microscope ever known, will fail to discover the least difference between them. In the drawing room, at the fashionable evening party, a young man receives his initial lessons, and a passion is called forth and developed which demands gratification. Indulge it he must even though it takes him among vilest associates and into most disreputable places. The downfall and utter ruin of many an otherwise noble young man dates its beginning from the decisive hour when he was seduced by the mistress of some elegant home into playing progressive euchre in the social circle.

But the gambler sometimes enters the sacred portals of the church, clothed as an "angel of light," and opens up his paraphernalia at the church fair or bazar, directing a "raffle" or organizing a "lottery." He often deceives the "very elect" with the specious plea that the end sanctifies the means, and the holy place transforms the "creature." A hog, of animals most unclean to a Mohammedan, strayed into a mosque and polluted the temple, driving the priests almost wild with consternation. But one, shrewder than the rest, solved the difficulty on the spot. The temple was so holy that when the hog crossed its threshold it was transformed into a pure and innocent lamb. Even so the animal they call a "tiger," in his lair down in the tough district of the city, undergoes a radical if not "miraculous" change and becomes a sportive, stainless lamb, “when Mary leads it into the church.”

The church that tolerates, for the sake of filling its coffers with dishonorable dollars, the unhallowed methods of the lottery and raffle, deserves the curse of God and man. It is an ecciesiastical gambling den and ought to be dealt with as such. It is more "a school of vice, and instructor of incipient gamblers, an apologist for immorality," than a church of the Lord Jesus. Christ.

Gambling is associated with and followed by a whole brood of dire evils and flaunting vices. It provokes the thirst for strong drink. The terrible reaction of an exciting "winning," or a destructive and heavy "loss," calls for a stimulant; this

"enemy in the mouth not only dissipates depression, but "steals away the brains," and goads its unreasoning victim to return to the gaming table. It not only calls for stimulants but entraps its victims in other meshes. The gambling hell and the variety theater are mutual supports. The saloon, the "tiger's lair," and the brothel constitute the devil's vile trinity of breeding and nesting holes of sin and vice in protean forms. Gambling is not only a menace to, but a withering blight upon, the home. When it becomes a rooted passion in the heart, there is no room for the flowers of domestic joy and peace. The "fires of all the finer feelings become embers" upon the hearthstone of the home which contains a devotee of the "black art."

It has been said that a woman can forgive her husband a hundred libations on the altar of the jolly Bacchus or the blind god of fortune with vastly more ease than one foul sacrifice at the polluted shrine of lustful Venus. But women should understand that in seven cases out of ten, virtue is first dethroned, the will made weak, and passion strong by slavery to gambling and drink. Why is it that gambling has obtained such a foothold in American life and flourishes almost unhindered, in its terrible sway from palace to hovel, from plutocrat to pauper? Because nearly everybody believes in it. It is certainly within bounds to say that the real root of the difficulty in suppressing this evil is that a great many people in our best society and in our churches are not convinced that there is anything really wrong in gambling. They ask, "Is it not lawful for me to do whatsoever I will with my own?" The answer from a moral standpoint should be most emphatically "No." In small matters as in great, a man is only a trustee of the property he calls his own, and his title is only valid when he uses it equally for his own good and that of his fellow man. He is not at liberty to appropriate his own property to useless and malevolent ends, to waste it foolishly, much less to use it for promoting vice. No man has a natural right to stake one penny úpon a game of chance, no more than he has the right to take the loaf of bread which at the time he does not want, and tread it in the mire in

the presence of a hungry child. But gambling is intrinsically evil and only evil. The indictment against it is fourfold.

First-It fosters belief in luck and chance and superstition. It offers a premium upon witchcraft and voodooism.

Second It insults labor and destroys motives to honest industry. The young man who won one hundred dollars on the races by risking only one dollar, or the servant girl who drew fifty dollars by a lottery ticket for which she paid but fifty cents, are both now thoroughly disgusted with the slow and conservative but honest methods of earning a living. "Why work like a slave for fifty dollars or twenty dollars per month when one can win twice that sum in an afternoon?" The first winning of a young man constitutes the most unfortunate event in life, for it weakens all laudable ambition to achieve success on skill, merit, and economy as a business man. It begins in a desperate attempt to get something for nothing, and usually results in getting nothing for something.

Third - It corrupts the whole manhood, and prostitutes the noblest faculties of the soul to basest uses. Its poison is insidious.

Once in the system, like malaria, it chills and fevers and unfits for life and shatters the constitution. It begins by demoralizing the powers of application. It then spoils men for the plain duties and rational enjoyments of everyday life. It blunts the sense of right, until the gambler comes to regard the most sacred things, even the manhood of man, and the virtue of woman, as purchasable. It feeds the passion for nervous excitement by bringing together the greatest number of demoralizing stimulants. These are intensified as the stakes increase, and the habit grows until a desperate mania, or a horrible insanity, robs character of purpose, piety, and purity, and brings the end of a blasted life.

It is the unanimous testimony of ministers of the gospel that it is far more difficult to lead a man who has become infatuated with the gambling mania to a life of uprightness and virtue than to lead a drunkard from his cups.

The wretched man upon whose soul the powers of darkness have secured a mortgage in the game of chance will leave his family in semi-starvation, even in sickness unto death, and hasten like a moth to the candle of destruction.

Fourth-But the chief indictment against it is written in a very old book, in the words, "Thou shalt not steal." There are two possible ways by which one may get money or property from another honestly. First, he may receive it as a gift. Second, he may render an equivalent. The gambler who acquires money by purchasing a chance in the "pool" by a wager, a raffle, or securing a "prize," gets it in neither of these ways. He has simply won it. The money lost, is lost contrary to the desire, design, and therefore to the proper consent of the persons losing it. And the winner holds it by no better right according to the interpretation of strict morality than the thief or robber.

Gambling leads directly to dishonesty. The connection between gambling and stealing is so natural and intimate that prudent business men refuse to employ gamblers in positions of responsibility. There are indications that a thoughtful and conscientious people are taking steps looking toward the suppression of this measureless evil. Great Britain has recently formed an anti-gambling league, and courageous leaders of Christian thought, and molders of moral sentiment, in New York city have projected a "National Anti-Gambling Society" for the protection of the young and the manhood of America.

When once the American people realize the enormity of this sin, they will drive it from the land with the besom of destruction. In the mean time it is the imperative duty of the press, pulpit, and platform, to agitate.

May the agitation go on and increase in volume and velocity until the reign of devils is summarily cut short- until this cloud, one of the darkest that ever dropped over the earth's fair face, is lifted and dispersed.

Wrecks of Wall Street.

Ο

PROF. E. T. TYNDALL, Editor Daily News, Philadelphia.

NE of the most fascinating spots in this country, and especially in New York city, for the young speculator, is on

the floor of Wall street stock exchange. Although each day new additions are made to the numbers of wrecked fortunes and blasted lives, yet each succeeding day adds new plungers to the list. This alluring den occupies a large portion of the block bounded by Broad, Wall, and New streets, and Exchange place. When the excitement waxes warm even the older members on the floor have difficulty in keeping their heads, and the inexperienced take headstrong risks in the turmoil and soon find that, instead of realizing the fond dream of immense wealth, they are ruined and penniless. And it is not only the inexperienced who are wrecked financially, not to speak of the physical and moral influences of those gambling places.

When the immense influence which Wall street exerts on the trade of to-day is considered, the conclusion is, to say the least, alarming. Millions of dollars are involved in these daily speculations, and experience has taught that a panic there means crash followed by crash, as most of the largest speculators are directly or indirectly connected with large financial concerns elsewhere. One of the first and greatest failures on Wall street, known as the "Western Blizzard," occurred in 1857, when the Ohio Life and Trust Company, a gigantic concern, with millions invested in stocks, failed. Business was for a time paralyzed, as many banks, which had advanced this supposed-to-be stanch company large sums of money for speculating purposes, had to suspend, and the hard-earned savings of