p. 93 | Please All Classes by Wm. C. Gage

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 14, 1865

Please All Classes.

By Wm. C. Gage

“The entertainments will be such as cannot fail to please all classes. Come one, Come all!”

Thus read the advertisement for a social gathering to be given by the Baptist church in ————. And has it come to this, that a religious society can provide an entertainment which will please all classes? Perhaps this is so, yet we think there is one class which could not have been very highly pleased by the levee in question, if any such were present, namely, the humble followers of Christ; and this for several reasons:

First, there was no prayer on the occasion, and it must have pained them to see a gathering of professed Christians opened by a comic song, instead of an invocation of the Divine blessing. Again, it must have been anything but pleasing to see the children of church members acquiring in such a place, a taste for games of chance by means of grab-bags, lotteries and fish-ponds, especially as all the faculties for increasing the thirst for gambling are readily furnished the youth of our land, and such an appetite once acquired is with difficulty subdued. In fact a great many “entertainments” were provided on the occasion which must have been displeasing to this class of people, and which we have not space to enumerate.

On the other hand what class was that which was most pleased, and of which the audience was mostly composed? Did it comprise the little handful that always attend the prayer-meetings, and whose piety adorns their daily life? or was it those who are oftenest found in scenes of gayery and mirth, the class who are usually first and foremost in getting up social gatherings for festivity, instead of social meetings for prayer? Perhaps nearly all who were present were pleased at the total receipts, in whatever manner they might have been gained, and satisfied their consciences in view of the fact that it was to pay the minister, or for some charitable object.

But aside from the mere amusement or pleasure of the occasion, is there not a principle in the matter which is worthy of serious attention? We allude to the practice of gambling, so extensively indulged in at gatherings of this description. However harshly the term may grate upon the sensitive ear, yet it is none too strong a term to use. If a man should walk up to a church-member and say, “I am about to dispose of my horse by lottery and would like to sell you a ticket,” he would proudly answer, “I never gamble!” and yet he will go to a fair of some religious society, and the ladies will gather around him, one with tickets in a beautiful quilt, another in a handsome tea-set, &c. and before they leave him, he will have invested in all the lotteries of the evening, and perhaps will carry home some of the winnings, while his children will have drawn numerous rattles and toys from sundry grab-bags and fish-ponds, or perhaps tried to do so and failed, which in either case, will beget within them a desire to try again, and their next trial may perhaps be made in a game of cards, especially as church-members and even ministers have begun to openly defend the practice of card-playing.

That this is the tendency of such operations, cannot be disputed, and is in some degree realized even by those who plan and execute them, yet nobody seems to care, and thus the children and youth are being helped onward to disgrace and ruin, by those whose duty it is to shield them from the vices so destructive to morality and virtue. Oh that nominal Christians might be awakened from their fancied security, and made to see the terrible events just before them, and the preparation necessary to obtain salvation in the day of the coming of the Son of Man.

WM. C. GAGE.

Manchester, N. H.