ion than just to look on, but there is ever hanging over you the
sword of detection. The policeman appears, or God's light is let down
upon the scene, and you are discovered as having part in it, and your
name is stained and your character gone, and your life marked with a
perpetual stigma of disgrace. When God's Judgment comes on sin it
always involves some who are just hovering on the edge of it, as well
as those who are in the thick of it. You ought not to be there.
Remember Ahaziah.

And there are some evil natures and some evil things which a man cannot
touch in even the slightest degree without being led on from step to
step, as Ahaziah was, until he was in the thick of Jehoram's iniquity.
A young woman cannot enter a gin-palace and drink her glass at the
counter--as I see scores do any night--without gradually going further
and losing all the modesty and grace of womanhood. A young man cannot
touch gambling in any of its forms without almost inevitably being
drawn under its fascinations, as one who is slowly involved in a wily
serpent's coils. An English bishop thinks and has said that a little
betting is allowable, that if you only indulge moderately in it, you
may do it with impunity. He might as well have said that if you only
steal coppers the law will smile upon you, but if you steal gold you
will come in for its stripes. He might as well have said, "If you only
put your little finger in this fire it will not hurt you, but if you
thrust your whole hand in, it will burn." There can be no moderation
in a thing which is essentially and in all its principles based on
dishonesty and corruption, and evil excitement and evil greed. I am
profoundly sorry that such a thing has been said by one whose word has
so much authority and influence. It will be taken by thousands as an
encouragement to do what they are only too prone and eager to do. Who
shall curse what a father in Christ has condescended to bless? We need
rather to have all Christian hands and voices raised in passionate and
tearful denunciation of that which is doing more than anything else to
demoralise our youth and eat away the very morals of the nation. We
need to warn against it and denounce it in whatever form and degree it
is practised, and to say, "Touch not, taste not, handle not the
accursed thing."

We must keep away altogether from the men who delight in evil paths,
and from the things, the very touch of which defiles. Go not in t