can't receive the sacred host.

The Chicken

[Tim J.]

True enough, and most people now know (as it has percolated through the culture) that alcohol - like other things - should be approached with a measure of caution.

It is the poetic sentiment behind Mr. Belloc's hyperbole that I cherish, though. The knowledge that life is much more than simply ticking off time, and that the Christian life is something much greater than the avoidance of sin... it is a kind of expansive, living fire.

[ScottD]

Party Pooper indeed. Belloc's words aren't for a modern medical prescription and don't need the quickly spoken classifier at the end of the commercial. My only problem is that he neglects to mention the wonderful golden elixer known as beer.