By C. H. SPURGEON.
GAMBLING, in all its forms, is a sort of beehive of sins. It breaks the command which forbids us to covet, and it verges closely upon a violation of that which forbids us to steal; it has a peculiar hardening effect upon the heart, and it renders its votary more or less a partaker in a multitude of wrongs. The term which Wesley applied to slavery, when he called it “the sum of all villainies,” might with great justice be transferred to many of the various shapes of gambling. All who pursue it are not equally guilty; some, indeed, follow it as a mere pastime, and are hardly aware of the criminality of which they become partakers; and it may be admitted that very few would knowingly perpetuate those ills which, nevertheless, are the immediate and inevitable consequences of their action.
Take a glaring case of gambling on a large scale—the gaming-hall of Monte Carlo. Here many are ruined day by day: families are reduced to poverty, creditors deprived of their lawful due, and men who were once respected are turned penniless upon the world. Are not those who joined in the play partakers in the system which produces these mischievous results? The wives and children reduced to beggary—may they not accuse the gentlemen and the ladies who sat at the table with the foolish head of the household, and assisted at the emptying of his purse. Apparently they merely sported with a few gold pieces, which they could afford to risk; but in truth they helped at the spoilation of a family. Worse than this, those suicides! Those who fly from the consequences of their infatuation, and rush red-handed into their Maker’s presence! Who slew all these? The keepers of the gaming tables? Assuredly. But others are in the ring of manslayers. There would have been small lure to the tables if persons of cooler head and calmer blood had not taken their places there, and staked their moderate amounts upon the red and black. Every person uniting in the game has contributed his share to the dread catastrophe. Would not the reader’s conscience prick him if he had happened to be one of such a party? And if any have been there, and their consciences remain at ease when they know that numbers every year destroy themselves because they are beggared at those tables, then their play has done for them the worst of mischief, for it has deadened their moral sense.
A man frequenting a gaming-table becomes a partaker in all the sins and crimes which are known to come out of the system, and will always come from it as a matter of course. Hence, blood-guiltiness may now be lying upon skirts little suspected of such a stain. It is not probable that any practised gamester will own this; or that, if he did own it, he would feel alarmed by the confession, for this sin steels the heart. None but men accustomed to games of chance would have rattled the dice-box at Calvary, and played for the Redeemer’s vesture. We remember well the story of a city missionary, who found men playing at cards upon a box, covered with a white cloth, which turned out to be a coffin; and we were prepared to believe his statement, because of kindred instances of callousness caused by the same pursuit. A gambler can do anything. We were being startled by the story of a suicide, who had blown out his brains in a gaming-house, when our horror was overpowered by a deeper emotion as we heard a frequenter of such places say, ‘It was very disgusting on the part of the man! Why could he not have gone out of sight?’ Self-murder was nothing to him; but the indelicacy of shocking ladies and gentlemen provoked his virtuous indignation! Once let the mind be saturated with gambling, and it is rich soil, well prepared for the production of any crop of vice which the prince of darkness may see fit to sow therein.
What we have said of gambling is meant to apply to the habit in general, and not to public and professed gaming only. The things differ only in degrees and in name; but in their essence they are fraught with the same evils. Whether a man gambles with Government stock, or cotton, or wool, or wheat, or merely risks his cash upon the cast of dice, or the turn of a ball, is of small consequence to the moral quality of the action. At the present time temptations to this vice are everywhere: the young man confronts them at the club, in the billiard-room, and in the columns of the newspaper—yes, the religious newspaper; and worse still, he is invited to gamble for the benefit of a church or a meeting-house. Gentlemen are ready to send you wonderful gains from investments which they will themselves recommend to you: they know how to make thousands, but instead of using their superior knowledge for their own welfare, they generously give it to their clients for a percentage too small to be worth mentioning. Send on the money with which the speculation can be commenced, and your downward course has begun. You do not mean it, but you may be taking a fatal step, and like multitudes of others you will throw your money, your position, and your reputation into the vortex of speculation.
“Speculation is not gambling.” Perhaps not; but we leave far wiser men than ourselves to draw the line. A measure of risk attaches to all trading, and even the highest risks may be unavoidable in certain legitimate pursuits: this is one thing; but to go out of one’s way, and stake one’s possessions upon a chance, is quite another. Definitions are not needed where a thing is perfectly well understood by all but mere cavillers. There is a clear line of demarcation between the necessary speculation which attends all commerce, and the wild, illegitimate risk-mongering, which is essentially gambling in the garb of trade—gambling often of the worst kind.
The friend of his fellow-men should be earnest to dissuade them from the beginning of the habit of gaming, since it has such a powerful fascination about it that, once entangled by it, its votary appears to be unable to escape. The following instances we know to be true in substance, though the details are purposely obscured:—
A clergyman came to a certain hotel, and thought that he would ride over and see the Casino. He had no inclination to sit at the gaming table; indeed, he would have spoken of it with disfavour. He was interested by the play; he risked a few francs; he staked more; he lost all his gold and silver; he changed his notes; he left himself penniless, and was obliged to walk home—a weary march—for lack of means to pay his railway fare. He raised more cash, and was for a long time habitually in the rooms of the Casino, forgetful of the dignity of his profession and the claims of his position. The basilisk had fixed its eyes upon him, and he could not resist.
A gentleman, in moderate circumstances, came to a health resort, with a sum of money sufficient to meet his charges during the few months which he hoped to spend by the sea for the restoration of his strength. He also went to the tables out of sheer curiosity. It was his first visit; he was caught in the snare, and came forth from the room without a pound. He wrote home, and procured a hundred pounds. One would have thought that, once bitten, he would have been twice shy; but no, he was bent upon replacing his lost gold, and so resorted to the hall hard by the spot where pigeons are shot, and there, of course, he was plucked of every fragment of his last remittance, and was compelled to lose his holiday, quit the salutary air, and return home immediately. What an infatuation! He is a happy man if he has taken warning, and has henceforth abjured the all-devouring habit.
Many who have fixed incomes remain for years, and even for life, chained to the tyrant’s chariot-wheels. When the first of the month, or the quarter-day arrives, these moths flutter to the candle. It is only a matter of time: their wings are singed; and they pine in obscurity till the next season of renewed cash. Some even mortgage their allowances, and so in the midst of plenty are ground down by perpetual poverty. They are always going to strike the golden number! They have a sure system: they will yet astonish their friends, and justify their years of failure. Reason has long since ceased to affect them, and their long and bitter experience is equally lost upon them. The instances are many: the fact of the infatuation is undeniable.
But our readers are secure against such dangers. Are they? In these times practices which concealed themselves in the darkness are now braving the light. Ministers are named who attend the theatre and remain pastors of Nonconforming congregations; games of chance, which our Puritan forefathers abhorred, are tolerated in professedly Christian families; and our rising youth, first at boat-races, and then at horse-racets, become familiar with the prevalent practice of betting. Then, as we have already observed, certain advertising brokers continually bait their traps, and persuade young tradesmen and others to try their luck upon the Exchange. Frequently we hear of tradesmen and private individuals brought to grief in ways which are, in plain English, a form of gambling: they meddle with matters which they do not understand, burn their fingers, and become the prey of designing men, who know their way about among stocks, shares, mines, and bubble companies.
Verily, “he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent,” and “the love of money is the root of all evil.” There would not be half the distress in the world that there now is if men did not hunger after the meat from other men’s plates. To be satisfied with a moderate allowance prevents the grasping mode of business which devours the income of others. There is room for fair enterprise and honest energy, but greed and hard-heartedness find no space for themselves except by swallowing the feebler folk around them. Nothing short of all will satisfy some people, and to get this all they risk what they have. If they lose, the misery falls upon their families, and those who trusted them; and if they gain, it generally leads to the eating up of others as men eat bread. Whole trades have been tightened down to bondage for the workers and straits for the smaller men, by some one greedy individual whose methods of action have put on the screw, and caused thousands to suffer not for a day, or a year, but in perpetuity. They were able to do this by a speculation which was not one whit superior to a throw of the dice. Among men they may be had in honour so long as wealth is worshipped; but when true philanthropy and righteousness become the basis of renown they will sink into contempt. Political economy is pleaded, and we know enough of its iron laws; but at the last great day men will not be judged by the philosophy of Adam Smith, but by the laws of the Eternal. That gambling on a very large scale has ossified the public heart might be asserted with no small measure of truth, and proven from the fact that the terrible poverty of the age excites small compassion in many minds, for they meet it with the inevitable Political Economy argument, or else declare that statistics prove something or other, which neither fills the hungry nor clothes the naked.
Keep from the enticements of gambling in any and every form. “Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.” May no one to whom these words shall come be bird-limed by this pernicious practice; but avoid the evil even in its most harmless shape, if harmless shape of it there be!—Sword and Trowel.
“His name is Jesus. Who originated this name? It was planned from all eternity. Deep in the recesses of the Divine mind, deep in the counsel of Omnipotent love, there lay a jewel, a gem, which was to be manifested in the fullness of time, and to be the joy and glory of eternity. It was the name of Jesus. . . . It was not the man who gave this name to our Saviour, but eternal wisdom and love.”—Dr Adolph Sapher.