p. 13 | SOME ALLIED EVILS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 28, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 50.

SOME ALLIED EVILS.

It is a truth which all observation and experience tend to confirm, that vicious habits and other things of evil, like "birds of a feather," are usually found flocking together. It is to be remembered that nearly all gambling and drinking resorts are furnished with reading matter and pictures as near the line of positive obscenity as the law will allow. A significant case in point is the recent introduction of the Spanish bull-fight in the Belgian watering place at Spa, one of the most notorious gambling resorts in Europe. The proprietors of the gambling dens at Spa, having succeeded by various subterfuges in re-instating the prohibited roulette and trente-et-quarante, find that the gaming table no longer satisfies the cravings of famished pleasure seekers, and so they have decided to introduce bull-fights.

It is in ways like these that the devil and those who are engaged in his service take advantage of the weaknesses of human nature. They know that indulgence in one form of evil is quite sure to be followed by indulgence in another. When they have once broken down the moral restraints around the hearts of the boys and young men so far as to permit the introduction of vile and impure thoughts, they know that the rest is comparatively easy. From such things the transition to vicious habits and open acts of wickedness is direct and rapid. The boy whose mind has been debauched by vile pictures, is quite sure to become a good customer of the cigarette dealer, and after that of the liquor seller, and along with these of the keeper of the gambling house and the brothel. All these evil trades, and particularly the three latter, are closely allied. They are always in fact, and often literally, "next door" to each other. There is a fellow feeling between them which makes them "wondrous kind" in furnishing victims to one another, and in defending one another's interests. They are to a large degree interdependent. They stand and fall together.—New York Observer.