is
address to do more than refer to them.

It must be understood in the few remarks I purpose to offer on this
subject, that I confine them to what I have called the habit of
betting. I shall not affirm that betting is necessarily a sin, but I
do state it as my conviction that its tendency and results are
practically always in that direction. William Cobbett--than whom no
man has ever written more sensibly to young men--says that "betting is
always criminal in itself, or in what it leads to. The root of it is
covetousness, a desire to take from others something for which you have
given, and intend to give, no equivalent." These statements may be
debated, but they appeal to me as essentially sound. A young man says:
"If I choose to risk a sum of money which I can afford to lose over a
bet with some one else who can afford to do the same, what has talk
about equivalent got to do with it? What, or where, is the wrong in
such a transaction?" This is a test question, and I am disposed to
answer it by saying that I do not think any young man who takes himself
seriously will urge it; and when put on a lower plane, the closer you
examine it the more rotten it is found to be. Is it wrong to cultivate
and indulge a habit that inevitably leads to bad results? And that is
what betting does, apologize for it as you may. Putting aside for the
moment any considerations about the money you can afford to lose, you
cannot afford, either in your own or in the interests of the community
of which you are a part, to take the moral risks that are involved in
betting. It is to insult our intelligence to deny that,
comprehensively speaking, the basis of betting is cupidity, and
cupidity of a particularly dangerous kind. There may be exceptions,
but they are scarcely worth mentioning; whatever may be the inception
of the habit of betting, it almost inevitably roots itself as greed;
and it is greed that consumes character like a furnace. It is the
black altar on which everything worth being must suffer immolation.

I was told some time ago of a place of worship which had a
billiard-table on its premises. Provided at the suggestion of the
minister with the best of intentions, it was soon turned into a means
of betting. The managers were obliged to take the matter into serious
consideration, and out of a regard to the susceptibilities of the young
men who used the table, they decided not to prohibit stakes upon a
game, but to insis