the gambler is seldom saved. Friends may warn, the wife entreat with the eloquence of her tears, and children cry for bread, but deaf as the adder, desperate as the maniac, he rushes on, regardless of danger, reckless of consequences.

4. It is a poor business. All the odds are against you. You have ten chances to be struck with lightning to one for winning. Men go in for wool and come out shorn. Every gambler sooner or later goes to the dogs.

5. It is an unhappy business. The gloomiest set of men in the world are your betting men. They are always on the edge of a precipice. They are in perpetual danger of being reduced to beggary.

6. It ruins at last. You may gain all that the tables of earth can bear, but it may be the price of a lost soul. The devil, the arch-gambler, is cunningly playing for your soul. Life is a mighty game, in which you are the stake. Who shall be the winner-God or the devil?

XXVII.

66

WANTED-HONEST MEN.

I AM not one of those who believe that every man has his price," and that “an honest man has a lock of hair growing in the palm of his right hand." No! There are in the world of business many more honest men than rogues, and for one trust betrayed there are thousands most sacredly kept. I have no sympathy with the cynic who, as history informs us, being ordered to summon the good men of the city before the Roman censor, proceeded immediately to the graveyard, and, standing on a grave, called to the dead below, saying he knew not where to find a good man alive; or that sour sage, that prince of gamblers, who could speak in praise of no one but himself and his wife (the latter deserving all the praise she got for enduring him so long), I refer to Thomas Carlyle, who described the population of his country as consisting of so many millions, "mostly fools." When any one complains, as Diogenes did, that he has to

hunt the streets with candles at noonday to find an honest man, we are apt to think that his nearest neighbor would have quite as much difficulty in making such a discovery. If you think there is not a true man living you had better, for appearance's sake, not say so until you are dead yourself.

But some of the most gigantic scoundrels have fattened on sermons about love, faith, inspiration, the efficacy of the sacraments, and heaven, who ought by practical preaching to have been thundered out of the church, where their presence was a sacrilege and a disgrace. Mr. Froude, the distinguished English historian and essayist, said that he had heard hundreds of sermons on the non-essentials, "but never, during these thirty wonderful years, never one, that I can recollect, on common honesty, or those primitive commandments-thou shalt not lie; thou shalt not steal."

The bankrupt laws of our land have reduced stealing to a fine art. Our laws are making people dishonest by fixing it so that a man can wipe out his debts by compromising with his creditors.

"The world is a goose, to succeed you must pick
The feathers off nicely by buying on tick;

The vulgar pickpocket is sent off to jail;
Be polite; give your note, and gracefully fail."

Strange, but true, a man will be treated kindly in proportion to the severity of his fall. Smash on a small scale, and the world will jump on you with both feet; smash on a grand scale, and the world will take you by the hand. What the world needs more than anything else right now is downright honesty, and the church will never convert the world until she gets honest. She has too many members who are agents for and boarders with their wives. A man's church-membership has not the commercial value of one dollar. There are thousands of men in our churches who do not tell the truth. I was reading the other day of an old Hard-Shell Baptist down in Georgia who walked into a store one day and said to the merchant, "I want a couple of hundred dollars' worth of goods this year on credit." The merchant looked at his old hat and jean pants, and concluded that he was not the sort of man to trust, and he told him he would not give him the goods. The man. walked out, and the merchant asked the clerk in the store, "Who is that man?" "That's Mr. So-and-so, and he belongs to the HardShell church up here." The merchant went out after him and said, "Friend, come back here. Are you a Hard-Shell?" He said, "Yes." "Well," said the merchant, "you can

have all you want; you can have all here in this store on credit for as long time as you need." And down in Georgia the Hard-Shells will turn defaulters out of church just as quickly as they will drunkards. I hope to see the day when you may sell the last thing a man has who can but won't pay his honest debts. How can you keep the things that the people ought to have? If all our church members would pay their debts the world would have more confidence in the church and in Christianity.

As a mere matter of selfishness, "honesty is the best policy." But he who is honest for policy's sake is already a moral bankrupt. Men of policy are conscientiously (?) honest when they think honesty will pay the better, but when policy will pay better they give honesty the slip. Honesty and policy have nothing in common. When policy is in, honesty is out. It is more honorable for some men to fail than for others to succeed. Rather be like Longfellow's honest blacksmith, "who looked the whole world in the face and feared not any man," than enrich yourself at the sacrifice of conscience and the blessing of Heaven.

Part with anything rather than your integrity and conscious rectitude. Capital is not