AN ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN.
By the Venerable Archdeacon Madden.
(Photo: Elliott and Fry, Baker Street, W.)
ARCHDEACON MADDEN.
It was close upon midnight. I was alone in my study, busy clearing off a pile of letters that had been waiting all day for a "leisure moment." In the midst of my work a vigorous ring of the door-bell resounded through the house, followed by such a peremptory ran-tan at the knocker that I jumped to my feet and rushed to the door to see what was the matter. There I found two rough-looking men, who lost no time in stating their business. "We want your reverence," they said, "to come and see a poor young fellow who is dying; the doctor has given him up, and he is crying out for a minister to come and pray with him." I could not refuse such an appeal, and off I started with the men. They led me to a narrow street in my parish and into one of the most dingy houses in the street. After groping my way, by the aid of lighted matches, up a dark flight of stairs, I found the dying man in a dirty back bedroom.
He could not have been more than thirty years of age. He was propped up in bed, and the grey look of death was upon his face.
As I entered he turned eagerly to me, and, holding out his hand, said, "I'm dying, and I am not ready—not ready!"
Just as I was about to speak he suddenly gasped out, "John, John! hand me those things on the table." John came forward and laid upon the bed a sporting paper, a pack of cards, a set of dice, a bottle of whisky, and some race lists.
There was a deliberation about the whole business which convinced me that the matter had been talked over between the men. When all were spread out in due order, the dying man again turned to me and said, "Look, vicar, those things have been the ruin of me; and they have been a curse to me, and I want to turn my back upon them all—I want you to help me to do it." Again I was about to speak, when suddenly, stooping down, he gathered them all up and thrust them into my hands with the words "Shove them up my back." I was so staggered by the request that I stammered out "What—what do you mean?" "I want you," he said, "as God's minister to shove them up underneath my shirt. I want to put them behind my back. I want God to see that I have done with them for ever." I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It was all so absurd and yet so pathetic. The man was in dead earnest. He had evidently thought over it, and meant it as an "act" of true repentance. He was undoubtedly a man who had "come down in the world," and it was not all ignorance.
I said to him, "I will do what you wish, but I will kneel down first, and you will repeat a prayer after me." I knelt and he repeated after me these words: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee. I renounce all my sins—from the bottom of my heart I renounce them all. Father, receive Thy prodigal son, and forgive me for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."
I then rose from my knees and carried out his wishes. To us all in that chamber of death it was a most solemn sacramental rite. I, indeed, verily believed that it was the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of a true repentance. There I held the things that had cursed his young manhood, ruined a promising career, and brought him down to poverty and a premature grave; and as I held those emblems of evil behind his back I told him of a Saviour who "carried our sins"—upon whom the Lord had laid the iniquities of us all.
Little by little he gasped out his tale of sin: the gambling, the betting, and the "horsey set" he had got amongst as a youth; then drinking and bad company; then "striding came ruin and poverty like a weaponed warrior." Deserted, degraded, he crawled into this wretched room, sick in mind and body, to die forsaken and forgotten by all his old boon companions except John.
The scene of that night has left an indelible impression upon my heart and mind. I believe the merciful God accepted that strange outward act as an evidence of sincere repentance. To the very last he would have us hold those instruments of sin between his shirt and his bare back, and as I held them there he died calling upon God.
When I passed out of that house of death into the streets and the morning light, I prayed, as I had never prayed before, that God in His mercy might deliver this fair England of ours from the deadly and degrading vice of gambling.
It is over ten years since my midnight visit to that gambler's death-bed. I remember still one sentence of the ruined man: "It doesn't pay, sir! It doesn't pay!" Aye! and even if it does pay some few, what then? Is it not ill-gotten gain? And if so, what shall it profit such a man, though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
The vice of gambling does not stand alone. It is the mother of sins; the sordid and the sensual too frequently go hand in hand. Lying, blasphemy, impurity, dishonesty, trickery, double-dealing, follow in its train.
The gambler who, by a stroke of "luck," becomes rich in an hour, is tempted to spend his winnings in riotous living. It is with him a case of "luxury" to-day, despair and drink to-morrow.
A general atmosphere of blackguardism seems ever to pervade the race-course. Here is a cutting from the daily press of August last:—
"Blackguardism at the Alexandra Park Races.—Fourteen brutal assaults, committed on the Alexandra Park race-course on Saturday afternoon, have been reported to the police, the assaults in several cases having been accompanied by robbery. One of the gentlemen assaulted was a professional man well known in the neighbourhood. He was standing at a refreshment bar in the grand stand when he was half-killed by roughs. Another person who was assaulted was a member of the Jockey Club staff; but many frequenters of the course were heard to express pleasure at this, in the hope that it would lead to some better provision being made for the exclusion of well-known roughs from the rings and stands."
I have seen more than one young man of my acquaintance stand in the felon's dock, and I know they were brought there by betting. I have heard the wail of wife and children in the court as the culprit was hurried from the dock to his cell. And what was left for him to do when he was released from prison? Who will employ a man with the stigma of "imprisonment for dishonesty" resting upon him? He sinks lower and lower, dragging his poor wife and has little children down with him in his degrading descent—down to abject misery.
"In addition, too, to the frightful injustice to wives and children caused by betting and gambling, and the results on the home life," says a recent Report of the Convocation of York, "they have an injurious effect on those who are addicted to them, deadening their spiritual life, and making them indifferent to higher joys and nobler pursuits while the passion lasts. An example of this is afforded by Greville, who, in his memoirs, says: 'Thank God! the races are over. I have had all the excitement and worry, but have neither won nor lost. Nothing but the hope of gain would induce me to go through the demoralising drudgery, which I am aware reduces me to a level of all that is most disreputable and despicable, for my thoughts are eternally absorbed in them. It is like dram-drinking; having once begun, you cannot leave it off, though I am disgusted all the time with my occupation.'"
And it is useless, my brother, to juggle with your conscience in this matter. Gambling is a vice, whether it be for penny points or for "ponies." The question of the amount of the bet has nothing to do with the sin of gambling. The principle is what we look at.
"The wrong of gambling lies not in the excessive indulgence in an intrinsically innocent practice, but in the surrender to chance of acts which ought to be controlled by reason alone, and decided by the will in accordance with the moral laws of justice or benevolence."
Brother men! shun this vice. It is the certain road to ruin. Do not be lured to your doom by this terrible fascination. Shake off its spell, renounce its tyranny: "It doesn't pay! It doesn't pay!"
"It doesn't pay, sir! It doesn't pay!"
It is an accursed thing. It degrades the mind, it demoralises the whole moral being, and, if not renounced, means everlasting ruin.
This is no time for smooth words. Gambling is a growing evil in the land. Women and children, as well as men, have become entangled within its meshes, and are being dragged down to perdition. It destroys all that is noble and unselfish in the human heart. It paralyses the will, stultifies the reason, and stifles every holy emotion in the soul. The man who "prepares a table for fortune and fills up mingled wine to destiny," who makes chance his idol and gain his god, will live to curse the day of his birth. Be wise, therefore, O ye sons of men and seek the Lord your God with all your hearts; for "the blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it."
Told in Sunshine Room.]
