of evil men, or visit any forbidden scenes, or lend your countenance in any way to their doings, even though you have no further intention than just to look on, but there is ever hanging over you the sword of detection.  The policeman appears, or God’s light is let down upon the scene, and you are discovered as having part in it, and your name is stained and your character gone, and your life marked with a perpetual stigma of disgrace.  When God’s Judgment comes on sin it always involves some who are just hovering on the edge of it, as well as those who are in the thick of it.  You ought not to be there.  Remember Ahaziah.

And there are some evil natures and some evil things which a man cannot touch in even the slightest degree without being led on from step to step, as Ahaziah was, until he was in the thick of Jehoram’s iniquity.  A young woman cannot enter a gin-palace and drink her glass at the counter—­as I see scores do any night—­without gradually going further and losing all the modesty and grace of womanhood.  A young man cannot touch gambling in any of its forms without almost inevitably being drawn under its fascinations, as one who is slowly involved in a wily serpent’s coils.  An English bishop thinks and has said that a little betting is allowable, that if you only indulge moderately in it, you may do it with impunity.  He might as well have said that if you only steal coppers the law will smile upon you, but if you steal gold you will come in for its stripes.  He might as well have said, “If you only put your little finger in this fire it will not hurt you, but if you thrust your whole hand in, it will burn.”  There can be no moderation in a thing which is essentially and in all its principles based on dishonesty and corruption, and evil excitement and evil greed.  I am profoundly sorry that such a thing has been said by one whose word has so much authority and influence.  It will be taken by thousands as an encouragement to do what they are only too prone and eager to do.  Who shall curse what a father in Christ has condescended to bless?  We need rather to have all Christian hands and voices raised in passionate and tearful denunciation of that which is doing more than anything else to demoralise our youth and eat away the very morals of the nation.  We need to warn against it and denounce it in whatever form and degree it is practised, and to say, “Touch not, taste not, handle not the accursed thing.”

We must keep away altogether from the men who delight in evil paths, and from the things, the very touch of which defiles.  Go not in their way, pass not by it.  “If sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”  Learn the lesson of Ahaziah’s life, and how his fall came because he consorted with wickeder men than himself, and was anxious to see their doings.

GEHAZI

BY REV.  J. MORGAN GIBBON

“The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever.  And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.”—­2 KINGS v. 27.