Untitled article by John Harvey Waggoner

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, February 18, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 10

TWO GREAT EVILS.

By John Harvey Waggoner

HABITS, in their first formation are weak, easily controlled, and therefore those who indulge them think there is no danger; but by indulgence they become passions, and then they hold our very being under their despotic sway.

Probably there are no two passions more ruinous to every moral principle than those of drunkenness and gambling. We all know more or less of the power of appetite, and we could easily judge, if we had no direct testimony, of the almost hopeless condition of the slave to the use of intoxicating drinks: a habit for evil fixed, and the nervous system so shattered that little or no power of resistance is left. And those who have been addicted to gambling testify that the passion for it is strong as any other, often amounting to a mania or frenzy. Yet, strange as it may appear, these two evils are finding their way into the families of all classes in the land, not excepting professors of religion.

The habit of drunkenness is formed in many respectable families by the custom which has become so prevalent of using home-made wines; or drinks which are erroneously called wine, made from the juices of various plants, and berries, very commonly from currants. These drinks are generally a compound of the juices with brown sugar and water. It needs but little knowledge of the chemical nature of these compounds to determine that they are intoxicating. Their taste betrays them. A truly temperate man, whose taste is not perverted, may detect it at once. And to these may be added cider, often drank by professedly temperate or pious people, sometimes so hard that it will turn the brain of a truly temperate man in three minutes. This ransacking all the realm of nature to find something to drink is a great evil. We need nothing to drink but water, and but little of that. If we live as we ought to, abstaining from unhealthy, stimulating, and irritating substances in our food, we shall not desire much drink, and water will be chosen. It is generally conceded by observing and truly scientific men, that we drink too much; both at our meals, and in the fields of labor. A sister says, “I cannot drink water for breakfast.” Answer. Choose your food by reason, not by appetite, eat slowly, learn to eat without drinking, and it will be for your health. A brother says, “I cannot work in haying or harvesting without drinking a great deal, and so much water does not agree with me.” I find generally three difficulties in such cases. First, eating when fatigued and not chewing the food sufficiently; second, drinking too much when eating, which hinders digestion, weakens the stomach, and creates that sensation which they vainly try to allay by drinking more largely; third, using much salt in the food. I am satisfied that very many are greatly deceiving themselves, thinking they have adopted health reform, when they have scarcely learned the alphabet of its principles. Nothing with which the human family abuse themselves has so great a tendency to create and cultivate this mania for drink as the free use of salt. As it is commonly used it is one of the great food-curses of the age. Train your appetite as you would your child, to choose the good and eschew the evil, and not excuse its use because you like it, which is the same excuse that the veriest sinner in the land has for his evil ways. Study, pray, and act as though you meant to overcome, and not spend the precious hours of probation in strengthening perverted appetites to drag you down in the time of trouble. Drinking so much is a habit, and as such may be controlled and overcome, as any other habit may. But if the habit must be indulged, do not turn it into a worse one by seeking a substitute for water.

If intemperance were confined strictly to drinking drugged whiskey, the half-way prudent would not easily get caught in the snare. So if gambling were confined to vicious dens, card tables, and billiard saloons, it would be a trifling matter compared to what it is at present. Stimulated by church fairs, it has grown into general favor, and so lulled the consciences of the people as to scarcely meet a remonstrance from the press or the pulpit. The last and most formidable phase of gambling is in “Gift Enterprises.”

It is but a simple act of justice to say that the American Agriculturist, edited by Orange Judd, New York, has been most untiring and very efficient in exposing these swindling operations. Their advertisements are found in nearly all the papers, and there are few, even in the ministry, but have been insulted by receiving their cards and offers of “Splendid Chances.” Were their goods as represented, and each ticket holder possessing a reasonable hope of some return, still they are lotteries—it is gambling, and as such, all moral and religious persons should shun the unhallowed gain as they would stolen goods. But their representations are not true. A “gold pen, warranted $1.00,” for a twenty-five-cent ticket, being tested was found to be worth eight cents! They deal largely in cheap jewelry, entirely worthless. The getter-up of a club generally gets something of real value (when they ever hear from them, which is not always the case), showing that it is not an impartial drawing, as is pretended, and thus a bait is thrown out to induce others to engage in the traffic in tickets, and aid the swindlers.

This nefarious business received a great impetus from the “Crosby Opera House” lottery. This house in Chicago was valued in the “scheme” at $600,000, and all for a few dollars in a ticket! The sum was so large and the tickets being offered for sale in the first banking houses and book-stores throughout the land, many who had been opposed before, stifled their scruples and bought tickets. The managers, of course, made a snug fortune; the ticket holders lost their money. But many of them lost much more than this. They built “air castles” on the foundation of the Opera House. Day after day, and week after week, they fluctuated between high hopes and fears; their minds passed through the dangerous excitement of the possibility of their waking up some morning to immense riches; is it any wonder that they lost their sensibility to the moral evil of gambling, and were prepared to enter anew into similar excitement?

Many of these enterprises have, professedly, a moral or benevolent design; got up for the relief of the soldiers, &c. The greatest of these, and a sample of all, was the “Gettysburg Asylum Association.” So plausible were its pretenses that Congress exempted it from the payment of tax and license. But this led to its exposure. A Congressional Committee examined into its operations, and reported that the chief articles in the scheme were some diamonds bought by a New York merchant for about $150,000; but the transaction was a fraud, the diamonds not proving as represented, and the Asylum scheme was got up to recover his money on his sham diamonds. They were valued in the lottery at $300,000! Another of the managers put in a farm at $45,000, which was valued in the “scheme” at $60,000. The Committee found it on the Assessor’s book valued at $3,500; testimony showed its value to be from $6,000 to $8,000. This is a sample of the honesty of one of the best of these enterprises; if it be allowable to use such a word in reference to them. But my object in referring to this was to quote the closing remarks of the Report, which has been published since I commenced writing this. The Committee says:

“All lotteries are swindles. Yet by far the most dangerous lotteries are those where vice is made attractive, where a sense of the crime is deadened, and consciousness of the guilt removed by the pleasing delusion that honorable names indorse, and a pretended good end justify, violations of the law; yet there is not a tithe of the excuse there is for a man bankrupted by misfortune staking his last dollar upon a throw of the dice or a shuffle of the cards. There has been more demoralization in this country from gift enterprises than any other single cause. Not only all classes, but each sex and all ages are drawn into the giddy whirl, and many, in buying a first ticket here, will spend their last dollar at the gaming table. Already the harvest has been prolific in an outgrowth of villainous schemes, each with a different device, such as Elmore & Co.; Clarke, Webster & Co.; jewelry distribution; Toilet Watch Company; the Pen and Pencil; and Kelly Pictorial, and others, each with its own trick to victimize the ignorant and credulous.”

Every word solemn truth. And I would exhort all

to beware of the deception. If any have been so blinded by the enemy as to be partakers in this sinful excitement, let them repent before the Lord, lest they be reckoned in the last day with Balaam, who “loved the wages of unrighteousness.”

J. H. WAGGONER.

Clyde, Ohio, Feb. 7, 1868.