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GAMBLING is another amusement to which young men, addicted to pleasure, frequently have recourse. A passion for gambling is one of the most ruinous propensities that can infect the human heart! It is to the mind, what a love of alcohol is to the body! And to the man addicted to gambling and play—the ordinary pursuits of business will be as flat and uninteresting—just as looking forward to a day of bread and water, is to the drunkard craving and waiting for his liquor. Gambling is a system of excitement and stimulants, which prepares the passions for every excess. It is a 'parent vice', and its 'offspring' are as deformed and monstrous as itself! It produces a serpent brood of crimes—among which fraud, suicide, and murder, have all been found. Young men, as you would not have these vices generated in your heart, harbour not in your bosom the mother that bears them! Retreat from the billiard and card table! If you would not end up as a gambler—avoid all gambling!
Every friend to the morals of his country must deplore the increasing passion for the brutal and brutalizing sport of PRIZE FIGHTS. This practice is more demoralizing than it is possible to describe. It is fraught with such deadly mischief to the national demeanour and conduct, that it should become a matter of most serious consideration with the legislature whether more effective measures ought not to be taken for its suppression. There is scarcely a vice which tends to disturb the order of society that is not cherished, and, to a considerable extent, encouraged, by this odious system.
Independently of the offensive spectacle exhibited by two men acting the part of wild beasts towards each other, and endeavouring, if not to tear, to beat each other to pieces; independently of the fatal manner in which these conflicts sometimes terminate—what a system of gambling of the most pernicious description is connected with this practice! What habits of idleness are contracted! What a spirit is generated among the labouring classes to excel in these feats of brutal courage and savage skill! What a lure is held out to the indolent! What what a temptation thrown in the way of the industrious! Where are all the thieves, the cheats, the murderers of a country, most likely to be assembled at any given time? Around the prize fight ring. What a revolting and shocking instance of this kind of amusement have we lately had in a neighbouring county.
At the very time when the Hertfordshire murderers were arraigned for a deed which had circulated horror through the kingdom; while the sentence was being pronounced upon them, will it be believed that 30,000 people were assembled to witness this their favourite recreation, by which the murderers were trained for the crime which hurried them to the gallows? In what school were they trained to commit murder? In the ring of the prize fight! And yet thirty thousand people, at the very time when they were being doomed to death, were assembled to patronize the practice. In this town the fate of the murderers was lost sight of—in that of the fighters; and it seemed a matter of less concern whether they were condemned, than who won the prize fight!
Let anyone conceive the mass of crime which was committed within the circle that surrounded the combatants; let him think of the oaths that were sworn, the pilfering that was carried on, the diabolical rage that was felt, the gambling that was practiced; let him add the numbers who closed the evening with intoxication, the multitudes who were then first led astray from the paths of morality by acquiring a taste for evil conduct and evil company. Let anyone think of these things and say if the place on which this crowd were assembled, did not contain a greater accumulation of crime than could be found on the same space in our world. Who can wonder at the prevalence of vice, when such things are going on? But we may wonder to hear of noblemen, gentlemen, lawyers, being present. May our youth have wisdom enough to abhor the practice; may they see that one of the nearest roads to ruin is by the ring of a prize fight. To all the flimsy arguments by which the practice is attempted to be defended, may they reply—that to be brutal is not the way to embellish our nature, and that the ferocity of a tiger and the dexterity of a savage is no ornament to a civilized rational creature.
Still, after all that can be said of these practices, young men are to be found who will justify them on the grounds already stated. But try them by their effects. See their influence on personal godliness. Godliness, alas! such people make no pretense whatever to it. They have not the fear of God before their eyes. They are not only without piety—but against it. "God is not in all their thoughts." They are atheists in practice—if not in opinion. If a man loves such pleasures more than God, he has not even the semblance of piety. He is not even moral. It is true he may not be a murderer, robber, housebreaker—but he is still an immoral man if he be living in drunkenness, swearing, or fornication.
Try this mode of life by its influence on their USEFULNESS. Young men who live in the enjoyment of wicked pleasure, are defeating one end of their existence, which is in every possible way to benefit the human race—to do good by their property, example, and principles. Instead of this, their property is squandered upon their vices, and not devoted to relieve the misery, and promote the happiness of mankind. The influence of their example, instead of falling around them like the refreshing dew—sends forth a withering blight. Their principles, instead of resembling precious grain, are the seeds of poison, which they scatter along their path. They have no part in benevolent and Christian institutions. I have known young men, who, while they were moral, were active as teachers of Sunday schools, and agents of other philanthropic institutions, immediately as they acquired a taste for sinful gratifications, withdraw their names, and retire from the scenes of Christian mercy. They ceased to be philanthropists when they became immoral; and now, instead of doing good, they do harm. On how many such do the curses of indignant, heart-broken parents rest, for corrupting their sons, and seducing their daughters.
Who shall depict, in proper colours, the crime of SEDUCING, and then abandoning an innocent female? And yet how common is it! She, poor wretched victim, the dupe of promises never intended to be fulfilled, and at length deserted as a worthless, ruined thing—seeks by the wages of iniquity to prolong a miserable existence, until, in her garret, consumed by disease, she closes a life of infamy by a death of unspeakable horror. If at the recollection of her untimely death, her betrayer feels a pang of remorse, his pity comes too late for her; it cannot restore the peace and purity, that, with felon hand, he stole from a bosom which was serene until he invaded its tranquillity; it cannot repair the virtue he corrupted; it cannot build up the character he demolished; it cannot rekindle the life which he was the means of extinguishing; much less can it call back from the torments of the damned the miserable spirit which he was the instrument of hurrying to perdition!
Ah! how, one should think, must her upbraiding spirit haunt his imagination; how often must he hear her groans of despair, and see her frenzied appearance, seeming in every agonized distortion to say, "Look at me, my destroyer!" The seducer, I admit, is less guilty than the murderer—but how much less? The murderer extinguishes life at once; the seducer causes it to waste away by slow degrees amidst unutterable torture! The murderer hazards his own life in the commission of the crime; the seducer exposes himself to no personal risk! The murderer is visited with the heaviest sentence that the justice of the country can inflict—but the seducer can revel in impunity, and can go on from conquering to conquer in his desolating career, and defy all justice—but that of heaven!
Yes, the guilty and polluted wretch will be greeted in fashionable and moral society with the same welcome as before, though he comes to it with the guilt of female ruin fresh upon his soul. Oh! when shall the time arrive that reputable females will resent this cruel indignity offered to their gender. When will they protect the virtue of their weaker sisters, by frowning from their society, the individual who has betrayed one of their number to her ruin! When shall the time come that the profligate and debauchees, by the consentaneous feeling of virtuous women, shall be banished from their presence? If any individual shall glance on these passages who is guilty of this great wickedness, let him ponder on his guilt, and never cease through life to weep for his sin, looking for pardon through the blood of Christ. If anyone should read this discourse, who meditates the crime, may I come between his 'basilisk eye' and the victim marked for ruin, and already flattering under the spell. Pause, young man, oh! pause, before you resolve to ruin two souls at once, and produce an entanglement of sin and misery which eternity itself shall never unravel!
I would not throw the blame of seduction entirely on my own gender. There are not a few to whom Solomon's description of the female tempter will apply in this age. What numbers of 'abandoned women' infest our streets before the sun is set. Is there no means of being rid of this nuisance? If not, let our youth beware, and remember the words of scripture, "Hearken unto me now therefore, O you children, and attend to the words of my mouth, let not your heart decline to her ways; go not astray in her paths. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death!"
Amidst all your sinful jollity—are you happy, young man, in your sins? Are vice and bliss synonymous? Is immorality the road to happiness? Are you satisfied with your course? Do you approve of it as the most rational mode of life? Have you the sanction of both your judgment and your conscience? You know you are not happy! You may be gratified—but you are not satisfied! You may have pleasure—but you have not happiness! When the 'honey of gratification' is all gone, is there not asting left behind? Expose to us your wounded, bleeding heart; admit us to your chamber at midnight, when left alone with an angry conscience, to be lashed almost to madness. Let us hear your heartbroken reflections, when you heap your envenomed reproaches upon your own folly and wretchedness. Oh! what proofs could we recollect, even from your own lips, that the way of transgressors is hard, and the pleasures of sin are but for a season!
Have there not been times also, when, in the very midst of the riot and revelry—a mysterious hand, visible only to you—came forth and wrote your doom before your eyes; when conscience arrested you, as God did Belshazzar, at the feast? From that moment the pleasure was all gone. You tried to be merry—but your smile was as the laughter of a demon, which could but ill conceal the torture that raged within; and you retired, as Esau did, when he had eaten his pottage, reflecting that it was for this you had sold your soul! What makes you so afraid in a time of sickness? Because you seem to see death on the pale horse approaching you, and hell following in his aftermath!
Add up, young men, all the pains of vice—the anxiety which precedes, and the remorse which follows it, the stings of conscience and the reproaches of friends, the fear of being detected, and the shame of detection when it has taken place—and say if they do not far overbalance the pleasures of sin. I will concede to you, that sin has its gratifications—but are they not as Solomon calls them, "The crackling of thorns beneath a pot"—a noisy, but fleeting blaze?
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