Proverbs 16

Proverbs 16:8

. OR THE HOLE OF GREEN CLOTH Sermon preached on Sunday afternoon to MEN ONLY. Proverbs 16:8I AM to speak to you this afternoon of one of the oldest sins. Gambling is not a modern art, but in its different forms and phases can be traced back for centuries, and millenniums, and into every nation and tongue that has ever existed beneath the sun. With some peoples it has been more rank than with others, but no generation has escaped its seductive fascinations.What new thing, then, could one be expected to say on so old a theme?I was telling the men who met in our chapel the other Monday evening, that familiar story of a certain parson, whose affectionate, but poor people wanted to express their appreciation of his faithful services; and so they started a subscription to buy the parson a horse.When the papers had gone their rounds, it was found that $19 had been pledged, and so the original movers made haste to purchase such a steed as could be had for that amount.They brought him to the parson, who, having duly returned his thanks, put the horse in the side lot.Shortly, a jockey passed that way and seeing the animal made some scurrilous remarks as to his physical appearance, declaring that he was rather the worst piece of horse flesh he had seen; to which the parson replied with righteous indignation, “That is a better horse than my Lord rode into Jerusalem on.” Thereupon the jockey climbed over the fence and examined the animal’s teeth, and turning to the parson he said, cynically, “Dominie, that is the very same horse.”I am sure that the things I shall say this afternoon are aged, some of them doubtless nineteen centuries old, and more, but like the Dominie’s horse, they may be serviceable still, and may properly illustrate and emphasize the truth in our text, “Better is a little with righteousness, than great revenues without right”. It would seem that Solomon must have been thinking of gambling in some form when he penned that sentence, and this afternoon, I want to employ it to impress you with its truth. There are several reasons that might be assigned for saying this with reference to gambling. The first is this: IS The basal principal of all honest dealing between men is that business transactions shall promote mutual advantages. When that does not occur, we say somebody was guilty of cheating. When did the professional gambler, or even the greatest novice in the art, ever dream of making the game contribute to another man’s wealth, as well as to his own? Does not every visitor to the hole of green cloth go there with fixed purpose to rob his brother, if possible, and thereby enrich himself?You know Boston is a great center of literary culture, and that culture has affected the speech of the women particularly until they make the most elaborate words do service for small occasions. One day Mr. and Mrs. Emerson were sitting together in their Boston home, when she turned to him and said, “Browning, dear, what is a cutaneous pastime?” “A cutaneous pastime, my love; I never heard of such a thing.” “Well, on the car this morning, I heard two men talking, and one of them spoke of a skin game.”That’s gambling!

The scalp of the other fellow is the purpose of each player. The only difference between the motive of the highway robber and that of the man who throws the dice, or fingers the cards, or bets on the turning wheel, is that one proposes to rob his fellow with his consent, while the other proposes to rob him whether he consents or not.

The fact of robbery remains as the ulterior purpose, whether the man accomplishes it with a seven shooter, or in “seven up”; whether he win by using a sledge hammer, or by his knowledge of “old sledge”; whether he gets his money by means of an iron poker, or the “gambler’s poker”.No doubt some of our professional gamblers would loudly protest against this definition of their purpose and act. No question that they pose as if their clean characters were defamed by the preacher’s words. But though they hold up their hands in holy horror, the definition will stand, and their true infamy will seem to the world to inhere in their chosen pursuit, not in what others have said of them.Some years ago, I saw a letter written to a member of my church, by a New York counterfeiter. In that epistle the New York shark offered to sell $3,000 in the best counterfeit, such counterfeit, he affirmed as no expert could distinguish from the genuine, for $300 of the United States print. Lest he should offend the conscience of the Christian man by this proposal, he explained at length in his letter, that he was an honest man, and the business was perfectly legitimate. Yes, our penitentiaries were built to husband such honesty and the men of such legitimate business ought to be in them.I have read of a clergyman who, seeing a certain horse-jockey trying to take in a simple youth by imposing upon him a broken-winded horse for a good one, interfered.

Taking the young man to one side, the preacher said, “That fellow is a shark. Don’t exchange with him.” When the trade was declared off, the jockey was quite out of temper.

He followed the preacher up and said, “Parson, I would a good deal rather hear you preach than see you privately interfere with bargains between man and man.” “Well,” answered the parson, “if you had been where you ought to have been last Sunday, you could have heard me preach.” “Well, where was that?” asked the jockey. “In the State Prison,” returned the clergyman.And our prisons have in them special departments, which the sense of civil justice has set in order for honest (?) gamblers. GAIN MEANS GOLD We often wonder how a man ever reaches the point where he can handle money gotten at gambling without feeling defiled by the touch.We have sometimes wondered what newspaper men do with the money that they take for “Ads” that invite the youth to visit the anti-rooms of perdition, in what waters they wash them to take away the stain of a brother’s blood. But if that question could be answered, here is a more difficult one still: How shall the gold gotten from some green youth without giving to him any sort of exchange, or from the father, whose children shall cry for bread because he gambled and lost, ever be so cleansed that the winner can buy bread with it that will not choke or poison his own wretched wife and children!Robert McIntyre, in the keenest: discourse against this business that I ever read, said, touching this corruption of money, “Once, when the plague visited an English village, the stricken people resorted to a stream near by to get bread left there for them. They tossed the coins for payment into the brook where they were found hours afterward, by those who had provided the food. They thought the over-passing waters had cleansed the pestilence from the coins. Perhaps it had, but no brook, river or sea hath tide medicinal enough to cleanse the curse from money made at gambling. It is cankered.

It is blood-stained and tear-rusted. It will curse him that wins and him that loses. Remember this, young man, that the moment you engage in its blighting business, you either arrange to lose in dishonesty, or else by dishonest methods to grow rich in blood-money.”THE GAME The dishonesty of the business is not its blackest stripe; blacker still is its power to degrade the men who indulge. Young men are apt to overlook that feature. In the strength and beauty of young manhood, our egotism is slow to admit the possibility of shame) and degradation as our eventual lot. What young men fear is that their seniors or peers shall count them unsophisticated and green. But he has that of which he may be justly proud who is so green that he has not seen the inside of a gambling room. Better be green than degraded.The first degradation appears in the loss of self-respect.

I never gambled but once and when I went away from the place where I had made my contribution to the foul vultures who lay in wait for succors of my sort, I went in shame. In the presence of my father, I felt abashed; and, though my mother was many miles away, when I saw her again, I could not help suspecting that some way she knew about it.

The guilty conscience needs no accuser.Few better men than President Garfield have graced the presidency of the United States; and it is worth while for youth and the aged to listen while he speaks. On one occasion he said, “I do not much care what others think and say about me, but there is one man’s opinion about me which I very much value. That is the opinion of James Garfield. Others I need not think about. I can get away from them, but I have to be with him all the time. He is with me when I rise up, and when I lie down; when I eat and talk; when I go out and come in.

It makes all the difference between happiness and misery as to whether he thinks well of me, or not.”I had rather retain my self-respect, than have all the silver and gold that the gambling houses of the world have ever handled, and I say that in face of the fact that Monte Carlo, alone, handles millions a year.The second degradation results in the condemnation of society.The drinking man is often a man who commands social position. It is a sad commentary upon American civilization, but it is a simple fact to say, that the scarlet man, the adulterer, is not excluded from what we call the first circles; and even his indulgent neighbors bow to him their respect, if he hold political position, social station or is in great worldly possessions.But from the gambler the greater part of society shrink as if they feared contamination from his touch.In Chicago, I knew a physician who had married a young woman of some means, and inveigled her into the purchase of Chicago property in his name.After two or three years that ought to have been spent as a honey-moon, that young woman was white-haired, wrinkled-faced, broken-hearted.

She was a comparative stranger to me, but because her husband had a few times attended my church, she came one day to my study, and poured out her soul, and told me how he had gambled away all his money, had mortgaged his house for $3,000, and lost that.I went to talk with him and he attempted to defend his conduct and commiserate himself as unfortunate. He is a great fool who expects to be anything else than unfortunate, and yet attempts to get gold by gambling. But in the course of the conversation he said, “This thing has gotten abroad. My friends are giving me the cold shoulder; even the social circles in which we have moved seem not just willing to receive me, though I know that not a one of the members thereof are free from sin, and some of them have habits that are less clean than gambling. But,” said he, “society seems to condemn the gambler as it does not the drinker, the dishonest, the lustful, or any other, and I don’t think it is right.”To his remark I replied, “But it is a fact, and I thank God for it. The business that could take the bloom from your wife’s cheek in two years, and turn her raven hair to white, and furrow her face as forty years ought not to have done, ought to be stigmatized by every member of society who is not lost to every sense of truth and right, and your suffering is not a sufficient judgment of your sins.”I have often thought that this black art never does its worst for a single man.

It is when the husband and father degrades not only himself, but his house and family, that Heaven must weep. It is then that the angels know how this serpent of green has struck venom into the flesh of wife and child, and in its slimy coil is crushing the home.The most of you have read Hawthorne’s strange story entitled, “The Man of Adamant”, in which he describes one Richard Digby, who lived and carried about the world a stone in his bosom just where the heart should have been.That story is true to life.

I knew a young man many years ago, who illustrated it. His wife was surpassingly beautiful, his little girl one of the most winsome of children in that city. When she gave him her hand, and heard his promise to “love, cherish, honor and protect, until death do us part”, he had property and position. But the fatal night came when ‘from his office he went to that heavily curtained upper room. He was unlucky and lost. Half crazed by his misfortune he borrowed and went again to get back what was gone. Doubtless the Devil deceived him into believing that if he got even, he would quit. But again he lost!

Then, more desperate than at first, he borrowed in greater sums, and mortgaged his house; sharks soon had that. Then hardened, he went to his employer’s drawer and borrowed from that, without the owner’s knowledge. A few weeks passed and the Company’s expert came that way, and found the ticket returns $2,000 short. It was a sad night in August when that sweet young mother and beautiful child found themselves suddenly widowed and orphaned by his flight, and in their poverty and disgrace locked arms and wept as only the innocent sufferers can.When the next day I learned the awful truth, I thought, and I believe that you will agree with me, “Oh, the power of the gambling den to degrade! The man who deserted that wife and darling child was not the same who had married her five years before. Then he had his manhood, and this beautiful woman was in the glad possession of his heart.

But a few months of gambling changed his whole character, left him in sullenness and sin, his very soul stained and his conscience seared, little more than a wretched memory of his former self—and those same few months of degradation for him brought permanent misery and burning disgrace to the darlings at home.David refused to drink water that brave men had risked their lives to obtain for him in the hour of thirst. As he poured out their liquid, in oblation to God, he said, “Shall I drink the blood of men who went in jeopardy of their lives?”If David would not get pleasure, at the expense of danger to their lives, shall men at this later century, and in this refined city, this community of Christians, gamble, when the hearts of wife and children, the respect of self, the good-will of society, the happiness of the home, and the interests of eternal souls, are in the stake?Dr.

Lorimer used to tell us that in Asia, it was not uncommon for a reckless and infatuated player, having lost all of his money, to put up his wife, or son, or daughter, and for the possession of their persons throw the dice.That startled an American audience, but it is no more true of Asia than of our land. For, the man who is destroying his self-respect, parting with his gold in the place where only fools of fortune assemble, inviting social condemnation, moral degradation, and spiritual, is, whether he knows it or not, playing with his own wife and children as the stake.THE GAME But gambling degrades to dethrone.First of all it dethrones character.It is not a question merely of self-respect, but it is a question of self—a question of manhood.When an older brother was about to graduate, mother was expecting to witness the final exercises of the school. In the night, previous to the day on which she was to start for the college, she started up in her sleep and screamed until the startled house hurried from their beds to the side of hers. Every one came asking her, “What is the matter?” She opened her eyes, and looked about for a moment, and then a peculiar joy came into every feature of her face, and she said, “Oh, thank the Lord it is only a dream. I thought I was at the college, and had found son in the degradations of strong drink.” There are many mothers in Minneapolis this afternoon who would give the world to know that their gambling, drinking sons were safe, and that the thought of lost purity, lost honesty, lost resolution and lost manhood was only a dream.But breaking hearts notwithstanding, a stubborn fact remains to embitter the waking and sleeping of many a mother, “My boy’s manhood is gone. He lost it in that upper story over the saloon.”It dethrones reason. The strain of such excitement with the alteration of success, and failure, no keen mind can long survive.Some years ago I was going down the Ohio River, when a well-known minister, formerly of this city, was aboard the boat, and he told me of his visit to Monte Carlo, the gambling hell of the earth.He spoke of how many minds were unsettled in that beautiful, yet blighting spot.

He said it is impossible to learn how many men and women annually commit suicide in that place. The authorities take pains to conceal the number, shuffling the dead Speedily out of sight, lest the vision of these self-destroyed ones should injure the trade.

The late Dr. Lorimer, of Boston, in a book published, affirms the same fact as gleaned from his visit to that spot in 1891, saying, “Instances are not wanting and indeed are sufficiently frequent to be of the common places of the institution, of those, after prolonged ill luck, apparently a trifle wearied and worn and haggard from the mental strain, wandering forth beneath the silent stars, and there, on the margin of the beautiful sea, ending life—a pistol shot, a hurried funeral, or a wooden-box hastily dispatched to a distant city, and a vacant chair at the Faro table invites another to ruin and despair.”I used to wonder if the mind of Hutchinson— “old Hutch”, as they called him, on the Chicago Board of Trade, would keep its balance to the end of his days. But you know how history finally answered my question. He went the way of a thousand of others, the way of saddest insanity, and most dreadful death.It dethrones God. There is no business that more absolutely despises God’s law. There is no institution in which His Name is more often blasphemed, and in which the sightless goddess of chance reigns supreme, than in the room given over to gambling.

No wonder the drowning man drew a deck of cards from his pocket and cast them to the great deep, saying, “I don’t care to be in possession of that pack when I meet God”. He must have feared that the very sight of the means by which he had robbed his fellows would revive the Divine memory of the godlessness of his life, and the degradation of his chosen pursuit.It is a serious thing to lose the friendship of a faithful man, more serious still to abuse the love of a faithful wife and beautiful children, but most serious to do that which drives God from the life, unseating Him from His lawful throne.Some have said a mother’s love outlasts all, but many a man has despised the mother’s love and divorced himself therefrom.Years since, in Chicago, I picked up my paper one day and read, “Michael Feeley, a painter living at 2855 Union Ave., stabbed his aged mother last evening, at about 8:30 o’clock.”The half drunken man started for the saloon; the dear old mother followed and put her arm about his neck to plead with him to come back.

Angered by such tender restraints, he drew his knife and plunged it twice into the left breast, and leaving her in her own blood, went to his drinks.Such a report shocks us and we say, “How could it be?” But men stab God after the same manner— God whose love outlasts a mother’s, for the Scriptures say, “When thy father and mother forsake thee, the Lord will take thee up”.To dethrone Him from the heart, and by your sins stab His bosom of love, is to set the seal of destruction upon the soul which neither time, nor eternity, will ever remove.I beg of you, my brothers, that you do not that. That is a poor price for which to part with God, putting one’s self forever past pardon.It is said that Cyrus gave to one of his Generals a cup of gold and to another a kiss. The first complained that he had received the lesser favor.Surely then the kiss of the Eternal King ought to be precious above any possible wealth of this world, for that kiss brings pardon, peace and everlasting salvation. Instead of further offence, seek His favor and ask His forgiveness and love.A soldier in England was brought by a sergeant to the Colonel. The Colonel looked at him and said, “Why do you bring that man here again? We have tried everything with him.

Execute him!” “Oh, no,” said the sergeant, “there is one thing you have not tried, and I would like to see you try that.” “What is it?” said the Colonel. “Forgiveness,” replied the sergeant. The Colonel said, “We will,” and he called the young man in and addressed him. “Well, sir, you have done so and so; what is your excuse?” “I have no sufficient excuse,” was his humble answer, “but I am very sorry.” “Well,” said the Colonel, “we have made up our minds to forgive you all the past.

Start afresh and see if you cannot live right.” The tears started. He fell down at the Colonel’s feet and said, “I shall never sin again,” and from that hour he was a splendid soldier, a joy to his superior.That is what God is saying to us, this afternoon. If you want, I will forgive you. The old record shall be blotted out. This Sunday afternoon, take a fresh start, and by my grace, I’ll help you to stand, and save you from all your sins. How many of you will accept the offer of love?