ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

the Indus, would it not be a shame and a crime if the least of its members did not know enough to tell the dark-minded and the perishing the way to eternal life? The creed of a dying man is short, has just two articles, sin and salvation. He knows the one, and he craves the other. Now does not the person in whose experience both are realities, know enough to tell that experience to another, as poor, as ignorant, as himself? Systems he may not understand, but salvation he does. He knows that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and that faith in him is life eternal. Who shall bid him to lock this secret in his own bosom, when the perishing are asking for light and life!

No small share of the ministerial work is to train the church to her largest power with God and with man. "He gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for perfecting the saints to the work of the ministry, to the edifying of the body of Christ." The work of the pastor is specially to fit the church to minister the word of life to the lost, not to preach his system, but to enunciate the truth, in which is salvation., The Gospel in its essence has wondrous simplicity. A Karen, or a Hottentot, can understand it. It is a light in itself, and becomes a darkness only through our philosophy. We are straitened in our philosophy, and not in the Bible. We are pent up and cribbed in our system, which haunts us like a nightmare, destroying the blessed freedom and expansion of the Gospel. Said a shrewd observer, "We in New England are made of theology." Certain it is we spend our best years in the mastery of systems. Yet God has set truth in his word without order, and, I suppose, in the best possible relation and proportion. How few, however, are ready to preach it without setting around it the guards of the system, and fitting it to its place there!

Suppose there should not always be the appearance of selfconsistency in our preaching, it is no more than what appears in the Bible. And as it has pleased the Author of the Bible to leave it there, I am not sure that he requires human hands to fit and dovetail its parts into one another. A becoming modesty ought to be satisfied to stop where God does. There is more than one truth, and more than one side to truth. If the Bible

east

ed and

E

H

for

f

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

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

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

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

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »