THE FIRST RAFFLE by Egbert L. Bangs

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1880

THE FIRST RAFFLE.

By Egbert L. Bangs

BY EGBERT L. BANGS.

THERE are some phases of modern life, whose beginning may be found in Holy Writ. Murder is now, if not a fine art, at least an every-day occurrence. Go back to the first one, and you find that the victim was engaged in a solemn act of worship when his life went out. Wait, as the years go by, and the first drunken scene is enacted. Righteous Noah makes himself so ridiculous that a garment must be thrown over him to cover his shame. Would that a mantle of charity could as easily be thrown over the modern drunkard as the concealing garment was thrown over him!

Leap now the chasm of the centuries, and stand before the Saviour of the world in his hour of agony, and then wait a little, and you shall see coarse men casting lots for his vesture. That was the first raffle on record. The element of chance entered into it, and he who was lucky had the garment. There is something indescribably revolting in the scene just referred to. It is heartless to the last degree. I have often thought of this piece of gambling, when I have seen the church, engaged in a raffle to make money for the preaching of the gospel; and I have wondered if He could say of a church when so doing, "Many have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." Probably few who engage in such enterprises ever connect their grab-bags, their cakes with rings hidden in them, and their bed-quilts, arm-chairs, and other goods too numerous to mention, for which drawing-tickets are sold—probably few notice the connection between the scene they enliven with their sunny presence, and the one in which lots were cast for the garments just stripped from the Redeemer of the world. Perhaps that raffle was agreed upon while the clothes were still upon him. The same principle was involved in both transactions, for one was gambling as much as the other. Which of the two is the worse?

The men who gambled for the Saviour's vesture did it for a purely selfish purpose, and we have a right to suppose that they had no clear conception of his divine character and mission. His followers to-day have the light of almost nineteen Christian centuries to guide them, and they ought to know better than to gamble in the name of religion for the support of preaching and the adornment of a Christian church. Imagine a church raffle where the proceeds were to be used for the purchase of a communion set; and, if that is a perfectly right way to raise money, no one ought to see anything incongruous in such an association of ideas.

A Christian woman once excused herself for being overdressed, on the ground that, as she could thus make a better appearance, she could do more good in the world. She said she did it all for Christ's sake. When the active spirits in church financial work say they sell cigars and lottery tickets for Christ's sake, some one ought to say to them, "For His sake, don't." Christ did say of those who took his life, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Looking down from the temple above upon some of the church fairs for the benefit of his temples below, could he say as he saw his butterfly followers flitting about to sell tickets for the coming raffle, "they know not what they do?" The same spirit that sent him through the temple at Jerusalem, with a whip of small cords in his hand, must cry out against all such irregular and dishonest customs, no matter if they are covered with the gold-laced mantle of the highest respectability and social standing.—S. S. Times.