תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

emptiness and void, yet, methinks, the very idea of Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the Laws and Liberties of a great people, would enkindle such a high and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings would be consumed! But if the love of country, a sense of character, a manly regard for integrity, the example of our most illustrious men, the warnings of religion and all its solicitations, and the prospect of the future,-dark as Perdition to the bad, and light as Paradise to the good, cannot inspire a young man to any thing higher than a sneaking, truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent fame and dishonest bread, it is because such a creature has never felt one sensation of manly virtue;-it is because his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable to innocence.

Thus have I sketched a few of the characters which abound in every community; dangerous, not more by their direct temptations, than by their insensible influence. The sight of their deeds, of their temporary success, their apparent happiness, relaxes the tense rigidity of a scrupulous honesty, inspires a ruinous liberality of sentiment toward vice, and breeds the thoughts of evil; and EVIL THOUGHTS are the cockatrice's eggs, hatching into all bad deeds.

Remember, if by any of these you are enticed to

ruin, you will have to bear it ALONE! They are strong to seduce, but heartless to sustain their victims. They will exhaust your means, teach you to despise the God of your fathers, lead you into every sin, go with you while you afford them any pleasure or profit, and then, when the inevitable disaster of wickedness begins to overwhelm you, they will abandon whom they have debauched. When, at length, death gnaws at your bones and knocks at your heart; when staggering, and worn out, your courage wasted, your hope gone, your purity, and long, long ago your peace-will he who first enticed your steps, now serve your extremity with one office of kindness? Will he stay your head?-cheer your dying agony with one word of hope ?-or light the way for your coward steps to the grave?—or weep when you are gone? or send one pitiful scrap to your desolate family? What reveller wears crape for a dead drunkard ?-what gang of gamblers ever intermitted a game for the death of a companion?—or went on kind missions of relief to broken-down fellow gamblers? What harlot weeps for a harlot ?-what debauchee mourns for a debauchee? They would carouse at your funeral, and gamble on your coffin. If one flush more of pleasure were to be had by it, they would drink shame and ridicule to your memory out of your own skull

and roar in bacchanal-revelry over your damnation! All the shameless atrocities of wicked men are nothing to their heartlessness toward each other when broken-down. As I have seen worms writhing on a carcass, overcrawling each other, and elevating their fiery heads in petty ferocity against each other, while all were enshrined in the corruption of a common carrion,-I have thought, ah! shameful picture of wicked men tempting each other, abetting each other, until calamity overtook them, and then fighting and devouring or abandoning each other, without pity, or sorrow, or compassion, or remorse. Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, Come with us, we shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse : My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy feet from their path: for their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood, .. and they lay in

wait for their own blood, they lurk privily for their

own lives.

LECTURE V.

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be. These things therefore the soldiers did.

I HAVE Condensed into one account the separate parts of this gambling transaction as narrated by each evangelist. How marked in every age is a Gambler's character! The enraged priesthood of ferocious sects taunted Christ's dying agonies; the bewildered multitude, accustomed to cruelty, could shout; but no earthly creature, but a Gambler, could be so lost to all feeling as to sit down coolly under a dying man to wrangle for his garments, and arbitrate their avaricious differences by casting dice for his tunic, with hands spotted with his spattered blood, warm and yet undried upon them. The descendants of these patriarchs of gambling, however, have taught us, that there is nothing possible to hell, uncongenial to these, its elect saints. In this lecture

it is my disagreeable task to lead your steps down the dark path to their cruel haunts, there to exhibit their infernal passions, their awful ruin, and their ghastly memorials. In this house of darkness, amid fierce faces gleaming with the fire of fiercer hearts, amid oaths and groans and fiendish orgies, ending in murders and strewn with sweltering corpses,-do not mistakė, and suppose yourself in Hell,—you are only in its precincts and vestibule.

Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon mere hazard. The husbandman renders produce for his gains; the mechanic renders the product of labor and skill for his gains; the gambler renders for his gain the sleights of useless skill, or more often, down-right cheating. Betting is gambling; there is no honest equivalent to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned are no better than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard. When skill returns for its earnings a useful service, as knowledge, beneficial amusements, or profitable labor, it is honest commerce. The skill of a pilot in threading a narrow channel, the skill of a lawyer in

« הקודםהמשך »