did not defy and overrun our system, it could not be from God. We have not caught the whole truth, and pressed it into the few articles of our confession. The creed may be biblical, but not so biblical as the Bible itself. Every sect has the truth in parts, no one has it all. The Bible holds the truth of all the sects, and vastly more than the sects have thought of. And if by preaching the Bible we must preach the doctrines of this, or that, or all of the sects, shall we be afraid to do it? Will the time never come when we shall preach the word in all its glorious freedom, and flexibility, and strength? Must we ever be spending our time and energy on the mere details and finesse of the system, when exhaustless riches of truth and grace, for which the world is perishing, are given us to distribute?

We verily believe that the ministry needs a more fearless utterance. Instead of apologizing for the truth, and seeking to win the prejudices of men to its favor, they should speak with authority as the messengers of God. If they are faithful men, they have no choice but to speak the word which he bids them. The more solemn and awful the truths, the more pungently and frequently should they be crowded home upon the heart and the conscience. Let ministers preach the word in all its fulness, learning, once for all, that God's word in God's hands is safe.

Up. to this would we educate the church. We would have her feel that the truth carried home to the hearts of men, is the power of God unto salvation to them that believe. And we would have her feel that God has chosen her to the work of ministering the word of life. We would put the Gospel into the hands of her whole membership, and charge them, in the name of Christ, to preach it to every creature on the planet. We would have her feel that she has power with God as she lives by faith and prayer, and that she will prevail with man as she lays her very heart upon the world, and pours from its fountains the spirit of life. The world is perishing, not for better criticism, not for the results of nicer philological investigation and inquiry, but for the simple word which has nourished prophets and apostles, and the great army of the elect who have gone home to glory. If a few scholars choose to employ their time in settling the authority and meaning of the

sacred text, a work all important and necessary, no one will complain. But this is not the work of the church, or of the ministry as a whole.

A more urgent labor is on our hands; men are perishing, and God forbid that they should be amused with trifles. We possess the charm whose magic power dissolves away sin, and restores the soul to its union with God. If we fail to use it, we betray our Master, and the souls of those for whom he died.

ARTICLE II.

LOTTERIES AND RAFFLES.

THESE are schemes for a systematic disposition of money and valuables by chance, and are devised for amusement, and for excitement, and for profit. They are presumed to rule out the intervention of human skill and planning, so that it can not be determined and known in advance who shall gain or lose by a venture in them. The schemes, by their structure, foreordain certain results of loss and gain to the persons sharing in them, but on whom these results shall fall is left to the fortune, chance or hap, that constitute the very essence of the device. The result may be obtained by using dice, cards, tickets, numbers, wheels, and various other means.

The act itself goes under the general term of Lottery, though it has many other names, among which the more modern, popular and graceful is Raffle. Whatever the name, the thing done is substantially the same. It is "a game of hazard in which small sums are ventured for the chance of obtaining a larger value, either in money, or in other articles." The Raffle, as distinguished from the Lottery, has not perhaps so broad a meaning. In it each of a number of persons deposits or stakes a part of the value of something for the chance of getting by lot the whole of that thing. The impression of the word Raffle has, moreover, a something in it more refined and

graceful and dainty, than pertains to Lottery. The latter is associated in the popular mind, historically and necessarily, with trick, dishonor, dishonesty, gaming with desperate passion, ruined fortunes and families, and gross immoralities. This new court name, pleasing polite ears with the accent of its Italian and French pedigree, throws a vail over what is so justly offensive in the old term. But substantially and practically the two words mean one and the same thing, and so the statute of Massachusetts on games of chance makes them synonymes.

Many entering into the charitable raffle scheme do not regard it as setting up and drawing in a lottery, because the name of the thing is different. But the law in the different States does not discriminate between the two. Massachusetts and New York and some of the other States use the term raffle in their statutes, forbidding games of chance, as synonymous and interchangable with lotteries. Others cover the words lottery and raffle both and alike in their definition of a game of chance and of a ticket or right in the same. The language of the statute of Ohio will serve as an example of this legal defining that makes the lottery and raffle identical. "If any person shall open, set on foot, carry on, promote, make or draw, publicly or privately, any lottery or scheme of chance of any kind or description, by whatever name, style or title the same may be denominated and known," etc.

In the principles on which the two are devised and managed, in the gaming feelings excited, and in the general results on those interested, the Lottery and the Raffle are near enough to identity to be treated as one and the same thing.

It will best serve the purposes of this paper if we first sketch, in brief, the history of these games as related to legislation and state policy in Great Britain, France, and our own country.

Private lotteries were established in England as early as 1569, and their influence on the business habits and morals of the people began so long ago, three centuries, to be made known by experience. In 1612 one was granted by James the First for the benefit of the Virginia Colony, which yielded twenty-nine thousand pounds. In 1659 the English government established one for its own benefit in repairing the harbors of the realm, and sold forty thousand tickets at ten shillings

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each. Some of the prizes were many thousands of dollars each, and the temptations to buy were great. The success of a few with prizes, and the disappointment of many with blanks, stirred a popular and general profound passion for indulgence in such hopes and hazards. Steady and profitable toil was neglected, the earnings of the poor and often the scanty comforts of home were sunk in the many private lotteries that now sprung up. Treachery, fraud, and the gambling tricks common to the game, debauched the managers; while petty thefts of servants and clerks, and embezzlement of funds by treasurers and agents were resorted to for ticket money. The government became alarmed for the safety of public morals and industrious habits, and so in view of the wide and deep corruption from these schemes, it prohibited all private lotteries in 1698. "Notwithstanding which," says the historian, referring to this act of Parliament and its penalty of five hundred pounds, "the disposition to fraud on the one hand, and for adventure on the other, continued to prevail, and small lotteries were carried on under the denomination of sales of gloves, fans, cards, plate," etc. Here we have the illegal original of our illegal modern Gift Enterprises, and the sale of tickets of admission to something very common or low, with a chance of drawing a set of tin tea-spoons, a brass watch or a stick of candy.

Speaking of this state of morals in England, the writer continues: "Children have robbed their parents, servants their masters, suicides have been committed, and almost every crime that can be imagined has been occasioned either directly or indirectly through the baneful influence of lotteries."

Still later, and during the reign of Queen Anne, [1702–14]. Parliament labored farther to suppress them, as promoting immorality, and declared them to be "public nuisances." And under the Third George, [1760-1820], those who sold tickets without license were declared by statute [42d George III.] to be "rogues and vagabonds." Yet the government was not fully informed and awake as to the evil. They still thought hat the government could practice the wrong under restrictions and watching, and so avoid the abuses and immoral influence of private schemes. Therefore for revenue and other public

uses Parliamentary lotteries were established. This was a concession by the government that the thing was not an evil in itself, and necessarily wrong. Then private companies pressed for the same privilege, and established lotteries in contempt of the law. Then government undertook to regulate the popular passion by a License Law, adopted in 1778. The price of a license was put at fifty pounds. At once private schemes fell off from the number of four hundred to fifty-one.

Among others these two conditions were affixed to a license; that a company should not do any office work after eight o'clock in the evening, or sell any tickets in Cambridge and Oxford. Why forbid office hours at night, except that the lottery practices and works of darkness are very apt to join hands and become one? And why forbid the sale of tickets among the scholars of Cambridge and Oxford, except that lotteries are corrupting and dangerous to the young?

Still this demoralizing system and the struggles to regulate it, a vain endeavor, passed over into the present century. The English government was then deriving from licensing it about three and three fourths millions of dollars per annum, as revenue. At the same time the English people were oppressed by the immorality, vices and crimes that the system was producing. Then Committees in the House of Commons were appointed to make full investigations and report. "In 1808 the Reports of a Committee of the House of Commons disclosed," says an eminent English authority, "a dreadful scene of vice and misery brought on by lotteries, and recommended their abolition, or at least that they should be put under regulations." The language of the Committee itself is stronger than this, and we quote their own words:

"The foundation of the lottery system is so radically vicious under no system of regulations, which can be devised, will it be possible for Parliament to adopt it as an efficacious source of revenue, and at the same time divest it of all the evils of which it has hitherto proved so baneful a source."

The struggle to meet the evil now opened again with new vigor and nearer to a hopeful point of attack, as it was at the "radically vicious foundation of the lottery system." Still the remaining struggle was long, continuing for twenty years. It