It adds to the peculiar evils of this vice, that it is one, which in a moral community, is likely in a very considerable degree and in its worst excesses, to be practised in secret. The young man, whose character has stood firm and fair, dreads to have exposed to the public eye, what he is unwilling to confess is, but what others will call, a habit of gaming. He shrinks from inflicting the pain on his best friends, that would be caused by a knowledge of his courses and companions. His frank and ingenuous nature is tortured with the idea, that he wears a mask, and plays the hypocrite. He feels that it is base, yet such is the power of habit, that rather than relinquish the gaming table, he will submit to carry around with him this feeling of self-debasement. Though fast losing his self-respect, he will still struggle to retain the respect of the world. But it is a hard thing to demand of others, what his own consciousness refuses to himself. He is uneasy and restless as if some terrible disclosure were impending. cowers from the presence of the honorable and the good. is rebuked by the suspicions of his friends, nor is he less rebuked by their confidence in his worth.

He

He

I would not have it understood that a young man is lost who has gone no farther than this. No one is as yet thoroughly degraded, who retains this feeling of shame, and the sense of duty. But the youth who has come to the point, where his own personal experience of a vice has brought out in bitter and vivid forms the feeling of shame and remorse, has come to a turning point. Few, who are drawn so far down towards the cataract, ever turn and make for the shore. And here is the last place where he can turn. If he does not yield to the sense of shame and duty here, he never will yield. No man continues in this state long. He must make his election now between two courses, and his destiny hangs on the decision. His sense of shame and duty must conquer the growing vice, or be conquered by it. On one side or the other, he must now take his stand, on the side of the vice or on the side of the duty. He should do it with the settled feeling that if his sense of duty is now not able to conquer the unconfirmed habit, it is in vain to expect that it will do it when the vice has acquired more power, and conscience become weakened and deadened by repeated transgression. Thus far he has not so much become vicious, as he has learned by personal experiment the evil and danger of vice, But he has arrived now at a point where he must decide, or probably never decide whether he will be lost or be saved. He must once for all fly from those companions and habits, or yield to them.

And having gone thus far, become entangled with such associates, and habituated to such excitements, he is likely to crush down the promptings of duty and yield to the vice. We may suppose that he does yield, and trace the course of this miserable young man on, till gaming has unfolded itself into its consequences. It is a terrible picture, that should be traced with a pen of iron, as we see him sinking, stage by stage into the gulf, but it may not be a profitless one. And in the first place, gaming lays him under the most dangerous temp

tations.

This young man is perhaps in the employment and in the confidence of others. Their money may be in his hands, with little safeguard over it, except his own integrity. He is embarrassed by losses at the gaming table. He believes that the chances must turn, if he only had means with which again to take advantage of them. May he not take a small sum, though it does not belong to him? It will not be missed during the night, he will restore it again in the morning. With the money before him-in his keeping-and alone-and the strong passion urging him on,-is it impossible for him to yield? His hand is upon it-he stifles his fevered thoughts. and doubts-he is forth, hurrying through the dark street-he is in the den of gamblers. Suppose that with a mind tossed by fever and anxiety, he is contrary to all probability successful—and that the money is faithfully restored before he sleeps. He has restored by doing this, some degree of ease to his conscience. But again he meets with losses which, with his circumscribed means, are large. Is not the same resource before him? And again he uses it. But he is not again successfuland he must hide the first fraud by a larger fraud. And it is torture to him to think, that it is committed on one who has almost implicitly trusted him. And by degrees the money he has taken becomes so large in amount,-large because he is much confided in—that he is almost hopeless of refunding it. Hoping still by some desperate venture to regain and return all, he struggles on-with the utmost difficulty-almost in despair-evading from day to day a detection that haunts even his sleep, with the terrors of hell.

But leave a picture which is too painful for the mind to dwell on, nor follow him as he plunges with desperation, on into the opening gulf.

He is yet full of warm sympathies and affections. Let us follow him to another scene. It is midnight-and he is alone -with a single lamp-in his solitary chamber-a youth with the elements of a generous and manly nature-sensitive,

affectionate, and abhorring the very vice of which he is guilty. He has no friend to unbosom himself to, and to lean on in this his sad extremity. He is alone with his God, O no! he dares not think of Him. His heart is alone. He has grown haggard with the horrible feelings and fears that have been preying on him. He is keenly sensitive to his honor. But it is gone, he has been trusted and has defrauded the man that confided in his honor. He has lost his self-respect, for he has done again and again what he could not do, except in the darkness and solitude of the night, and dared not disclose. He stands on the edge of an abyss. A little more careful

scrutiny on the part of his employers, and he may stand before the world, a detected and shunned criminal-a criminal with the dishonor of a violated trust. And in his disturbed moments, he has unconsciously taken up and opened a book. But with the resting of his eye upon it, it has fallen, as if the lightning had struck his hand. It was a Bible-on the opened page a mother's name, and a mother's prayer written beneath

He had found the book after he had left his home, laid away in his trunk, the last token of her affection, speaking alike of a mother's love, and of God. And it is now all before him that last parting-that religious home, where at night and at morn the blessing of God is invoked on the absent one- -the parents and the sisters, to whom he is the object of hope and love, and the strong stay on which they lean. For a moment the vision fills his mind-and he is with them and hears their voices-and all the familiar scenes are about him. But reality destroys the momentary delusion of the fancy. It passes away, he is still alone-with a single lamp-in his chamber-with disgrace, and crime, and ruin yawning at his feet. There is a letter on the table at his side, just received, full of paternal affection and advice, and sympathy with the good prospects of his son. What answer shall the deluded father receive?

But we will suppose that he escapes detection. Still he does not escape from himself-from fear, and a stinging conscience, and a restless anxiety. Is there no way in which he may deaden this inward torture? Does not one vice tempt to another? Intemperance is the refuge to which he flies from restlessness and remorse. And by this, all his sensibilities are more or less benumbed. But even this, cannot entirely rid him of the consciousness of violated duties, and a righteous God. And sometimes, like lightning illuminating midnight gloom, awful terrors of the future flash in on his soul. There is one effort more to be made, before he can dare to remember the past, or think of the future. He nerves his

will to make it. He looks up at the sun and shuts his eyes, and professes to doubt whether there is a God-and man he says is governed by fate-and retribution, and a spiritual world, are chimeras which priesteraft has invoked wherewith to frighten and rule the vulgar. He will no longer be deluded. No retribution! If he will not believe revelation-how will he disbelieve the laws of nature? No righteous spiritual retribution! Is not hell already beginning to burn in his own bosom?

But he has not yet lost the affections of humanity. And he seeks and wins the affections of one who trusts him, and believes that he is, what he appears to her to be. And they are bound together for life's weal or wo. Let us go forward a few years. Late at night-in an obscure room-where penury hardly supplies a crust-there sits at her labor, one who is still in youth. Yet suffering has worn away the fullness of her beauty, and disease is already preying at the seat of life, and sending its unearthly sparkle into the eye, and the hectic flush into the emaciated cheek. And as she works, she watches, and her foot touches a cradle where rests a beautiful child --its face turned in the pale light upward to its mother-the eyelids closed, and the breast heaving in the quick but even breathings of sleeping infancy. And hours have passed since the clock tolled its midnight strokes over the silent city. And at every sound she has started, as if one for whom she waited had come and then sat down again-a single tear only telling how anxiously her heart watched the returning step. It is the gambler's wife, and the gambler's child, and he will soon be back from his orgies to one who did love him, and who yet loves--in her youth and beauty loved him, and now broken hearted, and in her dying feebleness, prays for him with all of a woman's love. May God be with the mother and child in that gloomy chamber;-the husband and father has deserted them.

But let us turn from these gloomy pictures. For it may be said that these things may not take place-that the gambler may not be dishonest-nor have kindred whom affections he can wound.

Let us look then at some of the necessary consequences of gaming.

It destroys all the affections. The gambler would have. friends; where shall he find them? Among his associates, where every one else does; among those whose tastes and habits are like his own-among gamesters like himself. But is the relation that he holds to them one of friendship? Certainly not, but of hostility. In that which most interests

them, there is no community of enjoyment. One's success is another's ruin. Each one is striving to rise on the wretchedness of his most intimate associates. Can friendship enter into this den of demons, who are mutually trying to destroy each other? And all the more generous virtues, pine, and sicken, and die, in the sickly heats of a haunt of gaming. And the mind-it dwindles away, when it has no other occupation than this; and usefulness is a word that has no meaning; and the moral nature is deadened, till the whole being of a man contracts so to a point, becomes so sordid, so earthly, that it seems as if, in despite of the laws of God, death must be annihilation. But there is no annihilation; that debased and degraded soul shall rise out of the sepulcher of the body, to stand before the bar of God.

Gaming! What does a man play for? Nominally for money. And suppose that he gains it. What does he gain with it? Worthlessness, shame, the most sordid selfishness, remorse, a degraded soul, the ruin of his nature in time, and the ruin o his hopes forever. This is the true stake for which every gambler plays, and which every habitual gambler wins. He may win nothing else, but he certainly will win self-degradation, self-corruption, and ruin.

In these remarks I have attempted to point out only so many of the temptations, dangers and evils of gaming; as might serve to show the justness of the proposition with which I started, viz. that gaming is a thing that a young man had better let alone. Its moral turpitude, its comparative criminality, let every one decide upon for himself. I only wish to show, that it is a thing better let alone.

And the remarks I have made are not addressed to gamblers. Such men cannot be thus reached. The religion of that class consists almst solely in forcing into the mind some modification of fatalism, which as far as possible shall absolve one from remorse, for the violation of those rules of duty, which better men feel under an obligation to obey.

But were one to see these pages, so unfortunate and miserable as to be bound by this habit, I should not know how to address him. I might pity him as a most miserable creature, but it would be as one in a disease for which man knows no remedy. Reformation is all but hopeless. Where shall you begin? What springs of action shall you touch, which moved, will have any power to raise the confirmed gambler from his degradation? There are some vices which do not seem to injure the affections, and these may be appealed to, as the ministers of reform. And inconsistent as it may appear, there are