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clude not only card-playing and the dealing in pool, policy shop or lottery tickets, but also betting, raffling and dealing in stocks and real estate when there is no real purchase made or delivery given, and the giving away of prizes for the first answers, or the first discovery of faces published in newspaper advertisements. But, be the means and methods what you will, call them by what names you please, if you propose to get property upon any hazard you propose to get it by gambling; and the man who, upon any hazard, wins property is morally a thief and guilty of stealing. He who loses is an accessory to the crime. Now, in face of this view of the subject, the question seems almost needless: Is gambling wrong?-J. E. STARR.

Arguments Against Gambling.

Listen to a conversation about gambling; and, where reprobation is expressed, note the grounds of the reprobation. That it tends toward the ruin of the gambler; that it risks the welfare of family and friends; that it alienates from business and leads into bad companythese, and such as these, are the reasons given for condemning the practice. Rarely is there any recognition of the fundamental reason. Rarely is gambling condemned because it is a kind of action by which pleasure is obtained at the cost of pain to another. The normal obtainment of gratification, or of the money which purchases gratification, implies, first, that there has been put forth equivalent effort of a kind which, in some way, furthers the general good; second, that those from whom

the money is obtained get, directly or indirectly, equiva lent satisfaction. But in gambling the opposite happens. Benefit received does not imply effort put forth, and the happiness of the winner involves the misery of the loser. This kind of action is, therefore, essentially anti-social. It sears the sympathies, cultivates a hard egoism, and so produces a general deterioration of character and conduct.-HUGH PRICE HUGHES.

The Deceitfulness of Gambling.

When the Inquisition House, at Madrid, was destroyed by order of Napoleon the commanding officer found an image of a beautiful virgin. The workmanship was most perfect, its proportions were correct, and beauty rested on each chiseled feature. This image was an instrument of torture. The victim was commanded to go up and embrace the virgin, and as he placed his lips against the cold lips of the marble a spring was touched, an internal machine was set in motion and the arms of the virgin, filled with sharp daggers, arose and encircled the poor sufferer, and, cutting into his flesh, mangled him in a most horrible manner and destroyed his life. Gambling is such an image. It looks well at a distance, but it is armed with knives which will cut-not only the body, but the soul. Fly from the gambler's house, as from the door of death. Fly from the gambler himself. He will strive to ruin thee. Poison is in his heart and falsehood on his tongue. He seeks thy ruin.-D. C. EDDY.

GENTLENESS.

Gentleness to Animals.

Thus the new ideas about the rights of dumb brutes, the rights of children, the rights of the heathen myriads, must be repeated and repeated until they shall become a mode of modern thought. As men can learn a new language until at last they think in it and dream in it, and speak it as unconsciously as they breathe, so an age can gradually move into a doctrine of benevolence which shall be with it always and reach out toward all the forms of life. Men and women will be kindness incarnate because they will not know anything else than love and equity. Few persons can remember when certain principles and emotions came to their own hearts. How can one find the day and the hour, when the truth was coming for years? As the cultivated mind loves the Spring time more at forty than it does at twenty, and loves music more in life's close than in life's morning, so the great truths of Church and State and duty and happiness spend many years in getting fully into the soul. In youth. kindness is intermittent; in middle life it becomes perennial.SWING.

The Might of Gentleness.

Even power itself hath not one-half the might of gen

tleness. LEIGH HUNT.

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GIVING.

Ostentatious Giving.

It is easy for you to make a big show in Church registers of collection. It costs you nothing. But it must be estimated, as Ambrose put it long ago, not in the light of what is given so much as in the light of what remains behind. We must say that; we must honestly say that; we must say all that, and not a syllable less than that. Many that were rich cast in much." But there was this drawback: It was a time of grinding; it was a time of robbing the poor; a time of harshness; a time of oppression and injustice. Many were the rich men who, like the Pharisee, would rob widows' houses and grind the faces of the poor, and then seek to muzzle inconvenient criticism by giving ostentatiously and largely to the Temple, where it was seen and known and recorded. Just as we have men today, engaged in that traffic which, perhaps more than any other agency, blights the body and soul of thousands and thousands, and fills the land with woe. Yet they come ostentatiously and give—say, £50,000 to endow a cathedral-and expect that God's servants will be so impressed and so depressed by them and the greatness of their gift that we shall not dare to criticize nor ask: "Is the money clean or unclean? How did you come by it?" Time was-and the Church was poor then-when to such givers, coming with illgotten wealth and coming in such a tone and spirit, Christ's representatives would have said: "Thy money perish with thee!" Go and pay the widow for her hus

band, who was killed by your drink. Go and feed and clothe the orphans whom you have made orphans by your utter selfishness. Do not say I am too severe. You can not whitewash the drink traffic any more than you can perfume a dung-hill. It is of the devil, beyond any power to express; and the closer you come to it, and the more you see of its evil, the plainer this becomes. And then we are not to criticize, but we are to be so impressed with the many that are casting in much that we are to be muzzled, and say nothing. Ah, no! Be fair. Be as fair as you like—be as fair as Christ—and you will be as severe as Christ.—McNeill.

Giving All.

In the case of the widow there was nothing left. You are not to look at me, and I am not to look at you; but each alone, each man and woman, is to look upward before God. And, remembering Him and His offering, let every soul give with the keen but kindly eyes of Christ reading us to our bottom thought. That is the thing. Sometimes one hears this expression: "I will give my mite." Will you? Well, we shall have a big collection today if you do. I advise the deacons to take the bag, and to take their hats in their hands along with it; for the bag will not suffice. There will be an overflow. How often we use these words with a kind of mock modesty! "I will give my mite." Why, my friends, the inite is the mighty thing. The mite is all.-MCNEILL.

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