In old times the casting of a lot was a solemn religious service: ushered in even among pagans with prayer and often with fasting; but what careless, reckless ignoring of God as the Governor among the nations, is there in all connected with the lot in our days. What foul associations cloud and wrap up almost every game of chance: how soiled are the cards, how unhallowed the rattle of the dice. What degrading, debasing work is done by every species of lottery; what desperate evils spring up and grow out of "a chance" at a Church fair! Some years ago, at the time of the great German and French fairs in New York, a lady thoughtlessly gave her young son leave to buy "a chance" for a gold watch. Thoughtlessly,--it was just a dollar to the fair and an amusement to the boy. And before twenty-four hours had passed, she would have given anything in the world to recall her permission. For at once the boy's mind became wholly absorbed in his "chance." The fair went on, the drawing was long delayed; and day after day--hour by hour, if he could--he went to inquire and to watch; and the mother saw her child in a true gambling fever, and she obliged to let it run its course. Mercifully, as she said, the watch fell to another. "If it had come to George, I don't know what in the world I should have done." "We play for sugarplums,"--we "toss up" for nuts; but each time the evil seeds are planted. The mere habit of _talking_ of "chance," of "luck," of "fate," as if you believed in them all, tends directly to weaken your realizing trust in the Great Ruler of the world; who counts his sparrows, and numbers the hairs of your head. Chance? If the watchmaker could not control one smallest wheel or point in his watch; if even a grain of dust got in and defied him; what think you he could do with mainspring and hands? One unmanageable atom would stop the whole. To quote Dr. Skinner again,--one to whom I think it never occurred to like anything but what God liked,--in his early life as a young man he had seen much wild company; and so strong was their association with evil, that to the end of his life he could never even hear the dice fall without a shiver. "Put it away, my dear," he would say of even the backgammon board. "I don't like it--I don't like it!"