Sin and its consequences in Christian preaching highlight the destructive outcomes of turning from God's will, often depicted through vivid images like sowing tares or the inward deformity caused by anger. These illustrations warn against rationalizing sin and emphasize its pervasive harm, both to the individual and others, underscoring the need for repentance and vigilance (Romans 6:23, James 1:15).
Lying is a hateful vice with severe consequences deserving strong opposition.
Lying is a hateful and accursed vice. If we did but discover the horror and consequences of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes. Montaigne.
Lying dishonors human nature and is cowardly before men and defiant toward God.
Clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold or silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embasseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge, saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man."
— Lord Bacon
Malice is self-destructive, like setting one's own house on fire through anger and revenge.
As we account him a mad and foolish man that would set his own house on fire; so may we think of him that sets his own heart on fire, and burns himself through anger, malice, and revenge. Cawdray.
Hatred and malice are like murder, killing others spiritually without physical contact.
Malice is the Devil's picture. Lust makes men brutish; and malice makes them devilish. Malice is mental murder: you may kill a man, and never touch him. "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." T. Watson.
Corrupt manners spread like invasive thistles, ruining fertile ground and providing refuge for evil.
The Spaniards carried with them the seed of the thistle to the plains of South America. In this congenial soil it spread, and covered many square miles with its prickly vegetation. These thistle forests grow so tall and dense, that a mounted horseman may be lost in them. They furnish a safe retreat to the jaguar and robber. A single seed, perhaps, has multiplied, covering and rendering worse than useless sections of fertile land as large as some of our smaller States. Not unlike this is the spread of corrupt manners.
Breaking one commandment breaks the whole chain, endangering salvation.
Suppose a boat on the Ganges, full of people: the wind roars, the thunder peals, the waters are swollen, and the current rapid. You hear shrieks from the boat, between the thunder-peals. They fear the rocks before them; and the question is, How can they be saved? Suppose the people on shore throw out to them a chain. They catch it, and already rejoice in the prospect of deliverance; when, alas! suddenly, as both they and the people on shore begin to pull, one link of the chain breaks, — not ten links, but one. What can they then do? "Overboard with the chain, or it will sink us sooner," cries one man from the boat. What shall they do then? "Cast themselves on the mercy of God," says another. Yes: and so say I to the sinner; for if one commandment be broken, — one link of the chain, — all is broken.
— Leupolt
Neglecting duties (sins of omission) can bring severe spiritual consequences.
Sins of commission are usual punishments for sins of omission. He that leaves a duty may fear to be left to commit a crime. — Gurnall. — We may lose heaven by neutrality as well as by hostility, by wanting oil as well as by drinking poison. An unprofitable servant shall as much be punished as a prodigal sou. Undone duty will undo our souls. — Bowes. — The last words of the industrious Archbishop Usher were, "Lord, in special, forgive me my sins of omission."
Pleasure can be like poisoned flowers, killing many in subtle and hidden ways.
It is said to have been a plan sometimes practised in the middle ages, to send poisoned flowers to princes or great persons, when a plot was laid against their life. Whether the fact be true or not, the moral it may suggest is true. Pleasure's poisoned flowers have killed their thousands, and not only rich, but poor; and that in the most insidious and imperceptible way.
— Bowes
Beautiful pleasures often hide deadly sins, like venomous serpents beneath flowers.
It is said that where the most beautiful cacti grow, there the venomous serpents are to be found at the root of every plant. And it is so with sin. Your fairest pleasures will harbor your grossest sins. Take care, take care, of your pleasures. Cleopatra's asp was introduced in a basket of flowers: so are our sins often brought to us in the flowers of our pleasure.
— Spurgeon
Prodigality often accompanies and fuels other costly vices and sins.
Prodigality is the Devil's steward and purse-bearer, ministering to all sorts of vice; and it is hard, if not impossible, for a prodigal person to be guilty of no other vice but prodigality; for men generally are prodigal because they are first intemperate, luxurious, or ambitious. And these, we know, are vices too brave and costly to be kept and maintained at an easy rate: they must have large pensions, and be fed with both hands, though the man that feeds them starves for his pains. Dr. South.
Profanity shocks even those from pagan backgrounds, showing its sinfulness.
After Dr. Scudder's return from India, he was upon a steamboat with his son, when he heard a person using profane language. Accosting him, he said, "This boy was born and brought up in a heathen country and a land of idolatry; but, in all his life, he never heard a man blaspheme his Maker until now." The man apologized, and moved away ashamed.
Unresolved conflict destroys both parties, leaving only bitterness behind.
"We could soon finish you up!" said some lemons to a bottle of carbonate of soda. "I could soon take the taste out of you!" answered the soda. "Let us try our strength," said the lemons. "With all my heart!" said the soda. And to work they went, trying with all their might to extinguish each other. Fizz went the lemons; fizz went the soda; and they went on fizzing, till there was nothing of either of them left, and only a nauseous puddle showed where the fight had been.
Sin is persistent and difficult to eradicate, like the immortal head of the hydra.
The hydra of fable had nine heads, the middle one of which was immortal. The monster ravaged the country of Argos. Hercules went forth to destroy him. He struck off the hydra's heads; but, as often as he did it, in place of each grew two new ones. At length, he succeeded in burning away the heads of the hydra, and in burying the immortal head under a huge rock.
Sin leaves lasting marks that God faithfully records.
The great stone book of Nature reveals many strange records of the past. In the red sandstone, there are found, in some places, marks which are clearly the impressions of showers of rain, and these so perfect, that it can even be detected in which direction the shower inclined, and from what quarter it proceeded; and this, ages ago. Even so sin leaves its track behind it, and God keeps a faithful record of all our sins.
— Biblical Treasury
The scar of sin remains forever, beyond physical death and judgment.
If you cut a gash in a man's head, you may heal it; but you can never rub out, nor wash out, nor cut out, the scar. It may be a witness against you in his corpse: still it may be covered by the coffin, or hidden in the grave; but then it is not till decomposition shall take place, that it shall entirely disappear. But, if you smite a soul, the scar remains: no coffin or grave shall hide it; no revolution, not even the upturning of the physical universe, shall obliterate it; no fire, not even the eternal furnaces of hell, shall burn it out. Dr. Thomson.
Slander is like deadly poison, invisible yet fatal in its destructive power.
This slander is compared to poison: "the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." The deadliest poisons are those for which no test is known. There are poisons so destructive, that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds; and yet no chemical science can separate that virus from the contaminated blood, and show the metallic particles of poison glittering palpably, and say, "Behold! it is there." F. W. Robertson.
A household fined members for slander to prevent evil speaking and its consequences.
A gentleman writes, that he once saw the title, "Slander Book," printed on the binding of a small ledger. On examining it, he found that the various members of the household were charged so much apiece for each slander. The accounts were very neatly and correctly kept, credits entered, &c., as in a merchant's office. He was informed that this plan of fining for slander originated with a young girl, with a view to prevent evil speaking and its consequences.
Small, overlooked dangers can cause downfall despite protection from greater threats.
Baldur the Good, one of the gods of Northern mythology, received premonitions of approaching death. To guard against this fate, his mother, Frigga, exacted an oath from fire and water, from all the metals, from stones, trees, diseases, beasts, birds, reptiles, and poisons, that none of them should harm her son. The other gods now regarded Baldur as immortal, and amused themselves by hurling darts or stones at him, while others struck at him with their swords and battle-axes; but all this harmed him not. Then one of the gods cut a sprig of mistletoe, which appeared harmless compared to the missiles he had already withstood, and hurled it at him. It pierced him through and through, and Baldur fell down lifeless. His mother laid all things that she considered dangers to her son's life under oath to do him no harm; but the mistletoe, insignificant and feeble, she passed by. Many a man who would have resisted great crimes or dangers has been pierced through, and fallen, by some little thing.
The soul's ruin is worse than any physical or societal destruction.
Suppose a luxuriant harvest shooting into perfection, waving in the wind, ripening in the sun, and flattering the fond hope of the husbandman by the fair promise of abundance. Should you see this hope blasted, and the whole produce of the fields destroyed by a universal blight or an overwhelming tempest, you would weep over the desolation, and turn with horror from the scene. Suppose a community cemented by friendship, inspired by patriotism, obedient to the laws, rising in opulence, in dignity, in character. Again: suppose it divided by suspicion, irritated by parties, distracted by violence, its cities depopulated, its fields drenched with the blood of their inhabitants, and anarchy and civil discord completing its destruction. Were you witness of this mournful tragedy, were you spectators of these acts of violence, did you behold this "wide-spread ruin," what language could describe the agitation of your feelings? But what are these when compared to the destruction of man? What can so affect our feelings as the soul of man in ruins?—this fair temple of God broken down by vice, and made the abode of every frightful monster and detestable abomination; this efflux of the divinity, sinking into depravity and wretchedness and infamy, till it is swept by the bosom of destruction, and driven by an avenging God into the pit of everlasting misery! R. Watson
Momentary sin pleasures cost the eternal kingdom of heaven.
When Lysimachus was engaged in a war with the Getz, he was so affected with the torments of thirst, that he offered his kingdom to his enemies for permission to quench it. His exclamation when he had drank the water with which they furnished him is wonderfully striking: "Ah, wretched me! who, for such a momentary gratification, have lost so great a kingdom!" This is the case of those, who, for the momentary pleasures of sin, part with the kingdom of heaven.
Habitual sin is no excuse; justice must be upheld.
It is said that a prisoner standing at the bar, indicted for felony, was asked by the judge what he could say for himself. "Truly, my lord," says he, "I did mean no hurt when I stole: it is an evil custom that I have gotten: I have been used to it ever since I knew any thing."— "Why, then," says the judge, "if it be thy custom to steal, it is my custom to hang up thieves." Spencer.
Swearing arises from rebellion against God and brings no profit to man.
I verily believe, that, if God had never made the third commandment, there would never have been so many oaths in the world: but it springs from a mere malignancy of spirit in man against God because he has forbidden it; for no profit can arise from the practice. Burroughs.
Legalistic loopholes can undermine true temperance and holiness.
In a certain town, a meeting was called to suppress the crying sin of intemperance. It is well known to the "wool-growing" part of the community, that their sheep must be effectually washed, in order to cleanse the wool for the manufacturer, once a year. Now this is a laborious business; not only so, but a very wet and cold business, as the sheep should be washed early in the season, before the wool begins to fall. In consequence, the good people of the town resolved, under heavy penalties, that they would, in no case whatever, drink any ardent spirits, save at the business of washing sheep. Not many days after, it was observed that one of those who composed the aforesaid meeting was a "little the worse for liquor." He was charged with the fact; but he protested he had lived up to the very spirit and letter of the resolution. He was asked how that could be. "Why," said he, "I have a sheep in that pen, which I regularly wash seven times a day."
Slander is a persistent destructive fire that spreads harm beyond control.
Slander is like the Greek fire in ancient warfare, which burned unquenched beneath the water; or like the weeds, which, when you have extirpated them in one place, are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot at the distance of many hundred yards. F. W. Robertson.
Fault-finding magnifies others' sins while ignoring one's own.
Those who find pleasure in dwelling upon and amplifying the faults of others, to the partial or total oblivion of their own, remind me of Hogarth's quaint picture in false perspective; wherein the trees that line the road, and the sheep travelling along it, grow larger and more distinct as they recede from the eye.
— F. W. Robertson
The tongue can be both a tool for good and a source of great evil.
The heathen philosopher Xanthus, expecting some friends to dine with him, ordered his servant Æsop to provide the best things the market could supply. Tongues only were provided; and these the cook was ordered to serve up with different sauces. Course after course was supplied, each consisting of tongue. "Did I not order you," said Xanthus in a violent passion, "to buy the best victuals the market afforded?"—"And have I not obeyed your orders?" said Æsop. "Is there any thing better than a tongue? Is not the tongue the bond of civil society, the organ of truth and reason, and the instrument of our praise and adoration of the gods?" Xanthus ordered him to go again to the market on the morrow, and buy the worst things he could find. Æsop went, and again he purchased tongues, which the cook was ordered to serve as before. "What! tongues again?" exclaimed Xanthus. "Most certainly," rejoined Æsop, "the tongue is surely the worst thing in the world. It is the instrument of all strife and contention, the inventor of lawsuits, and the source of division and wars: it is the organ of error, of lies, calumny and blasphemies."
Gossip spreads like invasive seeds, causing widespread harm and division.
A man, who, for a moment's gossiping gratification, drops an idle word affecting a neighbor's character, resembles that Scotchman, who, from partiality to the flora of his native land, sowed a little thistle-down in the British colony where he had raised his tabernacle, and where that nuisance to agriculturists had been unknown up to that time. It grew and flourished; and breezes—like the active wind of talk, that soon propagates a slander—carried the winged seeds hither and thither, to found for their obnoxious species thousands of new homes. It is as unsafe to keep company with one whose tongue is hung too loosely as to ride in a vehicle whose linchpins are loose.
— F. W. Robertson
A small spark from the tongue can ignite devastating conflicts and destruction.
I saw a terrible fire some time ago, or, rather, I saw the reflection of it in the sky: the heavens were crimsoned with it. It burned a large manufactory to the ground; and the firemen had hard work to save the buildings which surrounded it. They poured streams of water on it from fifteen engines; but it licked it up, and would have its course till the walls gave way. That terrible fire was kindled by a farthing rushlight. Some years ago, I saw the black ashes of what the night before was a splendid farm-yard, with bay-ricks, corn-stacks, stables, and cow-sheds; and lying about upon them were the carcasses of a number of miserable horses and bullocks, which had perished in the flames. All that was done by a lucifer match. In America, the Indians strike a spark from a flint and steel, and set fire to the dry grass; and the flames spread and spread, until they sweep like a roaring torrent over prairies as large as England, and men and cattle have to flee for their lives. "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindlet!" and the tongue is a fire. A few rash treads will set a family, a neighborhood, a nation, by the ears: they often have done so. Half the law-suits and half the wars have been brought about by the tongue. Husband and wife have separated forever, children have forsaken their homes, bosom-friends have become bitter foes, — all on account of fiery arrows shot by this powerful little member.
The wicked are restless and troubled like a restless sea, reflecting inner turmoil.
Emilins, giving a reason for putting away his wife, said, "Where this shoe pincheth me none but myself know." God also knows; and he says, "The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."
Bad words lead to sin and spiritual death, influencing hearts destructively.
Bad words are as influential as the plague and the pestilence. They have wrought more evil than battle, murder, and sudden death. They creep through the ear into the heart, call up all its bad passions, and tempt it to break God's commandments. A few bad words got into the ear of the mother of mankind; and they led her on to eat the forbidden fruit, and thus to bring death into the world. G. Magridge.
Cruel words cause lasting harm that cannot be undone once spoken.
You may tame the wild beast; the conflagration of the American forest will cease when all the timber and the dry wood is consumed: but you cannot arrest the progress of that cruel word which you uttered carelessly yesterday or this morning.
— F. W. Robertson
One sin can poison a life like a subtle, lasting poison.
A Jewish captive, named Zaniab, determined to destroy the false prophet Mohammed. After his conquest of Khaibar, she prepared for his table a shoulder of lamb impregnated with a subtle poison. Mohammed sat down to his meal, but, at the first taste, discovered something, and instantly spit it out. In the instant, enough of the poison had entered his system to injure his health for life. It affected him to the last. In the paroxysms of death, he exclaimed, "The veins of my heart are throbbing with the poison of Khaibar." One wrong, one sin, one mistake even, may send its poison through the life, like the poison of Zaniab.
A mother's greed led her to reject and mistreat her own son for money.
Two young men of Virginia, who served in the American army during the war, having regularly got their discharge, went home to their friends. One had only a mother living when he left home; when they had got near home, they fell into a conversation on the length of time they had been away, and concluded to try whether their parents would know them; with this impression, each took the nearest path home. The one who had only a mother, came in; and, finding his mother did not know him, he asked for lodging; to whom she replied, she could not lodge him; that there was a tavern not far from the place where he might get lodging, &c. He importuned, but she refused, till at last he told her he had a little money, and he was afraid to lodge in a tavern, lest some person should rob him. He took out his purse and offered it to her keeping. She, struck with the mammon, consented immediately to his staying; accordingly he did, had supper, and still never discovered himself to his mother or any of the family. He was directed to a bed once more in the "I began to think, is not God a just being, as well as merciful? Now what reason have I to think he will treat me with mercy and not with justice? and if I am treated with justice," he said, with much emotion, "WHERE AM I?"
"I showed him," says Mr. Innes, "that this was the very difficulty the gospel was sent to remove, as it showed how mercy could be exercised in perfect consistency with the strictest demands of justice, while it was bestowed through the atonement made by Jesus Christ. After explaining this doctrine and pressing it on his attention and acceptance, one of the last things he said to me before leaving him, was, "Well, I believe it must come to this. I confess I see here a solid footing to rest on, which, on my former principles I could never find."
# VARICE.
chamber of her who conceived .. m. How safe he must have thought himself then, compared to the field of battle. But she summoned a negro man, told him the scheme she had planned, hired him to aid her to the stranger's apartment, where they murdered him in his bed. Next day his fellow-soldier came to see his friend; but, on asking for the stranger, could hear nothing of him. He thought it was a trick to plague him, that the old woman denied it, till, hearing her affirm that no stranger had come there the last evening, nor any man, he asked her if she had not a son who went to the war. She said she had. "Well," said he, "I left him within a few miles of this house last evening, and he came here; and he told me he would not make himself known to you, to see if you had forgotten his looks. He must be here." The cruel mother fainted at the sentence, confessed her wickedness, and showed her murdered son, crammed in a closet of the house!! Oh, the love of money, what has it not done; what will it yet do!
Romans 1 vividly exposes human folly and guilt when God gives them over to sin.
Perhaps no part of the Bible occasions more surprise among the heathen, than the first chapter of Romans. Its graphic picture of the follies and the guilt into which men plunge, when God gives them up to a reprobate mind, are instantly recognized as having a counterpart in their own lives. To their minds the great problem is, how came language, so accurate and faithful, to be employed by the sacred writer? Some escape from the difficulty by affirming that the Scriptures have been altered to meet the case. A brahmin once told a missionary that the expression, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools," must have been inserted after the arrival of the missionaries in India.
Foolish disputes over trivial matters lead to deadly duels, showing sin’s tragic cost.
Colonel Montgomery was shot in a duel about a dog; Captain Ramsay in one about a servant; Mr. Fetherston in one about a recruit; Sterne's father in one about a goose; and another gentleman in one about "an acre of anchovies." One officer was challenged for merely asking his opponent to enjoy the second goblet; another was compelled to fight about a pinch of snuff. General Barry was challenged by a Captain Smith, for declining a glass of wine with him at a dinner in a steamboat, although the General had pleaded as an excuse that wine invariably made his stomach sick at sea; and Lieut. Crowther lost his life in a duel, because he was refused admittance to a club of pigeon shooters! What contemptible folly in men it is to risk their lives in order to settle such trivial disputes as these! And then how does the result of a duel really settle the dispute any more than the result of jumping together from a precipice, or any similar jeopardy of life and limb?
# 149. Dueling Avoided.
Gamblers desecrate a corpse in a cathedral, showing extreme moral depravity from sin.
The desperate depravity to which gambling reduces its votaries is strikingly illustrated in the case of three gamblers here related. They determined on a game, which was doubtless meant to show their utter contempt of all things sacred in this world and the next. Accordingly they enter at night the charnel house and take from thence a corpse that very day placed in the vault. They bear the deceased into the cathedral, pass within the chancel, light up one of the candles before the altar, seat the grim corpse by the communion table, and gathering around the table themselves, proceed to engage in a game of cards!! Shameless, sacrilegious doings that none but gamblers could think of without shuddering!!
The above fact is said by Rev. Wm. B. Tappan of Boston, to rest on good authority and he has accordingly made it the subject of a short poem on gambling.
182. Leads to Bankruptcy and Suicide.
A man loses all his savings gambling over a trivial bet, illustrating gambling's ruin.
"I was well acquainted," says Mr. Green, the reformed gambler, "with the circumstance of a young man starting to go to the hot springs of Arkansas. He was a man who had acquired by honesty and industry about nine hundred dollars. He had been in bad health for some time, and concluded to visit the springs to recruit his health. On his arrival at the mouth of White River, he was detained for a boat, and while there he was induced to play cards. I am unable to say at this time, what was the game that he played, but he won some forty or fifty dollars and the game broke up. After the game was broken up, one of the gamblers pulled out a button and bantered the young man to win it at "faro" and he pulled out a quarter and bet it against the button, and the banker won. He tried again and again, until he lost some three or four dollars, to win the button, and then went to bed. The banker had now several persons betting small bets on the game, and he won some eight or ten dollars, and here was quite a noise and bustle going on. The young man, who had quit and gone to bed, got up, and felt a strong propensity to win all. He began betting on the game again, and in a short time lost the whole of his nine hundred dollars trying to win a button; for that was all he could have won, as the man had no money at first but what he had won from the young man. The young man was obliged to make his way home, without his health being benefited, and without his money.
A false accuser swears an oath but is exposed, warning of the serious consequences of perjury and sin.
A man once waited on a magistrate near Hitchin, in the county of Hertford, (Eng.) and informed him that he had been stopped by a young gentleman in Hitchin, who had knocked him down and searched his pockets; but not finding any thing, he had suffered him to depart. The magistrate, astonished at this intelligence, despatched a messenger to the young gentleman, ordering him to appear immediately, and answer to the charge exhibited against him. The youth obeyed the summons, accompanied by his guardian and an intimate friend. Upon their arrival at the seat of justice, the accused and accuser were confronted; when the magistrate hinted to the man, that he was afraid he had made the charge with no other view than that of extorting money, and bade him take care how he proceeded; extorting him, in the most earnest and pathetic manner, to beware of the dreadful train of consequences attending perjury. The man insisted upon making oath to what he had advanced; the oath was accordingly administered, and the business fully investigated, when the innocence of the young gentleman was established, by the most incontrovertible evidence. The infamous wretch, finding his intentions thus frustrated, returned home much chagrined; and meeting soon afterwards with one of his neighbors, he declared he had not sworn to any thing but the truth, calling God to witness the same in the most solemn manner, and wished, if it was not as he had said, his jaws might be locked, and that his flesh might rot upon his bones; when, terrible to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and he was deprived of the use of the faculty he had so awfully perverted! After lingering nearly a fortnight, he expired in the greatest agonies, his flesh literally rotting upon his bones.
A boy is rejected for smoking, showing sin's visible marks affect reputation.
"I've got a boy for you, sir."—"Glad of it: who is he?" asked the master-workman of a large establishment. The man told the boy's name, and where he lived. "Don't want him," said the master-workman: "he has got a bad mark."—"A bad mark, sir! What?"—"I meet him every day with a cigar in his mouth. I don't want smokers."
Vice is easy to enter but hard to leave, often disguised as virtue.
The way of vice is as the entrance to a pit: it is easy to go down, but difficult to return. As an old stain is not easily removed, so habitual vices are not easily overcome. The most dangerous vice is that which most resembles virtue, as the most deceiving devil is an angel of light.
Those in vice long for lost virtues but are swept toward destruction.
One of the affecting features in a life of vice is the longing, wistful outlooks given by the wretches who struggle with unbridled passions, towards virtues which are no longer within their reach. Men in the tide of vice are sometimes like the poor creatures swept down the stream of mighty rivers, who see people safe on shore, and trees and flowers, as they go quickly past; and all things that are desirable gleam upon them for a moment to heighten their trouble, and to aggravate their swift-coming destruction. Beecher.
Merchants' gambling leads to quarrels and financial ruin on a steamer voyage.
A writer in the N. Y. Observer for 1831 says: A few years since, the large steamer M— set out from New Orleans on an upward voyage, having on board much freight, and many passengers. Among them were several merchants who had large amounts in sugar, molasses, coffee, &c., on board. Soon after the boat started they commenced gambling, and continued without intermission until after ten o'clock at night. The captain informed them, that it was contrary to the rules of the boat that they should play in the cabin after that hour. They protested, demurred, and entreated. But he was inexorable. At length he consented to their going to a small private room; but enjoined it upon them that there must be no fighting. Four of them renewed the game with excited interest. The captain having occasion to be up all night, went, about three o'clock, into their room. To his surprise he found them just on the point of fighting. Pistols and dirks were drawn! At his interposition and command, their weapons were put up. The cause of the quarrel was this: One merchant had lost all the money he had with him, and all his large cargo on board. The loser desired his merchandise to be estimated at the retail price where he resided, and to which place the boat was bound. But the marble-hearted winner insisted upon the New Orleans price as the basis of the calculation, and which would have left the loser in his debt to a large amount, for which he demanded a due-bill! At the remonstrance of the captain, he ceased to insist upon this, and the bill of lading having been transferred in due form to the winner, the miserable loser went home without a dollar to pay even his passage, to tell (if he could do it) to his wife and children the story of his folly, and to become a bankrupt!
A fireman gambles away his freedom, illustrating the destructive power of sin.
A colored fireman, on board a steam-boat running from St. Louis to New Orleans, having lost all his money at poker with his companions, staked his clothing, and being still unfortunate, pledged his own freedom for a small amount. Losing this, the bets were doubled, and he finally, at one desperate hazard, ventured his own value as a slave, and laid down his free papers to represent the stake. He lost, suffered his certificates to be destroyed, and was actually sold by the winner to a slave dealer, who hesitated not to take him at a small discount upon his asserted value.
A gambler's ruin leads to suicide, showing the deadly consequences of gambling.
By the device called hockelty in playing furo, professional gamesters in the Southern States, have been known to make thousands of dollars out of the uninitiated in a single season. "There is one instance," says J. H. Green, "that I shall never forget. It occurred in New Orleans about the year 1833. A planter, who lived near Vicksburgh, was very fond of play. He went to New Orleans to trade and sell his produce; and while there was invited to a faro bank. He lost, and during his play, he was caught in hockelty for twenty-two hundred dollars at one bet. The dealer had won from him about eighteen thousand dollars, and this bet was the last of his money. The effect of this loss may be more easily imagined than described. In a few moments he drew a pistol and blew out his brains. I have no doubt that the citizens of Warrington, Mississippi, will know the person here spoken of, as I understand his family or relatives lived in or near that place. Such have been the baneful effects of this game, that it was a matter of almost daily occurrence for some one to stab or be stabbed in the vile haunts of these wicked men."
Small profits from sin cause great social and financial harm to many innocent people.
A grocer in Clinton County, New-York, sold a drunkard a pint of new rum according to law, and made two red cents clear profit. The drunkard shot his son-in-law while intoxicated; and his apprehension, confinement in jail, execution, &c., cost the county more than one thousand dollars, which temperate men had to earn by the sweat of their brows! What say you, tax-payers, are you willing to pay a thousand dollars to enable the grog-seller to make two red cents!
Selling alcohol for small gain leads to tragic loss of life and innocent victims.
About the 1st of July, 1843, an Indian, one of those half-civilized, rum-loving creatures who abound in the West, stepped out of Cataraugus County into the State of Pennsylvania, where, it seems, men are sold indulgences to sin, as well as in the Empire State; and then filled his pocket-bottle with real "red-eye," and the seller of the poison made two red cents clear profit. While under its maddening influence, he went into a farmer's house near by, with whom he was totally unacquainted, and murdered a mother and five children—all that comprised 426. 421 before our prayer meetings were joined by the professors of military and civil engineering, the professors of mineralogy and chemistry, and the instructor of artillery, and as many as seventeen cadets.
Alcohol destroys families, leaving widows and children in suffering and despair.
said a forlorn woman, whose appearance gave every assurance of poverty and suffering, while she covered her eyes, no longer capable of shedding tears. The fountain was dried up.
"Used how?" I asked. "He," pointing to a rums-seller living on Chestnut-street, "he took my husband, as faithful a man as ever wedded woman, got all his money, burnt up his heart, ruined his body, palsied his tongue, and sent him home to inflict on me all the curses which overhung his own guilty head, and on his family, shame, that neither toil nor tears can wipe away; and now that husband is in the grave, with no one to weep for him, or console his wife and children.
My son caught the spirit and followed the example of his father: was enticed by the same rum-seller, and drained of all that he could earn or supply, till he came back upon me, not a son, but a useless carcass, quickened with the spirit of a fiend, and has ended his career, not in death, but crime, at the thought of which I cannot hold up my head; widowed, childless, and old. Oh God! what have I done that I should be used so?"
Our heart melted over this picture of wo, as we exclaimed, "God will not allow the cry of the widow to go unheard, or her cause unavenged."
Alas for the man whose business calls him to such responsibility!
# 422. Injurious to Traffickers and their Families.
A farmer becomes a liquor seller and loses his family to intemperance and death.
D. B. was an industrious farmer, and by great prudence and economy, had accumulated a capital of near $5000.—Hitherto, industry and frugality had been the only means of his advancement, but now more ambitious thoughts took possession of his mind. He resolved to live more at ease, and become a merchant in the village of ——. He procured a license for selling liquors to be drank on the premises. Gradually, he became intemperate; at the end of three years, his wife was a widow, his children fatherless! The amount found due the estate rather exceeded the capital he had three years before embarked in the business: but of all these debts, less than $500 could be collected. The remainder passed through the hands of several intemperate customers, and the family is left utterly destitute.
# (2). Immoral in its Character.
Seeking profit from sin brings accountability for the ruin caused to others.
Some twenty years ago, a carpenter, who was tired of making an honest living, came to a friend of mine in Philadelphia, with a petition for a tavern license, which he requested him to sign. My friend looked at him, and asked him why he did not stick to his plane and bench? The answer was, "Tavern keeping is a more lucrative trade; I want to get richer." "Well, but do you not think you will be affording additional facilities to drunkards to destroy themselves?" "Perhaps I shall." "Do you not believe that at least five men every year will die drunkards, if you succeed in getting a license?" "Why, I never thought of that before; but I suppose it would be so." "Then if the Lord lets you keep tavern ten years, fifty men will have died through your agency—now what becomes of the drunkard? Does he go to heaven?" "I suppose not." "I am sure he does not, for no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven; what becomes of him then?" "Why, he must go to hell." "Well, do you not think it will be just if the Lord, at the end of ten years, sends you down to hell too, to look after those fifty drunkards?"—The man threw down his petition, went back to his honest occupation, and was never tempted to desire a license again.
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