p. 75 | The Lottery Question by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 21, 1871

The Lottery Question.

By Editor

A FEW nights ago a dispatch was published in this paper, which stated that a certain ticket in a certain western lottery drew a prize of $10,000. This dispatch will go into nearly all the public journals. The effect will probably be an impulse to the lottery business in general, as well as a great increase of the business of the particular lottery named. It is bad enough to have a whole State wrought up into a gambling fever, as was the case during the recent California library lottery; and we insist that the press dispatches ought not to be used to keep up this fever and to cheat the press into thousands of dollars’ worth of gratuitous advertising. In this connection, it will be interesting to note how church lotteries (a branch of the lottery subject which may claim a separate article) are regarded by the pagan Japanese. A lottery scheme was put on foot in Yokohama to pay for a church organ. “But public sentiment,” says an exchange, “revolted against the idea of serving the interests of religion by gambling, and the government prohibited the enterprise.” The Japan Mail says: “The easy virtue of the Christian, thus publicly rebuked by the paternal care of the pagan government, is a slur we shall not easily forget, and a reprimand by which we may well be stung.” What have the Christian people of Spain and Portugal, where lotteries are conducted by the government, and of some of our States where they are authorized by Legislature, to say to this?