e to be almost an omnipresent evil. In treating
this subject, it is our purpose to point out something of the nature
of its evil, not only that we may be kept from it but that we may save
others whom it threatens to destroy.

Gambling grows out of a misuse of the natural tendency to take risks. A
social vice is some social right misused. Men have the social right to
congregate to talk over measures of social and economic welfare. But if
they discuss measures which oppose the principles of free Government,
their meeting together becomes a crime against the State. A personal
vice is some personal right misused. As some one has put it, "Vice is
virtue gone mad." It is a personal right and a personal virtue to be
charitable, even beneficent. But since justice comes before mercy, if
one uses for charity that which should be used in payment of debt, his
virtue of beneficence becomes a vice of theft. So it is with gambling.
It is giving the natural tendency to chance, to risk an illegitimate
play. The person who is afraid to risk anything accomplishes but little
in any way, is seldom a speculator, and never a gambler. Usually the
gambler is the man who is naturally full of hazard, who loves to run
risks, to take chances. Nor will one find a more practical and useful
tendency in one's make-up than this. See the discoverer of America and
his brave crew for days and days sailing across an unknown sea toward an
unknown land. But that was the price of a New World. Note the hazard
and risk of our Pilgrim Fathers. But they gave to the world a new
colonization. See the Second greatest American on his knees before
Almighty God, promising him that he would free four million of slaves,
providing General Lee should be driven back out of Maryland. General
Lee was driven back, and that immortal though most hazardous of all
documents, from man's point of view, was read to his Cabinet and signed
by Abraham Lincoln. All great men have taken great risks. Not a section
of the United States has been settled without some risk. No business
enterprise is launched without some risk. To secure an education, to
learn a trade, to marry a wife, all involve some risk, much risk. The
tendency to risk, to hazard, to chance it is a practical and useful
tendency. Only let this tendency be governed always by wisdom
and justice. No person ever became a gambler until consciously or
unconsciously he forfeited wisdom and justice in his chances and risks.

Gamblin