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Taking a Pleasure Trip

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 22, 1870

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 35, No. 14.

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Taking a Pleasure Trip.

By Editor

All right, no harm, if so be God is in it, true and love. Little folks and great folks have no right to do this, do that, go there, by sea, or by land, except God permits, says, “Go!” “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
It’s our pleasure to please God, do his will. Young readers, are the angels happy, think you? What makes them happy? Because they fly on wings obedient! Don’t you want to be an angel? Well fly, fly! fly! on angel’s wings, to do good, to make others happy. Are you born of the Holy Spirit, regenerated? Have old things passed away, and all things become new? Do you love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and strength, your neighbor as yourself? Are your little hearts full of faith and the Holy Spirit? Are you going forth weeping, bearing precious seed? Is holiness written on your foreheads and your door-posts? What now—any time or relish for cricket, dominoes, checkers, fox and geese, and other games of chance, that kill time and lead to gambling?
Every description of gambling is unsafe, because of the irresistible tendencies of indulging in games of hazard. No one can deny that the mental passion for gambling is as terrible and as destructive as the physical appetite for strong drink, and they are to a great extent concomitant or supplementary, one of the other. No one can doubt that the love of hazard is a natural, mental passion. The tendency of the whole system of gaming is to an undue stimulus of this love of hazard, and there must evidently be somewhere a line that divides the safe from the dangerous. Where is that line?
It is at least safe for every lover of humanity to discountenance and renounce every type and instrument of gaming which is ever employed in gambling. It is dangerous enough to encourage games which stimulate this passion, though they are not capable of awakening the enthusiasm necessary for gambling; but to use the very tools of the gambler is hazardous indeed.
We speak from experience and wide observation. When a boy, we became so infatuated with whist, checkers, fox and geese, that we lost all relish for study, and sometimes the day broke to find us still at the table.
No question is exciting greater interest in the Christian public, than that of amusements, or pleasure-seeking. The Watchman says: “This spirit is penetrating our churches and coloring our Christianity. The demand is, that our sanctuaries, and our Sabbath Schools, and our prayer-meetings, should be amusing. Attractive is the word used. Opera music is furnished in the sanctuary. It attracts; it fills the pews. The Sabbath School must be attractive. The children must be amused. Sabbath School concerts and anniversaries must be spiced with witty anecdotes, and prayer-meetings must be made attractive by holding them in rooms furnished with the apparatus for popular games. A brother in the ministry described to me the furnishing of a room for a Young Men’s Christian Association in one of our cities. Along each side of the room were tables for playing dominoes, backgammon, and checkers, and around these, young men sat, absorbed in their games, ’till the moment for the prayer-meeting came, and then the tables were cleared, and worship began. Now, in the name of all that is proper, and serious, and sacred, we protest against this combination. The experience of years has taught us that the prayer-meetings which have been most profitable to us have been those to which we have gone from the closet, and from our knees. Can these young men turn at once, and without leaving their places, from an exciting game to acts of prayer and praise? Is this the fitting-preparation for an approach to the presence of Him before whom angels veil their faces?”
Little Christian, your soul is alive in God, on fire for salvation; you can say with the psalmist, “Oh! how love I thy law: it is my meditation all the day.” What now—fall into this trap of Satan? Not a word of it, not a golden moment will be wasted in the pursuit of mere worldly amusements, however innocent in themselves they may be considered. Your pleasure is in doing good, in social and religious meetings, in the most earnest and energetic efforts for the promotion of every enterprise that is calculated to glorify God, and bless any portion of the human race. All the pleasure that is found in social parties or games of chance, for mere amusement, will prove in the end to have been too dearly purchased. Such pleasure-seeking on the part of Christians, distracts their attention from worthy objects, renders them barren of religious enjoyment, and destroys their Christian influence with the impenitent. It is equivalent to acknowledging that there is not enough in the religion of the Bible to employ and satisfy the mind. This is an alarming inference; but there is no escape from it.
The religion of the Bible rejoices the soul, fills it with unspeakable delight. The word of God is sweeter to the taste than honey or the honey-comb. Those who most fully appreciate the magnitude of the duties of life—the work of living for eternity—will have the least concern about pleasure of any kind.
“Fathers, mothers, when your sons Look to you for daily bread, Dare ye, in mockery, load with stones The table that for them is spread? How can ye hope your sons will live, If ye, for fish, a serpent give?”
“Why do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Isa. 55:2, 1. “Oh! that men were wise, that they understood this!”—D. F. NEWTON, Ed., “Apples of Gold.”