Correspondence.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1177, 5 September 1885, Page 3

Correspondence.

DANCING V. GAMBLING. (To the Editor.) Sib,— l sometimes go to Church, and I also attend the Quadrille Assembly. Fancy my consternation, then, on being informed by one of our local ministers the other Sunday that we who indulge in dancing are on the " slippery rood to Hell!" But when the minister in question coupled the ball-room and the gambling saloon, to my mind, he attempted to prove too much, which I will undertake to demonstrate to his discomfiture. Gambling, we ail aduv.t, it one of the growing evils of our social system, which it behoves both Church and State to take united action against, and yet, alas I with [their art unions and church bazaars the churches themselves are sowing the seeds of the vice among their own members. No amount of sophistry can reconcile church gambling with the spirit of the religion of Christ. I would remind my holy teacher* of a soene that once occurred in the Temple. I have taken a ticket for the Presbyterian Church art union, but just as I take a ticket in a consultation ; and it has come within my knowledge that a holder of two tickets in the art union exchanged them for a consultation ticket. If looked at in a logical way, the two classes of tickets are interchangeable, and the one form of gambling differs from the other only in degree — in the B&tae way as ihe conduct o£ a man who steals a few pounds differs from that of one who " appropriates " a few thousands. When the church popularises gambling, what can be expected among the unregenerate ? — I am, &c, Anti-Humbto.