“Lotteries and Religion.”
By Editor
WE are sorry to see in the New York Observer, a temperate but severe criticism on some practices at the late Sheltering Arms Bazaar. We are sorry, not that the Observer criticized that which richly deserved it, but that the occasion for rebuke was given by church people. The article was headed “Lotteries and Religion.” There is no manner of question that the practice of taking chances for any costly article is simply and purely illegal. That is enough to condemn it, even if otherwise innocent. But this gambling is made illegal because of the best of reasons; viz., that it is immoral. It is often argued that people who have small sums to give prefer to give in that way, because they expect to receive nothing in return. This is a specious argument. They pay for a dollar or a half-dollar’s worth of gambling excitement, the worst thing they could purchase, and they expect to get what they pay for. Now gambling is like no other vice in its influence. It is like arsenic eating, in that it may be indulged in up to a certain point without apparent harm, and suddenly at once become irresistible and fatal. Men may be moderate gamblers, but they never can tell when they will cease to be. Once let a man win largely or lose more than he can afford, and he is in a vortex. Now we know that these fair lotteries, raffles, and the like, have this consequence. They kindle the desire for gambling. A young man wins once or twice a costly article and begins to have a superstition about his “luck.” That will tempt him to other ventures in other places. And it makes the young feel that there is no harm in such things. We say advisedly that there is no safety in tampering in the slightest degree with such hazards. Our people are but too inclined to this evil, and far too much of business is carried upon gambling principles already. Again there is an inherent wrong in the very essence of the thing. It is getting an article, no matter what, which one desires, for far less than its worth. No one is the better, and hardly any man but is the worse for this. It is demoralizing. The Observer has taken church people to task for breaking the laws of the State. We accept and indorse the rebuke, and add that these have also broken the laws of God.