es people get something thrown in with their purchase. It may be a
gold watch or a set of silver, a ring or a farm. Sharp way to get off
unsalable goods. It has filled the land with fictitious articles and
covered up our population with brass finger-rings, and despoiled
the moral sense of the community, and is fast making us a nation of
gamblers.

The Church of God has not seemed willing to allow the world to have
all the advantage of these games of chance. A church fair opens, and
towards the close it is found that some of the more valuable articles
are unsalable. Forthwith the conductors of the enterprise conclude
that they will _raffle_ for some of the valuable articles, and, under
pretence of anxiety to make their minister a present, or please some
popular member of the church, fascinating persons are despatched
through the room, pencil in hand, to "solicit" shares; or perhaps each
draws for his own advantage, and scores of people go home with their
trophies, thinking that all is right, for Christian ladies did the
embroidery, and Christian men did the raffling, and the proceeds went
towards a new communion set. But you may depend on it that, as far as
morality is concerned, you might as well have won by the crack of the
billiard-ball or the turn of the dice-box.

Some good people cannot stand this raffling, and so, at fairs, they go
to "voting," sometimes for editors, and sometimes for ministers, at
a dollar a vote. Now the Methodist minister is ahead; now the
Presbyterian leads, and now the Baptist. But, just at the last moment,
when one of the ministers of the more popular sect seems sure to get
the prize, the members from some obscure denomination, that do not
deserve the prize, come in, and by a large contribution carry off for
_their_ minister the silver tea-set.

Do you wonder that churches built, lighted, or upholstered by such
processes as that come to great financial and spiritual decrepitude?
The devil says: "_I_ helped build that house of worship, and I have as
much right there as you have;" and for once the devil is right.

We do not read that they had a lottery for building the church at
Corinth or Antioch, or for getting up a gold-headed cane or for an
embroidered surplice for Saint Paul. All this I style ecclesiastical
gambling. More than one man who is destroyed can say that his first
step on the wrong road was when he won something at a church fair.

The gambling spirit has not stopped for any