THE CRAZE FOR GAMBLING.
By T.
THE New York papers tell of a young man only nineteen years of age who has been employed in the post-office in that city, and who has been stealing money from the registered mail. A Southern bank sent $2,000 to a bank in New York, and this young man took this, among other amounts that he stole. The matter was traced to him through his extravagant expenditures in gambling resorts and in other ill-reputed houses of vice and crime. He is now under arrest, and will doubtless be sentenced to a term in the penitentiary. The foregoing case is only one of the many that are all the time coming to public notice. Banks are robbed by their trusted employees; business firms are defrauded by the men that are intrusted with the handling of funds; the mails are robbed; and in every way men are risking their liberties and even their lives in order to get money to spend in gambling and the debauching vices that go with it. If you chance to get on board a train or ferry that is leading to the race-track on the racing days, you find yourself crowded and jostled about and almost trampled underfoot by the excited crowd, that is manifestly intoxicated with the desire for gambling, and to gratify the thirst for exciting amusement. Any observing person can not help noticing these things. And any one who has ever read history, knows that when such a condition of things takes possession of a nation, its doom is sealed. It will go down to ruin rapidly. This crazy passion for gaming and exciting pleasures is not peculiar to this country. It is even worse in other nations of the world. And in this driving age, when everything goes with a rush and a bustle, who can conjecture how quickly universal disaster will be brought about? For, when you stop to consider the matter, it is evident that gambling is not alone in its degrading tendencies, but it carries with it every other vice that is known. Were it not for the fact that the second coming of Christ is right at hand, the picture would indeed be a gloomy one. But the certain knowledge that He is coming very soon, lights up every mind that is willing to receive and enjoy light. And the news of His coming should be carried quickly to the ends of the earth. Every troubled soul that is distressed and perplexed because of the condition of things that is in the world to-day, should have the opportunity just as soon as possible of knowing that the Christ of God, the Destroyer of sin, but the Lover of men even tho sinful, is soon coming to earth again, to rescue every one who accepts His salvation. If you have a knowledge of the prophecies that make this great truth so plain, how great and how solemn is the responsibility that rests upon you to make it known to every one else within your reach? "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." "To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." T.