“GAMBLING A MENACE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 745, 19 August 1929, Page 14

“GAMBLING A MENACE”

DEBASES ITS DEVOTEES RACING NOT SPORTING Preaching on the “Evil of Gambling’’ yesterday morning, the Rev. J. F. Martin, of the Devonport Methodist Church, said the gambling spirit was a menace to civilisation. The ancient nations, Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, China and India, were all infected and retarded by It, while tlie anti-gambling people of Israel became the nation through which God conveyed the greatest moral and spiritual truths. Gambling debased its devotees by turning the healthy desire to gain the best things in life into a “get-rich-quick-without-labour-or-trouble” passion. It robbed him of the true spirit of adventure, and sent him plunging after a vain hope. It made him anti-social toward his fellow men, for he gained pleasure at the expense of their pain. It put him outside legitimate commerce, for in transferring property gambling violated the only principles of honest transfer, which were giving, serving and exchanging. . , Referring to the claim that gamblers were sports, the preacher said that English papers showed that when the outside horse beat the favourite in the Derby, after a struggle that should have appealed to all sportsmen, there was very little demonstration from those who had backed the favourite. • Looking for a constructive suggestion, the preacher said that the spirit of gambling was really a visitation of tile spirit of faith, and if the man who was prepared to risk pleasure, freedom, hunger and even death for gambling were to risk it to follow Jesus, he would realise the thrill of following Him who said: “I come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.’’.