Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1903-03-26

BESIDE, taking your own ground, even II
there is such a thing. there is only one
chance out of whole hundred which will
p become aeoa certainty aItaa Well you say, 1T
chance. AS chance is good, them"
Yes, but BIS chance is poor. In other
words, one mans chance neutralizes an
other; therefore, there are no hundred
chances. If you have bought one good
chance, then ninety nine have paid for =
poor chance. What equality is there in
that? Thus, even on your owR ground
there IS nc such thing as chance. And,
from the high standard of science and act
ual fact, there is no such thing in this
world, in the entire universe, chance.
Ninety-ninc have bought nothing, and you
have taken their money, and if You dA,t
teel sI mean IN taking it y9H %, are meaner % ?nsn
then, is left to gambling? No moral right
at all No justice whatever. It is clear,
clean, absolute. unequivocal wrong. Moth
ing is left bdt the excitement and the un-
crazy hope of getting rich without paying
for it. and whoever entertains it is rum
ming against the everlasting laws, and you
can dig his grave.
Now, finally, want to remind you where
this mental jugglery ends. It ends as
poison ends. 1t is poison OF the mind, an
Intellectual poison. Just as poison enters
the tissues Of the body and acts upon the
system, SO it acts upon the intellect. At
first it excites, then follows reaction. Then
more of the poison is taken, with similar
reaction, and again more is taken and more
reaction. So. there is constant play and
and more of the intellectual poison with
the reaction. God help the man, for the
undertow has got him! 1
NV dear friends, there is something to
me absolutely appalling about getting un-
der the power without knowing it of that
kind Of intellectual poison. | speak ear.
gifted men who have yielded to it and gone
down. The mental unreason that is IN
vol :'ed in gambling unhinges mems braias.'
Indulging in gambling becomes something
| that man can hardly himself stop. Yon
know men never stop doing thing unless
a motive comes which is stronger than the
motive that leads them to do it. The man
| goes on and goes on until the. impulse and
motive to do the thing becomes stronger
| than the motive that comes in TO stop it.
| just the moment the impulse becomes
stronger than the constraining motive then
it is goodbye, it is good-bye! Boys 6egin
by betting on marbles or putting up stakes
| teresting." It makes the game more inter-
esting to the devil. Then comes the race
| track. The more refined the man and the
finer the intellect the more surely the dis
ease. Nothing is so CHASTITY as the craving
for gambling which gets hold of a fine
a church worker, told me of man who
confessed to him that he had crept up
stairs in the dead of winter to his little
sleeping girl and taken away the clothing
that covered her and the shoes which she
wore, put them under his coat and skunk
off and pawned them for rum-the demon
curse Now, with gambling the frightful
monomania is still worse. If there is any
young man here this morning who has any
suspicion that the serpent is getting that
coil around him, then quick, quick, or you
are a lost man! You are a lost boy!
ter lock yourself in your room and live on
bread and water. You had better hold
your hands in the fire until the veins burst
than go on with the fend of gambling. Am
too urgent? Forgetting the dignity Of the
pulpit? Let the dignity, of the pulpit 60.
boys face and thank God that your boy
is safe. Then pray for another whose boy
is gone, or whom she thinks is gone: Gods
grace is great and she has come to her pas
tor and spoken of this matter.
By your kind indulgence I want to refer
to Just one more point. It is sometimes
said that gambling is the product of bust.
ulatlon, as its Latin origin implies, is es
sentially foresight. It is an endeavor to
. look ahead and determine values. 1t is not
an appeal to chance. We see the same root
to the word inspection, or the word re-
! spectacle or the noun specular, which il
the same Latin word. Some forms of bust
ness speculation are, of course. unfair, but
: in a large business sense speculation is not
; guessing in advance, but looking in advance
| and do not believe the two go together
; In new. strong countries speculation is al
: most always the accompaniment of bust
, ness opportunity. But in dead countries
: such as Spain was fifteen years ago, have
, poticed that while business speculation i.
! almost dead gambling is far more preva
lent even than here. See the higher Eng
lish society in Queen Anne's time, minis
. ters. everybody gambled, but there was no.
much business speculation. No, my friends
it IS idleness craving for excitement, illu
sion, bad company, corrupting morals
These are the forces that lead men int
| gambling. All gambling, even the least, un
der all circumstances, is like seduction ane
$ slavery = eternally unjust and eternall!
t wrong. It is taking something for nothing
! It makes every man his neighbor's foe.
! corrupts society and undermines the fab
5 ric of the American state. It is unpatrioti
e and against the eternal Sinai It divorces
/ contract and it's equivalent Is there on
+ here this morning, I wonder, who want
: his dearest friend. his young brother, t.
], stop gambling? If so, in Gods name, le
l him stop himself