370 ON THE EDUCATION OE YOUTH. the gaming - table, the loss of a little money is one of the least in. juries you sustain by it. But what if you should still come off gainers ? Is this the way that God has taught or allowed us to procure the necessary comforts of life ? Is this a sort of labour or traffic on which you can ask the blessing of heaven? Can you lift up your face to God, and pray that be would succeed the Cast of the die, the drawing of the, lot, or the dealing out of the cards, so as to increase your gain, while it is the very sense and language of the prayer, that your neighbour may sustain so much loss ? This is a sad and guilty circumstance which belongs to gaming, that one can gain nothing but what another loses; and consequently, we cannot ask a blessing upon ourselves, but at the same time we pray for a blast upon our neighbour. Will you hope to excuse it by saying, that my neighbour consents to this blast, or this loss, by entering into the game, and there is no injury where there is consent ? I answer, that though he consents to lose conditionally, and upon a ventrous hope of gain, yet he is not willing to sustain the loss absolutely; but when either chance, or his neighbour's skill in the game has de- termined against him, then he is constrained to lose, and does it unwillingly ; so that he still sustains it as a loss, or misfortune, or evil. Now if you ask a blessing from heaven on this way of your getting money, you ask rather absolutely that your neigh- bour may sustain a loss, without any regard to the condition of his hope of gain. Your wish and prayer is directly that you may get, and he may lose: you cannot wish this good to yourself, but you wish the contrary evil to him : and therefore I think gaming for gain cannot be consistent with the laws of Christ, which certainly forbid us to wish evil to our neighbour. And if you cannot so much as in thought ask God's blessing on this, as you certainly may on such recreations as have an evident tenden- cy innocently to exercise the body and relax the mind, it seems your conscience secretly condemns it, and there is an additional proof of its being evil to you. All the justest writers of morality, and the best casuists, have generally, if not universally, determined against these me- thods of gain. Whatsoever game may be indulged as lawful, it is still as a recreation, and not as a calling or business of life : and therefore no larger sums ought to be risked or ventured in this manner, than what may be lawfully laid out by any persons for their present recreation, according to their different circum- stances in the world. Besides all this, think of the loss of time, and the waste of life that is continually made by some who fre- quent these gaming - places. Think how it calls away many a youth from their proper business, and tempts them to throw away what is not their own, and to risk the substance, is well as the displeasure of their parents, or of their master, at all the
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=