THE MENACE OF 
 I MM O R AL I T Y 
 
 IN CHURCH Am smrE 
 
 JOHN ROACH STRATON 
 
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 1929. 
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THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 IN CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 REV. JOHN ROACH STRATON, D.D. 
 
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 MONDAY EVENING, MAY FIFTH 
 
 AT TEN-THIRTY O'CLOCK 
 "Their Help Oftei\ Proves to be the Turning J*ointJnjtbeLiv^ of Thousands of ChiWren" 
 
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 A Dance and Entertainment to EsUblish a'PERMAVENT Fund to Be Used in Bettering tne Physical. M^r-u.. and Moral Condition ol Cnudrm lOirls Especialb^* Brw^t 
 Before the Children's Court. FVom This Fund Will Be Delrayed U»c Expenses of Remo\-ing Famil*« I« B.?tter Surroundings. Securing Positions for Parents Out of Bn- 
 plo>Tnent. ProndrngOothing^nd Other Necessities, Suggesting U«difal Attention Wnere Nece&sao. Adjusting MarriAges. Civii and ReUg>oua,Taking Cases of Non-wip- 
 port to Higher Courts, eta - 
 
 THERE ARE THREE DIVISIONS OF THIS ORGANIZ ATION-PROTESTANT.CATHOLIC AND JEWISH 
 
 —And Moneys are Oistnbuted and Relief Granted Irrespective of Creed 
 
 The 'Bal Bl«" wiB be marked b> unusuil fticuret of «nt«Runment eontribu'id by Mr. Florenz ZiegfeW. Jr.. from his'Midnighv Frolic pioductwn. 
 
 Inqludin^T the Initial Appearance of the English and French Stage Beauties 
 
 Recenlly selected «J>road^.by Mr. Ned W.ybum. Mr.'Irviiig Berlin hiiS.»Trtttii a special number, dedicated to the 77lh Di\-ision. '^inich 
 will be sung for the first tirce on this occasion. In addition. Mr. Ben AJi Haggin haf prepared a unique senea of Ubleaux \-ivant5itnich 
 will enlist tbe beauty and*per8onal distinction ofanumber of distinguishwl women ofeociety. 
 
 TickeU of Admauon, $5.00 \ 
 Supper, $3.00 
 
 MRS. CHABLES DANA GIBSON. Treuurer.UIFIflb AreniM 
 
 RITZ.CARLTW<.VANDERBILT and PLAZA HOTELS 
 
 THE BIG SISTERS' SHOP 6*2 Fifth A.tnue 
 
 Table ReiervaiuMft: 
 
 IM.M and Ui.¥>. Diaimr BWi 
 i2SM, Fo) <r iltOO. Ttlm Tk'M 
 
 "The most remarkable advertisement ever published in America." Reduced from a 
 full page display ad. which appeared in the "Times" and other New York papers of 
 April 28, 1919. Illustrates the complete blending of the church and "the world" — a 
 dance, woman's "undress party," and a theatrical "ballet," all advertised under the 
 auspices and in the name of religion ! See page 30 in sermon on "The Capture of 
 Churches by the World." 
 
THE 
 
 MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 IN CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Messages of Wrath 
 and Judgment 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN ROACH STRATON, D.D. 
 
 PASTOR OF CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 NEW ^^a^YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
TO THOSE MEMBERS OF 
 
 CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 WHO HAVE SO LOYALLY AND LOVINGLY 
 SUPPORTED THE PASTOR IN HIS STAND FOR 
 GOD'S HOLY TRUTH AND HIS FIGHT FOR 
 INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I What Sort of Preaching Does the Modern 
 World Need? A Frank Introductory 
 Message ii 
 
 II The Capture of Christian Churches by the 
 World, as Illustrated by the "Bal 
 Bleu " Ball and Other Social Conditions 22 
 
 III Slaves of Fashion: The Connection 
 
 Between Women's Dress and Social Vice 38 
 
 IV The Awful Corruption of the Modern 
 
 Theater: Should Christians Attend? . 51 
 
 V Dogs Versus Babies: The Shadow of a 
 
 Great Sin 77 
 
 VI The Scarlet Stain of Sexual Impurity: 
 Will America Go the Way of the Great 
 Empires of the Past? : 87 
 
 VII The Re-establishment of a Right Home 
 
 Life, the Mainstay of the Republic . 106 
 
 VIII The Great American Gambling Craze . 119 
 
 IX God or Mammon? A Message to the Mil- 
 lionaires OF New York 133 
 
 X The Rage for Rag-Time Religion . . 150 
 
 XI Sabbath Observance AS SoaAL Sanity . 160 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBX PAGS 
 
 XII Will New York Be Destroyed If It Does 
 
 Not Repent? 175 
 
 XIII Judgment Because of Pagan New Year and 
 
 Peace Celebrations 185 
 
 XIV The Final Defeat of the Devil .... 202 
 
 XV A Real Hell for Real Sinners . . . 214 
 
 XVI The Heavenly Home and Its Happy In- 
 habitants 237 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Advertisement of the "Bal Bleu" Ball . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Public Warning against Dangers of Disease 
 FROM Social Sins 32 
 
 Jazz Band that Performed for a Church . . 152 
 
 The ''Preacher's Strike" Cartoon 208 
 
 iz 
 
THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 IN CHURCH AND STATE 
 
THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 IN CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT SORT OF PREACHING DOES THE MOD- 
 ERN WORLD NEED? 
 
 A FRANK INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE TO MY READERS 
 
 The following messages are printed in response to 
 many requests for their publication. I have allowed the 
 local coloring to remain in the discourses, because I felt 
 that these elements might add to the vitality of the mes- 
 sages, and make them more concrete and real. 
 
 I have not softened the messages, either, by "retouch- 
 ing" them. I have hoped that they might be more effec- 
 tive, if even the occasional crudities of extemporaneous 
 speech were left in them, rather than if they were pol- 
 ished off to a nicer literary form. These messages were 
 stenographically reported, and they are given here just 
 as God gave them to the messenger, — hot from the heart. 
 The only difference in the printed messages from the 
 spoken form is that I have added some matter and em- 
 ployed some terms in some of them — particularly those 
 that deal with sex questions — which could not be ap- 
 propriately employed in the pulpit. The messages are 
 very plain spoken in their discussion of the appalling 
 vices — the rank paganism and ever widening indecencies 
 of the modern age. If any are unduly sensitive to plain 
 
 II 
 
12 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 speech about these matters, I warn them here against 
 reading this book. 
 
 Happily, however, we are getting away from that false 
 modesty which is not willing to talk about these evils, in 
 order that they may be exposed and corrected, but is will- 
 ing to tolerate them in guilty and shameful silenge. We 
 need to substitute the challenging tones of truth for this 
 cowardly and prudish reserve. We need to speak out. We 
 need knowledge of these secret enemies of our homes. 
 These evils feed on silence and grow by stealth, and we 
 ought to-day to tell the whole truth and not compromise 
 with evil. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall 
 make you free." As in Hosea's day, thousands and tens 
 of thousands are being "destroyed for lack of knowl- 
 edge.'* Men and women, boys and girls, — our children, 
 our brothers and our sisters, — are going down. Surely 
 it is our duty to unmask the sources of their destruction, 
 and to seek by all honest and legitimate means to defend 
 ourselves against these secret assailants of the sanctity 
 of the church, the purity of the home, the good order 
 of the state, and the very life of the nation itself. 
 
 After every war, there is a wave of immorality. We 
 have just passed through the greatest war of all time, 
 and we are now witnessing the widest wave of immoral- 
 ity in the history of the human race. Like a consuming 
 fire, it is sweeping over the world. Only a spurious and 
 silly optimism can deny this fact. All who really know 
 conditions, both in Europe and America, confirm the fact. 
 
 THE FLABBINESS OF MODERN PREACHING 
 
 The overwhelming need of the hour is to unmask these 
 devices of the adversary and to "tear down the strong- 
 
FRANK INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE 13 
 
 holds of Satan." Whether in high places or in low, the 
 warning should be sounded strong and true. 
 
 And particularly is this true in New York City. Every 
 fad and heresy under heaven is here, and the churches, 
 often unwarned and unrebuked, are either "sitting at ease 
 in Zion," or stampeding after the world. Let any one 
 who questions this assertion read carefully the facts con- 
 cerning conditions and current social events discussed in 
 the following pages. 
 
 Now it is the mission of the preacher to measure the 
 real by the standards of the ideal, and to urge the real 
 up nearer to the ideal. We are to lift up our eyes from 
 the things that presently and immediately are and behold 
 on the heights things as they may become. The preacher 
 who merely endorses the status quo is but a poor exem- 
 plar either of the ancient prophets or of the Christ who 
 called the Pharisees — the religious leaders of his day — 
 "whited sepulchers," and who lashed the money changers 
 from the Temple. 
 
 The church and pulpit of to-day must awake, espe- 
 cially in our great cities, to the imperative need for ag- 
 gressive action against the entrenched evils of the age. 
 The church of God is not a hospital to nurse sick saints 
 into heaven. The church is rather an armory for the 
 training of soldiers to fight for righteousness and to 
 strive for the salvation of souls. Preachers who stand 
 in their pulpits from Sunday to Sunday and satisfy them- 
 selves with defending denominational redoubts, spinning 
 theological theories, propounding pious platitudes and 
 reeling off rhetorical bouquets, when the very fires of hell 
 are raging right at them in the slums, the palaces, and 
 the amusement centers of the city, and when multitudes 
 of young men and women are being swept away to eternal 
 
14 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 destruction — ^preachers who do that, haven't caught the 
 first gHmmer of their real mission as prophets of God and 
 "good soldiers of Jesus Christ." 
 
 We can imagine the pained contempt with which the 
 stalwart and rugged Prophet of Nazareth would look 
 upon some of our prim and precise "ministers" of to-day. 
 Men who cannot see beyond the narrow confines of their 
 own little parish, who "prophes'y soft things," and in 
 their smug aloofness are entirely oblivious of indulgences 
 all around them that are sapping the very foundations 
 of society. Men who close their eyes to the appalling 
 evils that are destroying hundreds of people for every 
 one their churches reach. Men whose main stock in 
 trade is pink teas, dulcet music, and dainty ethical ser- 
 monettes, — when the Lord of Life and the Captain of 
 our Salvation is calling for us to "endure hardness" in 
 the battle for righteousness! 
 
 The trouble to-day with many of our churches is that 
 we take up so much time defending our denominational 
 trenches from each other that we have but little strength 
 left to turn and fight the devil, who is assailing us all 
 from the flank and rear. We need to get back to the 
 simplicity and unity of the early church. The church of 
 to-day is too much on the defensive, and a church on 
 the defensive is a church without faith. Against the 
 awful forces of sin and corruption, both in high society 
 and in the underworld, the church — united, militant and 
 mighty — should lift up the flag that "bears the lilies of 
 the Lord." And in it all, the ministers must lead. It 
 is certainly encouraging to see that some are starting 
 definitely and strongly in that direction, and it is to be 
 hoped that there will be no relaxation, but that the lines 
 will be stiffened at every point, and the fight waged with 
 
FRANK INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE 15 
 
 increasing vigor and aggressiveness until a final victory 
 is won. 
 
 NEW York's need 
 
 Especially does this flippant, pleasure-loving, Mammon- 
 worshiping, Sabbath-breaking, sinful city of New York 
 — like the other cities of the world — need to be stirred 
 to the eternal truths of God. Some people to-day are 
 so pampered and spoiled, that they do not like to hear 
 even a discussion of these sterner truths. They want 
 what is palatable rather than what is profitable. They 
 are insistent that they shall be ''happy," but they have 
 very little concern that they shall be holy. They are 
 impatient of all rebuke and warning. They would have 
 their feelings saved at all cost and their souls saved at 
 no cost. If the preachers are to do them any spiritual 
 good, they demand that they shall do it like some dentists 
 claim to pull teeth, "painlessly"! The prophet in the 
 olden time had to complain that the people would "not 
 hear the law of the Lord." He declared that the spoiled 
 people "say to the seers, see not; and to the prophets, 
 prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth 
 things, prophesy deceits." (Isa. 3:9-10.) 
 
 Many preachers of to-day have surrendered to this 
 demand for "smooth things." For two generations, now, 
 German materialistic and rationalistic philosophy has 
 misled the theological thinking of our seminaries. The 
 pulpits of the land, therefore, are occupied often by ani- 
 mated question marks rather than by fearless prophets 
 of God. These dear brethren, in the pride of their ration- 
 alism and the exuberance of their surface optimism, are 
 preaching a milk and water theology, when they have 
 any theology at all. They are trying to heal the awful 
 
i6 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 cancer of human sin with soothing syrup. They are 
 sprinkling cologne water upon the putrid iniquities of a 
 rebellious race! 
 
 GOD NOT A MOLLYCODDLE 
 
 Because of these things, many people to-day have a 
 mushy idea of God. If they have left any faith at all 
 in God, they think of Him as a sort of good-natured old 
 grandmother, spoiling and pampering the children. What 
 the human race needs to-day, more than anything else, 
 is a revival of the right sort of preaching. Preaching 
 that will give God's messages rather than man's guesses 
 to the people. The source of all the disorders of to-day, 
 — the wars, the Bolshevism, the strife between capital 
 and labor, the riots and the bloodshed, the vice and the 
 crime — all of these things have come about because men 
 have lost faith in God and His truth. And they have 
 lost faith because the pulpit has not been upon its job. 
 Lawlessness is rampant, because the fear of God has been 
 lost; and the best medicine that these modern diseases 
 could have would be the fearless proclamation of the old- 
 fashioned teachings of the Bible. If we could hear every 
 pulpit in the land thundering these plain truths of God's 
 Word, and calling the people back to the great simplicities 
 of life, it would do more to better modern conditions 
 than all our reform measures and all the forces of our 
 statesmanship combined ! The multitude to-day, especially 
 those in the *'upper classes," need to be rebuked for their 
 sins, and warned of the wrath to come. For God is no 
 mollycoddle! God is the righteous Ruler of this mighty 
 universe, and He cannot wink at iniquity. The Bible 
 asks, "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" and 
 
FRANK INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE 17 
 
 unless He does do right, then destruction must come 
 upon all things. 
 
 Because New York sets the pace for all America in 
 many ways, the preachers and the people of this great 
 city need to be awakened to the realization of these ele- 
 mental truths. Some imagine because we live in ''Little 
 Old New York," as we call her, that somehow there will 
 be especial indulgence for us. But not so! God is no 
 respecter of persons or places. Eternal Justice will be 
 done, and God's righteous law and His holy will at last 
 shall be vindicated. Whether we live in a palace on Fifth 
 Avenue or a hovel in the slums, unless we repent and 
 turn from our sins, we are lost. 
 
 And no mind that is true to the facts and frank with 
 itself can deny that there is an appalling inertia, indiffer- 
 ence, and lack of consecration within the ranks of re- 
 ligion here and throughout the land. The way in which 
 the churches have lowered their standards and conformed 
 to the world is surely sufficient proof of this. And the 
 seriousness of the situation, so far as New York is con- 
 cerned, is proved by the fact that only 30 per cent. — 
 30 out of each hundred — of New York's teeming mil- 
 lions are connected with any religious organization, 
 Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish. 
 
 At least, therefore, as remarked in one of the sermons, 
 the city ought to know that there is another standard — 
 the standard of a pure church; the standard of a holy 
 religion; the standard of a regenerate heart; the stand- 
 ard of victory over sin and the world, instead of weak- 
 kneed and cowardly surrender to theml 
 
1 8 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 NEW York's elements of strength 
 
 Having spoken thus frankly about my own city, one 
 other word needs to be said. These messages are ad- 
 dressed to New Yorkers, because they were deUvered 
 originally to New York audiences; but the conditions 
 that prevail in this city are characteristic also of other 
 cities the world over. I have had pastorates now in Chi- 
 cago, Baltimore, and other cities of our country, and the 
 messages in this book might just as appropriately have 
 been delivered in any American city, as in New York. 
 The conditions considered are more acute here than else- 
 where, because New York is now the largest city in the 
 world, and she has more pressing problems arising from 
 mixed population, great congestion, etc., than other cities ; 
 but these evil tendencies, unhappily, are prevalent every- 
 where. Let no reader, therefore, dismiss these evils as 
 "belonging to New York only," and no other city plume 
 herself on being "more righteous than thou." New York 
 is not the only sinner to-day. 
 
 Indeed, since I have spoken so frankly in the messages 
 themselves in rebuke of the wrong conditions in this city, 
 I take this opportunity, in my introductory message, to 
 say that I am not unmindful of the elements of strength 
 and splendor in New York's life. There are here some 
 admirable civic and social forces — a great municipal spir- 
 it. If these forces were properly molded and led aright, 
 New York could become the moral and spiritual leader 
 of the whole world. 
 
 There is one element of hope, too, in the situation, and 
 that is that if New York is aroused she will move with 
 strength and vigor for righteousness, for she does every- 
 thing in a big way. There must come soon or late a re- 
 
FRANK INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE 19 
 
 action from the present extremes of worldliness and im- 
 morality. There is a bigness of spirit here which com- 
 pels admiration, and if we can only bring the city frankly 
 to face the fact of her sins, to see them as they really 
 are, and to repent and seek salvation, this giant city will 
 send tides of righteous influences throughout the whole 
 earth. 
 
 The element of fairness in New York's spirit has been 
 remarkably illustrated in the way in which the great 
 New York papers have printed large extracts from the 
 messages published in this book. The arraignment of 
 the city's sins is brutally frank, and yet the papers re- 
 ported the sermons without modifications. Some of the 
 messages are even rough, just as they were spoken, be- 
 cause New York is too big and rough to respond, or 
 even pay any attention, to soft-pedal, kid-glove handling ! 
 While often taking issue with the preacher, I have noted 
 in the New York papers, — ^both in the ranks of reporters 
 and editors — a willingness to face the facts, and a cer- 
 tain respect for the honesty which prompted these home- 
 spun statements of the old truths of God's Word. 
 
 WRATH AND JUDGMENT 
 
 These messages, then, are messages of wrath and judg- 
 ment. God cannot lightly pass by things as they are in 
 the world to-day. We have had such a flood of books 
 characterized by superficial optimism, and so many ser- 
 mons designed to please, crying *'Peace! Peace! when 
 there is no peace," that I have felt ever more strongly 
 that it would be timely to bring together a group of ser- 
 mons on the shortcomings of the church and the awful 
 sins of modem society, in the light of the sterner warn- 
 
20 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 ings of God's Word. My only regret is that some one 
 else who might more worthily and ably have dealt with 
 these vitally important matters, did not speak up before 
 I did. 
 
 Modern society needs to learn that the mere gilding 
 of vice does not change its pernicious character. Vice 
 is vice, whether robed in rags and practiced in a hovel, 
 or robed in purple and practiced in a palace. I hope, 
 therefore, that these messages will not "please." I do 
 not wish to please. I only wish to be loyal to Christ and 
 true to eternal Righteousness. The less the messages 
 please the worldly-minded, the better pleased will their 
 author be. I sincerely hope that they may arrest and 
 arouse each one who reads, whether saint or sinner; and 
 if, even through a first impression of opposition and an- 
 ger, any heart shall be led actually to face facts as they 
 are, until conscience shall be stirred to the enormity of 
 modern evils, and the greater enormity of tolerating such 
 evils in spineless and amiable indifference, — then I shall 
 feel amply rewarded, fully recompensed for the heavy 
 extra work entailed in preparing the messages for the 
 press. 
 
 NOT ALL WRATH 
 
 Lest any reader should conclude that this preacher 
 deals only in warnings and denunciation of sin and sin- 
 ners, however, and the influence of the messages be there- 
 by lessened, through the idea that their author is merely 
 a professional fault-finder and captious critic, I remark 
 that the messages in this volume were delivered, for the 
 most part, on Sunday nights extending over about two 
 years ; and they were mixed, as they were being preached, 
 with many other sermons which followed entirely differ- 
 
FRANK INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE 21 
 
 ent lines. They are brought together in this way be- 
 cause, while they are separate discourses, it has been felt 
 that there was some element of continuity and consistency 
 in the series. Since the Sunday night congregations to 
 which they were preached changed much in personnel 
 from week to week, there is occasional repetition of 
 thought or phrasing which I have allowed to remain, as 
 usually the particular Hne of thought seemed to justify 
 the repetition in a new connection. 
 
 The book is sent out, therefore, with the earnest and 
 prayerful hope that it may accomplish some good by aid- 
 ing in the tearing down of the "strongholds of Satan," 
 by pointing sinners to the cross, and thus hastening the 
 coming of that blessed day when our Lord Himself shall 
 be with us again, to lift the curse of Eden, to defeat the 
 devil, to banish the blight of sin, and to reign in justice, 
 peace and love in the "new heavens and the new earth, 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness.'* 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CAPTURE OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES BY 
 
 THE WORLD, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE 
 
 *'BAL BLEU" BALL AND OTHER SOCIAL 
 
 CONDITIONS 
 
 The word *Vorld" is often employed in the Bible, in 
 addition to its other meanings, to convey the idea of an 
 evil principle or power which is ever active, which is hos- 
 tile to the highest interests of the soul, and destructive of 
 man's moral and religious life. It is the sum total of 
 those forces which set the carnal over against the spiritual, 
 which glorify the temporal at the expense of the eternal, 
 and which exalt the earthly above the heavenly. Any- 
 thing upon which we set our hearts, to the neglect or 
 exclusion of God, is "worldhness." It is particularly in 
 this sense that we need to understand the meaning of the 
 term and to heed the warnings of God's Word about it. 
 We need to understand that worldliness is not simply 
 this or that little indulgence, which we tend to condemn 
 sometimes in our young people. There is an innocent 
 joy of life which should and does express itself in many 
 beautiful and harmless ways; but there is also this other 
 thing, which mars the true world and usurps the place 
 of God in the life, and which degrades and finally de- 
 stroys its devotees, and that thing is "worldliness." It 
 is described in the Bible in very searching and comprehen- 
 sive fashion, as "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 23 
 
 and the pride of life'* ; and it is declared that this thing, 
 expressing itself in this three-fold way, **is not of the 
 Father, but is of the world/' The very essence, then, 
 of worldliness is comprised in the three things — sensual- 
 ity, covetousness and vain glory. 
 
 THE SENSUOUS VER SUS THE SPIRI TUAI<^ 
 
 When the Bible, in the verse quoted, describes worldli- 
 ness as *'the lust of the flesh," it is in harmony with other 
 Scripture teaching that the flesh is naturally at enmity 
 with the spirit. Paul declared that *'the flesh lusteth 
 against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh." There 
 is a warfare to the death between them, and the life will 
 finally either be dominated by the one or the other. Hence, 
 we are solemnly warned "not to make provision for the 
 flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." 
 
 We will not take the time to consider that form of 
 sensuality which expresses itself in gluttony, drunken- 
 ness, and the grosser vices of the race. There are far 
 more subtle and dangerous forms of worldliness which 
 lead to these grosser forms, and against which we need 
 to be, in our age particularly, on our guard. 
 
 Take, for example, the situation as regards dancing 
 to-day. We should not be extreme in our judgments, and 
 yet can any one who really knows modern social condi- 
 tions deny the need of strong convictions within the 
 ranks of Christians upon this question ? From the earliest 
 time, dancing has been associated with the vices that 
 tear down and destroy the human race. In the Bible the 
 only sort of dancing, of which we have any record, is 
 the dance of religious joy. This is a dance such as Mir- 
 iam and David indulged in, when it is said of David, 
 
24 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 for example, that he * 'danced before the Lord with all 
 his might." 
 
 There is nothing in the Bible even remotely suggest- 
 ing or justifying dancing as we know it to-day. These 
 dances of the Bible were always simply an expression of 
 religious joy by a man or woman, as the case might be, 
 and never was there any dancing of the sexes together. 
 One of the most horrible crimes in the entire Bible, a 
 most shocking instance of human depravity and sin, oc- 
 curred in connection with dancing, when John the Baptist 
 was murdered and his head was brought in on a charger, 
 as a reward for the dance of a lewd woman before a 
 degenerate king. 
 
 We no longer have the simple and stately dances of a 
 former day, and we do not enter here into a discussion as 
 to whether they had a place or whether they were right ; 
 but beyond any question the dances of this day are an 
 expression of degeneration in human society. These 
 dances take their very names and movements from the 
 lower animals, and the amazing thing about it is, that 
 there seems to be so little conscience on this question 
 among Christian people. That thoughtful and highly tal- 
 ented Englishman, Harold Begbie, in his book, "The 
 Crisis of Morals," exclaims : 'Think what it means that 
 these filthy and lascivious dances are tolerated in private 
 houses, and that they are laughed at and caricatured in 
 the newspapers as though they were merely an absurdity 
 of fashion." And even a secular newspaper, the *'Times- 
 Picayune," of New Orleans, in a recent editorial said: 
 
 "The trouble with questionable dancing is that there 
 is nothing questionable about it — it is unq uestionably 
 fead! In the great up and down of the dance, from the 
 very beginning of history, each periodic dip has reached 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 25 
 
 some revolting level of vulgarity that has forced a revul-, 
 sion of feeling and 'blue laws.' So now, at the very out-\ 
 set of our comments, let us warn those who may seek to I 
 excuse the present-day spasm of dance depravity that | 
 unless there is a quick and well-ordered betterment of | 
 conditions, inaugurated from within the ranks, there is | 
 sure to be coming from outside the dancing fold a reac- ' 
 tion that, for a generation at least, will place an indiscrim- 
 inating ban upon such social enjoyments. There has been 
 a gradual undermining of the sensitive feelings of a large 
 element of the public, until to-day actions are tolerated 
 and moralities accepted in connection with social func- 
 tions which, until recently, would have subjected those 
 who gave them to instant ostracism. History, broadly 
 speaking, repeats herself; but she always does so with 
 certain artistic variations, and the characteristic, as we 
 see it, of the present period of dance degradation is that 
 it attacks most virulently the very young. It is striking 
 at our boys and girls, our young women and men, and 
 thus at the very roots of our future society/' 
 
 BAL-BLEU BALL AT THE RITZ-CARLTON 
 
 What shall we say, then, of churches and church peo- 
 ple, who not only condone but even conduct dances and 
 balls to-day? I hold here in my hand a full page adver- 
 tisement which appeared recently in our New York papers. 
 I consider it the most remarkable advertisement ever pub- 
 lished in America; and it proves, I believe, that at least 
 one large section of the Christian Church has been com- 
 pletely captured by the world. This advertisement an- 
 nounces the "Bal Bleu" ball, which occurred at the Ritz- 
 Carlton Hotel. The remarkable thing about the adver- 
 tisement is that it links up the ball and the theater directly 
 with the church, — Protestant, Catholic and Jewish. Un- 
 der the main display head at the top of the advertisement 
 
26 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 we have another Hne in large type, giving the name of a 
 lady, who was "Chairman" for the "Protestants," an- 
 other lady who was "Chairman" for the "Catholics," and 
 a third lady who was "Chairman" for the "Jewish" sec- 
 tion. This was a charity ball, to benefit the work of the 
 "Big Sisters," and it is stated, in a second place in the 
 advertisement, in very large type, that "there are three 
 divisions of this organization — Protestant, Catholic and 
 Jewish." This gives the hall a distinctive religious set- 
 ting. Another line in the advertisement tells us that "the 
 Bat Bleu will be marked by unusual features of enter- 
 tainment contributed by Mr. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., from 
 his Midnight Frolic production." 
 
 We are told further that this part of the entertainment 
 includes "the initial appearance of the English and French 
 stage beauties." Then the advertisement tells us that 
 these stage beauties were "recently selected abroad," just 
 about in the same way that an announcement would 
 have been made if some cattle had been bought abroad 
 and brought to this country for display purposes ! 
 
 Here, then, is a complete blending together of the 
 dance, and the most flippant and sensuous side of the 
 theater, with the forces of religion and the people of the 
 modern church! I have also a news account of this ball 
 taken from the papers the day following. This account 
 tells us how the ball went forward, with these theatrical 
 trimmings, and at last that "Sixty Ziegfeld beauties took 
 part in this frolic, including the nine recently brought 
 from overseas. Nymphs, fauns, and satyrs appeared in a 
 Greek ballet!'' The names of the ladies who were spon- 
 sors for the different branches of the church are also 
 given in this news story, and with them the name of one 
 of our world-famous Baptist laymen is linked up with 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 27 
 
 the ball, because he donated, we are told, a room where 
 was carried on "a spirited sale of tickets." 
 
 I do not wish to be unkind, but fidelity to Jesus Christ 
 and love of His church leads me to protest most earnestly 
 against any such mixing up of religion, with the dance 
 and with a theater ballet, as that ball and entertainment 
 brought about. If those ladies and gentlemen wished to 
 do something for charity, why did they not give their 
 money direct, which is the Bible method? In this day 
 of industrial and social discontent ajid unrest, because 
 of the inequalities of life, why did they parade in this 
 advertisement the fact that $50.00 each was paid for 
 many of the table reservations? If these leaders of to- 
 day will put more of their time and strength on correct- 
 ing the industrial and social wrongs of the day, there 
 woidd he less need of charity. What the great masses 
 of humanity want is not charity hut justice, and the part 
 of wisdom now is to place the emphasis at that point. 
 
 THE DANCE_AND VICE 
 
 Do not those who were behind this ball know that the 
 dance to-day is one of the main feeders of the very social 
 ills that this money from the charity ball was designed to 
 help ? This advertisement tells us that the money derived 
 from the ball is to ''establish a permanent fund to be 
 used in bettering the physical, mental and moral condition 
 of children (girls especially) brought before the Chil- 
 dren's Court." Do not these friends know that many of 
 these children, ''girls especially," who are brought before 
 the Children's Court, are brought to their moral downfall 
 through the degenerate dance halls of this city, where 
 evil men ply their unholy trade of seduction and ruin? 
 
28 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Again and again, social reformers have given us the facts 
 showing that an overwhelming proportion of the girls 
 who drift into the underworld, come to that terrible life 
 through the dance halls and the low theater. And yet 
 these representatives of the wealth and power of New 
 York will set, at the top of the social scale, this example 
 of dancing, etc., which cannot fail to encourage the prac- 
 tice all down the line, on the part of those elements of 
 society which are not so strong and protected as the upper 
 classes, but which suffer terribly through the wreck and 
 ruin wrought in the dance halls and other places of sin 
 connected with them. I could relate, from my own ex- 
 perience, many concrete instances of destruction that has 
 come to young girls through the dance halls; and yet in 
 the face of the known conditions, these leaders of our 
 city's social life will set the example of dancing before 
 the people. 
 
 IF JESUS HAD ATTENDED THE "BAL BLEU'* BALL? 
 
 And not only that, but the appalling thing about it is, 
 that they have done it all in the name of religion and 
 under religious auspices. Not only did they have this 
 great ball, in which there was the usual display of the 
 female form and a condition of undress that was shock- 
 ing, according to any right standards, but they also intro- 
 duced the ballet, which means simply that scores of young 
 women were paid to sacrifice their modesty, in order that 
 thereby they might entertain and please people by the 
 display of their forms and the grace of their movements. 
 
 When we stop and think of this in the light of Jesus* 
 love and reverence for womanhood and His effort to 
 protect the weak and to save the erring, is it not shocking 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 29 
 
 beyond all expression that Christian men and women 
 should be so thoughtless as to get their pleasures in this 
 way, and that, too, in the holy name of religion and 
 charity? I challenge any one to deny the assertion that 
 that ball and everything connected with it was an expres- 
 sion of pure paganism. It sounded like ancient Rome, 
 and not like Christian America ! There was not a single 
 Christian touch in it all. 
 
 We pray and hope for the coming again of Jesus Christ 
 to this lost world, and the Bible teaches us to believe that 
 He may come at any moment. Supposing Jesiis had 
 come to New York during the progress of that ball and 
 had walked into the ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton, what 
 woidd have happened? Doubtless the first thing would 
 have been that the ladies woidd have grabbed anything 
 in sight with which to cover th^eir exposed bodies! 
 
 THE VIRTUE OF A FIGHT 
 
 "But," you say, "why raise any issue over these things ? 
 What good will it do?" Well, a faithful fight always 
 does good, and all right thinking Christians should pro- 
 test in most earnest and emphatic manner against the 
 prostitution of religion by tying it up with these forces 
 of worldliness and sin. I take this opportunity to raise 
 the standard of God's truth and hoHness in opposition to 
 all of these things. At least the city ought to know that 
 there is another standard, — the standard of a pure church, 
 the standard of a holy religion, the standard of a regener- 
 ate heart, the standard of victory over sin and the world, 
 instead of weak-kneed and cowardly surrender to them! 
 We Christians are here in the world to ^'tear down the 
 
30 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 strongholds of Satan," and not to effect a complete of- 
 fensive and defensive alliance with him! 
 
 That ball was not right. Viewed from any proper 
 standpoint, it was hideously wrong, and may God stir 
 the sluggish conscience of New York and help us to a 
 better vision, or this city will suffer not only social decay 
 because of these things, but the righteous wrath of God 
 will fall upon her and upon her people ; and especially will 
 it fall upon those in high places who ought to know bet- 
 ter and who proved themselves ''blind leaders of the 
 blind" by these things! 
 
 THE DANCE AND SOCIAL DISEASES 
 
 By a striking coincidence, there appeared in the same 
 issue of the papers that contained this display advertise- 
 ment of the great ball, another display advertisement, 
 which I also have here. It was an announcement by 
 the United States Public Health Service and the New 
 York City Department of Health. This announcement 
 is signed by Dr. Rupert Blue, Surgeon General of the 
 United States Public Health Service, and by Dr. Royal 
 S. Copeland, Commissioner of Health, New York City. 
 This announcement tells of the frightful conditions aris- 
 ing from social sins in our city and state. The announce- 
 ment says that these conditions "make it necessary to 
 resort to heroic measures to check the spread of certain 
 angerous diseases." The announcement tells us that in 
 s^ew York State ''2jo,ooo men who registered in the first 
 raft and who were not called, were suffering from these 
 iseases" The announcement says further, ''The condi- 
 ions indicate tJmt the vitality of the nation is imperiled" 
 nd the announcement then tells us the blunt, appalling 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 31 
 
 truth that "more than 60 per cent, of men are infected 
 with these deadly diseases/' Yes, the diseases are deadly. 
 It is said that they cause 95 per cent, of the bhndness of 
 children and 60 per cent, of the more serious surgical 
 operations performed upon women, 75 per cent, of child- 
 less marriages, and other horrible results that strike at 
 the very fountain of life itself and that undermine and 
 destroy the human race. 
 
 The greatest danger point to-day is in the relationship 
 between the sexes, under the conditions of our congested, 
 overwrought modern life. Every great civilization of 
 the past has decayed precisely at this point, and the 
 danger signals, as this startling announcement from the 
 health authorities shows, are already out for our age. 
 Let it be said again that these are no light matters with 
 which we are dealing. The very life of the race is at 
 stake in these tremendous issues, and instead of rebelling 
 against rebuke or justifying ourselves in pride and 
 haughtiness, we need to bow in the very dust of re- 
 pentance, and turn back in humiHty to God and His 
 truth. 
 
 Can any one deny that there is a direct connection be- 
 tween the prevalence of these degraded dances to-day 
 and the starthng and terrible increase of these social 
 diseases? Was it not the keenest of irony that in the 
 same papers that carried the display advertisement of the 
 **Bal Bleu" ball, with its endorsement of the whole danc- 
 ing and ballet idea, there should appear also this other ad- 
 vertisement, warning the people against the terrible dan- 
 gers that flow from a wrong relationship between the 
 sexes? Laugh, if you will, at those who dare to sound 
 the warning, but "God is not mocked," and His righteous 
 laws cannot be violated with impunity. We can be in- 
 
32 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 different to these vices in New York, and laugh at the 
 preachers who dare to protest against them, but never- 
 theless our children and our children's children will have 
 to pay the price of our folly and sin, and our disregard 
 and violation of God's law. New York can continue with 
 her "cabarets" her "Bal Bleus/' her ''Midnight Frolics/' 
 her ''imported English and French stage beauties/' her 
 bedroom plays, where the main feature is lingerie, her 
 neglect of the church, her secidarising of the Lord's Day, 
 her half-dressed women, and her pagan wining and din- 
 ing, but she will have to pay the piper for all of these 
 things! She will have to reap the harvest from such god- 
 less and sinful sowing. Already she is reaping the harvest 
 in the startling fact that 60 per cent, of the men who walk 
 her streets are infected with loathsome diseases that en- 
 danger the health and safety of every man, woman and 
 child within her borders! 
 
 CHURCH DANCES TO-DAY 
 
 In the face of these terrible conditions, that ought to 
 be known to all intelligent leaders in the moral life of the 
 community, we have the fact that many churches are 
 now holding dances in their buildings. I have here, for 
 example, pamphlets announcing dances in a famous 
 Baptist Church on Manhattan Island, and churches of 
 other denominations are holding dances constantly in 
 their own buildings and even in down-town hotels. Oh, 
 how far we have gone in this modern age of ours from 
 the safe, sweet paths that our mothers and fathers fol- 
 lowed in the light of God's holy truths ! We hear from 
 some of our churches, even on Sunday, announcements 
 in connection with the theater, showing a practical al- 
 
ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 by the 
 
 UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 
 
 and the 
 
 NEW YORK Cnr DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 
 
 Conditions existing in many cities make it necessary to resort to heroic 
 measures to check the spread of certain dangerous diseases. Through 
 ignorance many persons, innocently and accidentally, are exposed to a pcrfl 
 which spares neither infant nor aduh. That peril is the venereal peril 
 
 The exigencies of war forced this Government to face the problem frankly 
 and courageously, and, as a result, the venereal rate in the American Army 
 w«s lower than in -any »Hiiy ia ths hi:::tc>r-- i>i the -vo'ld- Yet. frori the time 
 America entered the war— April, 1917, to "September, 19ia— 2,295,000 days of 
 service were lost to the American Array through venereal diseases. 
 
 Of these diseases, only one-sixth were contracted after enlistment. In 
 New York Sute at least 270,000 men who registered in the first draft and who 
 were not called were suffering from venereal diseases. 
 
 Thus, the problem is and has been a problem for civilian communities. 
 Because the problem has been ignored, the Army and Navy were seriously 
 handicapped throughout the war. The conditions indicate that the vitality of 
 the nation is impenled. This is evidenced by the large percentage of adults 
 who have venerwl disease during life. Out of 770,000 males reaching maturity 
 yearly, it is stated that 450,000 of them, or mere than 60Tc, are infected. 
 
 This condition of affairs must not continue. Deiiiobihza,.ion is .n j.i ogress 
 and the American fighting man must enter into his readjustment to civil life 
 with a clean bill of health. 
 
 Our soldiers returning from overseas are coming back principally by way 
 of New York, where these diseases are too prevalent. These men must be 
 protected. The way to protect them is to look the evil squarely in the face 
 and to attack it ope^y. 
 
 How should the problem be met? 
 
 First, by enlightening the public as to the seriousness of venereal in- 
 fections. 
 
 Secondly, by immediate steps to provide prompt and effective treatment 
 for those afflicted.. 
 
 To these ends, clinics have been established at the following locations : 
 
 The Bronx 
 
 Dent °r Hnltk CJsk (lUtt BSTCB), Itttb M. 
 
 Manhattan 
 (E*it Sulc) 
 
 De Mt:t TyirvfntAn. ^JT-e Bl- t roartii at«. 
 >ii EiTi.i Hctpiixi. nun »re. k leKh rt. 
 
 E«h l»r£«l UosptlAl. Jefferson * Cherry 
 l^Dox HIU Hoepltcl, LeitnFtca * *' 
 
 4 Er«*k ftve 
 
 * TTtk St. 
 
 _ 4 S7lh K. 
 
 CoDd SamArttkn Dispens&r7- Broome 4 Ees«x «!■. 
 
 Cornell DlspejMaTT. Flril 
 
 Broddyn 
 
 m- Uark'a BoFr^ral. 1T7-1T» &*cc.d^ ave. 
 
 6t. BanholomeWs HDvplial. 215 E- 42»d it. 
 Flower Ho«rpll&l. «3rt at. A Ave. A. 
 Povt-Gre4uate Honilial. Seoasd av«. A 2*th at. 
 nerlem H<»pllal, Lraox are. * llfiib 
 
 I>«pt. 9t Hea:tb Olalc. P1« 
 
 •ve. A lltth at. 
 
 V. 8. PuUlc Bcattb Serrlcc Cllotc. >n £. I9th at- 
 MalB CUbIc (I>epl. of Health). ]» Cemr« at. 
 
 (Wat Side) 
 
 VutVrbllt Cllnle. Amrterd&ni a^C- ft t9th aL 
 New Yortt rMapcDaarr. S« Eprlng »t. 
 West SIdfl DlapeaBa.nr. 31* W. 42iid at. 
 Ne* loric Ho«pll*.l, e-14 W. ISih »L 
 PreiKrh Hoepltai. 4 SO W. ttlh rl. 
 
 DcF'.. U BeaiO) CUnlc, 121 PriKC at. 
 
 ^^^^<^.^-/32^^ 
 
 »»rff«r" enteral, V. 8. P»¥bc i/eoUX Service. 
 
 Brsoklj-n H««pftal rMapeaiarr. De K»lb ara. A 
 
 RajTBond ri- 
 Polbcmca ^L. I C ) Baapltal. Heary ft Kmlxy aia. 
 Wjrckofr Helchta HoayftaJ. Et. Nlcfaolu avc. * 
 
 8t&nbope at- 
 Je-Rlsh Hospital. Clusen ft £t. IXaiir'a avea. 
 Dept- of Heaiih Olck. M Ptans^lvanla are. 
 Dept, of Health Clinic, Fleet ft wnicueWiy at*- 
 Dett. o( Heaim CIlslc. }M S. »ik si 
 
 Queens 
 
 Depc. af He&llli. STI-JT* FtJtoa i 
 
 RiciuDond 
 
 Der' ^ He&Uh. B47 ft ET.Iz^bctb at3^ Eaap.« 
 
 /-^^-Z 
 
 CraaUu>M<r\/ •2<jrX. Jfc» rark C<|«L 
 
 
 Advertisement (from New York "Tribune," April 28, 1919) warning public against 
 dangers of disease from social sins. This appeared in the papers the same day as the 
 full page advertisement of the "Bal Bleu Ball." See frontispiece. 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 33 
 
 liance with it. We see in other churches, the introduction 
 of "theatrical stars" in the effort to attract crowds; and 
 a short time ago, the wife of one of our preachers danced 
 all night long. This dance must have been with other 
 men, because surely even an "advanced" and "liberal" 
 parson would not yet go the limit of himself attending 
 a ball and dancing ! 
 
 Imagine this woman being called upon suddenly to go 
 to the bedside of some one who was sick ! Imagine her, 
 in her abbreviated ball gown, trying to comfort the sor- 
 rowing ones in the home, and kneeling beside the bed to 
 prepare a soul to go out into eternity ! The thought would 
 be utterly ridiculous and laughable if it were not so 
 tragic. 
 
 All of these things are shocking and horrible treason 
 to Jesus and His divine and holy truth ; and the time has 
 come for a stiffening up of our moral backbones, and for 
 a war to the death upon these insidious vices that are 
 doing so much to paralyze the church and that are sap- 
 ping the very life of modern society. 
 
 DANCING NOT NECESSARY TO "HOLD THE YOUNG PEOPLE*' 
 
 "But," some one says, "ought we not to make some 
 concessions to hold the young people ? Does not the end 
 justify the means?" No, it does not! and no sound, safe 
 system of morals can be 'founded upon any such idle 
 sophistry! No good can be reached by evil means, be- 
 cause Jesus said, "An evil tree cannot bring forth good 
 fruit." Some say that the only way to hold the young 
 people and to win the soldiers to the churches is to bring 
 in dancing and theatricals and all of that. They say that 
 we must "fight the devil with fire." But the trouble is 
 
34 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 that the devil has more fire than we have, and he can al- 
 ways beat us at that game. 
 
 Wherever the church tries to capture the world by 
 "fighting the devil with fire," she herself gets captured 
 and scorched ! The devil's specialty is fire. Furthermore, 
 and most emphatically, every right minded young inan 
 and woman to-day will resent the imputation that they 
 can only he won and held to the church by pandering to 
 the giddy and fleshly side of their natures. No ! Chris- 
 tianity means heroic self-renunciation, or it means nothing 
 at all. The only way that the church can really win and 
 hold the young, who are worth the winning, is by the 
 beauty of holiness and the joy of service. Not to get 
 something upon the low level of fleshly enjoyment, but 
 to give something upon the superb heights of the spirit, 
 is what the true church really stands for. The church had 
 better have Gideon's little three hundred, if only they 
 know how to pray and love souls and are set for the 
 service of God and man in the spirit of self-sacrifice, 
 than to have all of her teeming thousands of spoiled and 
 pampered worldlians, who are compromising God's 
 truth and dragging the white standard of Jesus Christ 
 in the very mud and mire of self-indulgence and shame! 
 
 The Christian church must divorce itself absolutely 
 from the sinful world. Self-sacrifice has in it far more 
 attractive power than selfish indulgencies. God hasten 
 the day when the leaders of our churches, and our 
 religious forces everywhere, will come to understand this 
 truth again, and will turn from the folly of compromising 
 with sin and of surrendering to the world ! 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 35 
 
 VICTORY OVER THE WORLD 
 
 The darkest day in the history of the Christian church 
 was when, away back inConstantine's age, it joined hands 
 with the temporal power for the accompHshment of its 
 •spiritual aims, and thus surrendered in part to the world. 
 The church and the world are inherently, essentially and 
 unavoidably antagonistic. Well does the Apostle John 
 say that ''the friendship of the world is enmity with 
 God." The message of the Bible to us concerning world- 
 liness and worldly people is, ''Come out from among 
 them and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean 
 thing." (Cor. 6:17.) Christ has taught us that we are 
 *'to be in the world but not of the world." The Chris- 
 tian's citizenship is in heaven. We have infinitely more 
 of dignity and greatness than those who are merely 
 citizens of this poor, sinful, passing world. 
 
 There is a way, thank God, by which we can overcome 
 the world, and "this is the victory that overcometh the 
 world, even our faith." The child of God walks not by 
 sight but by faith. He does not surrender his soul for 
 the sake of the tawdry trumperies of the world. He re- 
 fuses to strike his colors to "the world, the flesh and the 
 devil." He realizes that the only true happiness is found 
 in helpfulness, and that sacrifice in sendee produces 
 abiding peace and joy. 
 
 We have before us, too, as both inspiration and com- 
 fort, the blessed truth that "the world passeth away and 
 the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth 
 forever." We look, therefore, in pity upon the poor 
 worldlian, who is poor even though he may possess un- 
 bounded material wealth. With great serenity of *soul, 
 we pass by the thing that he clamors for, and in which he 
 
36 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 finds his satisfaction, and we say to him that we have 
 those "riches of the spirit" that ''treasure in heaven" that 
 abideth forever, "where neither moth nor rust corrupt 
 and where thieves do not break through nor steal." 
 When all of this pageantry and pomp, this vain display 
 of wealth and power, when all this gilt and glitter have 
 fallen into dust forever, the child of God will just he 
 beginning the enjoyment of those heavenly beauties and 
 those transcendent delights which shall be ours while 
 the years of eternity roll! These things are worth fight- 
 ing for and suffering for. 
 
 When Charles the Sixth of Austria died in 1748, he 
 was the last of the direct male line of the House of 
 Hapsburg, and disputes, therefore, immediately arose 
 regarding the succession to the throne and the possessions 
 of the House of Austria. Some time before his death, 
 however, Charles had bound all the leading powers of 
 Europe in a sort of agreement, called "The Pragmatic 
 Sanction," by the terms of which, in case he should leave 
 no son, his daughter, Maria Theresa, should become his 
 successor. But as soon as Charles died, Frederick of 
 Prussia, who had just ascended the Prussian throne, by 
 a quick movement of his armies, sought to defraud 
 Theresa of her dominions. But Queen Theresa fled into 
 Hungary, and with all of a beautiful woman's arts of 
 persuasion, she appealed to her Hungarian subjects to 
 avenge her wrongs. She gathered the noblemen of 
 Hungary in the Parliament chamber and told them the 
 story of the perfidy of Frederick of Prussia. Her un- 
 merited sufferings, her beauty, her tears, and, above all, 
 the little prince — her baby boy — in her arms, stirred the 
 resentment and kindled the ardent loyalty of the Hun- 
 garian noblemen. When she finished her plea, as one 
 
CHURCHES CAPTURED BY THE WORLD 37 
 
 man they snatched their swords from their scabbards, 
 formed a circle around her, and with the blades of their 
 weapons made over her a canopy of gleaming steel as 
 they exclaimed, ''We will die for Maria, our Queen!" 
 
 On a sterner field than this, Jesus Christ is pleading 
 with all righteous men and women to-day to battle for 
 Him. There is a usurper upon the throne of this world 
 and Jesus, as the rightful Ruler,, calls us to tear down the 
 strongholds of sin and Satan, not to be conformed to 
 the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our 
 minds, not to compromise with iniquity, but to rebuke 
 evil doers. With all humility and Godly fear, we are 
 to overcome the world with our faith, and to struggle 
 on until that blessed day when our Savior Himself will 
 come back again, and when "the kingdoms of this world 
 will become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ, 
 and He shall reign forever and ever !'* 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SLAVES OF FASHION: THE CONNECTION BE- 
 TWEEN WOMEN'S DRESS AND SOCIAL VICE 
 
 We cannot escape the .unpleasant fact that millions of 
 American women to-day seem to be simply fashion mad. 
 They are nothing else but slaves to "style." There is 
 no quarrel here with woman's instinctive desire to make 
 herself as attractive and beautiful as possible. The 
 trouble is with the women who make dress a fetish, and 
 worship style as a god. They seem to think and 
 dream of nothing on earth except new hats and dresses. 
 And it makes no difference how extreme or hideous the 
 styles may be, these women will have them or die. Many 
 a girl has surrendered her soul in order to keep up with 
 the procession of fancy dress. 
 
 And the lightning rapidity with which the styles 
 change must give the thoughtful pause, and cause the 
 man of limited income to nervously clutch his flabby and 
 emaciated purse. It is a notorious fact that women's 
 goods are higher than any other class of merchandise. 
 There seems to be a conspiracy between the dressmakers 
 and the merchants to change the styles as often as pos- 
 sible and to keep the prices up. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THE BUSTLE 
 
 A few years ago when bustles were all the rage, the 
 fastidious maiden would have laughed you to scorn had 
 
 38 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 39 
 
 you suggested a change; yet it was but a short time be- 
 fore new tendencies became operative in the style world, 
 and the bustle began to dwindle, while, at the same time, 
 the tops of the sleeves began to swell. The faster the 
 bustle dwindled, the more rapidly the sleeves enlarged. The 
 ladies stopped trying to float with a balloon attached at 
 the back and tried them at the shoulders. The "big 
 sleeve girl" was the idol of the hour, and the entire 
 geography of the mysterious female costume had to be 
 rewritten ! 
 
 Then, suddenly, and without warning, either to artistic 
 sense or exhausted pocketbook, the slave masters of 
 fashion decreed that the big part of the sleeve must be 
 at the bottom instead of the top. This necessitated an- 
 other revolution, including the throwing away of old 
 dresses and the purchase of new — much to the delight of 
 dressmakers and merchants, but to the consternation of 
 the exchequers of fathers and husbands. 
 
 Then came the ''Merry Widow" bonnets, when the 
 male half of congregations went into total eclipse, and 
 the whole earth was full of the glory of hats as the 
 waters cover the sea ! Then, later, instead of going out 
 at the sides like the "Merry Widows," until an umbrella 
 dwindled into insignificance beside them, the hats ran 
 up and toppled over into every imaginable fantastic shape. 
 And now we have a mixture of the two styles, and every 
 conceivable color of feather and flower has been pressed 
 into service, until the sanctuary on Easter Sunday looks 
 like a head-end collision between a flower garden and 
 a poultry show! 
 
40 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 PRICES HIGHWAY ROBBERY 
 
 The prices charged for these "creations" are simply 
 a polite form of highway robbery. They take a piece 
 of straw or felt, punch it up in the middle until it looks 
 like a Texas sombrero gone to seed, and is utterly with- 
 out symmetry or grace; then they stick a rooster's tail 
 on one side and a sunflower on the other, label the whole 
 thing "From Paris" and sell it for $40.00! At the out- 
 side limit there cannot be much over forty cents' worth 
 of actual material in it, but it is a "creation" from Paris, 
 and they find some one with the folly to buy it, and the 
 greater folly to wear it. 
 
 At one time the skirts were so wide that two ladies 
 filled a parlor, but anon, the word was passed down the 
 line from Paris, and the hobble skirt dawned upon us 
 with the "Standing Room Only" sign displayed. The 
 public was much diverted with the changed steps of 
 ladies, as they tried to walk, and with their fantastic con- 
 tortions in their efforts to get on street cars and climb 
 the stairs. 
 
 BOREALIS HOSIERY 
 
 Then, once more, the fashion masters cracked their 
 whips, and the skirts were widened some, but at the same 
 time the decree was sent that they should also be short- 
 ened, and the results were indeed startling. There fol- 
 lowed an abbreviation of length that greatly gratified 
 male curiosity with a display of color effects in shoes and 
 hosiery that suggested at times glimpses of the Aurora 
 Borealis ! 
 
 Then came the "transparent skirt,'* which was one of 
 the most brazen bids that the devil ever made for the 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 41 
 
 destruction of the modesty of American womanhood. 
 And now, once more, in all its weird wonder, we have in 
 our midst the hobble skirt, so that the man of humorous 
 tendency does not have to go to the playhouse for a good 
 laugh. All he need do is to stand on the street comer 
 and watch the procession. One woman, slightly pigeon- 
 toed, minces along as though she were walking on egg- 
 shells; another, faintly slough- footed, ambles the way a 
 raccoon paces; then comes another who, in her frantic 
 effort to escape an automobile, has to hop across the 
 street like a wounded jaybird, or a ham-strung frog! 
 And I did hear of one very fat but very fashionable 
 old lady who found it utterly impossible to negotiate the 
 unusually high step of a street car, and who finally 
 solved her problem by sitting down on the platform and 
 pivoting in, greatly to the diversion of the strap-hangers 
 and smokers on the rear end! 
 
 PITIFUL SLAVES 
 
 Why will they do it? Why i_s it that even Christian 
 women, who in all other ways are sensible, will be so 
 swept off their feet as to don such absurdities in dress 
 that they are made ridiculous ? Why do they do it ? We 
 answer it is the slavery of fashion. The shrinking of 
 human beings from being unlike other people, and their 
 desire to be conformed to the world. But Christians 
 should not be conformed to the world, but rather "trans- 
 formed*' by the renewing of their minds. 
 
 How cruel and horrible, often, are fashion's behests! 
 It causes the Chinese girl to so bandage and confine her 
 feet that walking becomes living torture and even hours 
 given to sleep are broken by bitter pain. It causes the 
 
42 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 woman of Lake Nyassa to insert a piece of stone or 
 metal in her upper lip, enlarging it from time to time 
 until speaking becomes awkward and painful, and the 
 entire lip is sometimes torn away. It drives many Amer- 
 ican women to wear uncomfortable and harmful shoes, 
 and to lace themselves until forms are ruined and health 
 is wrecked; and it leads other thousands to adopt the 
 absurdest extremes of fashion, or to make an exposure 
 of their bodies such that under right standards ever}r 
 sense of modesty would be shocked and every canon of 
 womanly delicacy feel outraged. 
 
 Some women complain that the men of to-day are 
 losing respect for them. Can you wonder at it, when 
 they practice such folly? Other women complain that 
 men are impure. Let them take heed that they do not 
 unconsciously pander to the lower natures of men by 
 the exposures to which the slave masters of fashion drive 
 them. 
 
 EVE AND THE APPLES 
 
 Two friends some time ago were at the theater. As 
 they looked across the expanse of gleaming shoulders, 
 breasts and 'arms, one said to the other: *'Ji"^' <i<^^s not 
 the Bible teach that after Adam and Eve ate the for- 
 bidden apple they knew that they were naked?" "Yes," 
 replied the other, '1 think so." "Well then, Jim," said 
 the inquirer, "from appearances here, don't you think it 
 is about time to pass the apples again?" 
 
 Do the good women of to-day, who allow themselves 
 to conform to the degenerate fashions that are imported 
 from Paris, really know the harm that they often do by 
 their extreme and questionable styles of dress? If some 
 of our ladies, when they attend the ball or theater or 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 43 
 
 walk the streets in garments that look as though they 
 had been taken out of a nightmare, and so abbreviated as 
 not decently to cover their forms, — if some of the ladies 
 thus attired could see the old men and the young men turn 
 and gaze at them, and could hear their remarks, they 
 would understand the profound harm that they do by 
 such thoughtlessness in the matter of dress. For the 
 sake of being considered "smart," they help to destroy 
 man's respect and veneration for womanhood, and thus 
 make it easier for men to surrender to their lower pas- 
 sions, and drift into sin. The slavish following of for- 
 eign fashions has been an ally of vice for years, in all 
 our cities. 
 
 A CLEAN YOUNG MAN'S CONFESSION 
 
 One of the finest things which I have seen in this entire 
 discussion since I raised the question of woman's dress in 
 the sermon on the "Bal Bleu" ball, came from a young 
 college man who withholds his name, but who contributed 
 a statement to the "Physical Culture" magazine. He 
 writes anonymously, and, therefore, we know that he 
 has given an honest statement. He says: 
 
 "As I have said, I am twenty-five years old, and I have 
 kept myself as clean physically as any girl who has ever 
 lived. Mentally I am unclean. Why? Because the women 
 I know will not let me be clean. They are good girls, 
 I know; tall and straight and strong, clear eyed and red 
 cheeked, wonderfully alive and full of good health and 
 good spirits. I know that such physically good speci- 
 mens of womanhood could not have lived or thought 
 wrongly, for they have the hall marks of clean living and 
 clean thinking written all over them. I respect them all, 
 but still they constitute my moral problem. Bad liter- 
 
44 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 ature we boys can leave alone. We can select the shows 
 we attend. Our girl friends we have no way of escap- 
 ing as long as we stay in an institution that is co-edsca- 
 tional." 
 
 Then he tells us of the struggles of a young man to 
 keep himself pure under the conditions of to-day. He 
 says, *Tirst of all, there is the ever present, ever function- 
 ing sex instinct, a hand-me-down from the primitive ages 
 when man was polygamous." Then he tells of the way 
 "in which the stories and illustrations, even in some of 
 /the high-class magazines, and the theatrical perform- 
 jances, etc., to-day, tend to make more difficult a young 
 I man's struggle to keep himself pure, because they keep 
 so constantly before his mind the sex idea. Then he says, 
 * 'Finally comes the thing that to most of us is the biggest 
 stumbling block, the manner in which our women friends 
 clothe themselves." 
 
 Then he tells how their girl friends dress with their 
 short skirts and bare upper bodies and gauzy trans- 
 parencies, so thin at times that he says if the girl has 
 miscalculated the capacity of her skirts, it is sometimes 
 true that "her form stands silhouetted in our bripiit 
 western sun." Then he asks honestly and earnestly : 
 
 "What is a fellow going to do? We don't go around 
 looking for these things, but we cannot help seeing them. 
 No matter how much one may respect a girl, it is an 
 effort for him to keep his thoughts from straying when 
 she exposes too much of her body in the way she does. 
 An instinct that is always ready to spring into action 
 is usually started to function very easily, and as the in- 
 stinct is psychological it seems to be the psychological' 
 element of curiosity that starts it to functioning." 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 45 
 
 CATERING TO MASCULINE CURIOSITY 
 
 This young fellow, who is writing in this fine, honest 
 way, then makes this point, which I think is the funda- 
 mental point in the whole matter of the connection of 
 women's dress and vice. He says plainly that the real 
 evil in present styles is not so much the exposure as it is 
 the evident catering to curiosity and the emphasis upon 
 the sex idea. He says truly that in the case of the bath- 
 ing suit or the gymnasium suit, where it is really neces- 
 sary to have abbreviated garments, it is ''rarely the cause 
 of morbid thoughts among normal men." Then he says : 
 
 "It is the clothing that only half conceals the limbs 
 and the body that is suggestive. I know from the con- 
 tact that I have had with so many college boys that the 
 sensual thing about women's dress is that which neither 
 conceals nor discloses the body of the wearer. It is de- 
 signed to show as much as society will allow, and the 
 psychological tendency to complete in the mind the ob- 
 ject that is imperfectly seen does the rest. It is the 
 imagination that is called into play that does the havoc." 
 
 Then he quotes from his roommate, who was in the 
 same struggle as this young man to keep himself pure, 
 and who unburdened himself after a dance one night, as 
 follows : 
 
 / "Darn the way these girls dress! If they are going 
 jwear clothes at all, why don't they wear enough to cover 
 lithemselves up?" 
 
 to I 
 
 7 
 
 This manly young fellow, who is evidently making a 
 noble battle for masculine purity, then says of women 
 whom he knows to be innocent of any real design to do 
 wrong : 
 
46 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 "Why should they go on dressing in a way to accentu- 
 ate the sex tendency? The young man who is trying 
 his utmost to keep himself clean for the sake of the 
 woman he will marry sometime in the future, has trou- 
 ble enough without his sisters throwing a monkeywrench 
 into his moral machinery.'* 
 
 Then he adds very truly : 
 
 *'The biggest moral battles that have ever been fought 
 have been by big, two fisted, men's men who have kept 
 themselves clean." 
 
 THE PREVALENCE OF THE SEX APPEAL 
 
 Good for this young man ! He has hit the whole nail 
 squarely on the head, and there is no answer to this 
 experience from real life which he gives. The greatest 
 evil in modern styles is the fact that the present tendency 
 toward undress is so obviously for the purpose of direct- 
 ing attention to the sex idea. This idea is tremendously 
 overemphasized in our modern life any way. It is fired 
 at us from the magazines, both the pictures in them and 
 the stories. It is literally rubbed all over us in the moving 
 picture show and the modern theater, it screams at us 
 from the pages of the novels of to-day, and, that no 
 man may escape, it parades itself in the follies of woman^s 
 styles. 
 
 The true object of dress is for utility and beauty, and 
 not for sex appeal, and it would be just as logical for 
 men to begin to dress with an end to sex appeal as it is 
 for the women to do so. If present tendencies continue, 
 and we go a little further with the process of "elimina- 
 tion," then I suppose that in the not distant future, we 
 will have both men and women in a state of complete 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 47 
 
 freedom from all clothing, which will finish the circle 
 and bring us back to the point from which the savages 
 started out. 
 
 Women are complaining to-day of the "double stand- 
 ard of morals," and they do right to complain; but, iq 
 Heaven's name, let them be consistent and not by their 
 mode of dressing, their dances, and other follies uncon- 
 sciously foster the very double standard of morals which 
 they so righteously denounce. A fossilized octogenarian, 
 or a self-complacent mollycoddle, with ice water in his 
 veins, may be able to look at the sights which any man 
 can see in modern society to-day, and in the dance hold 
 in his arms a throbbing, beaiitifid young woman, with 
 almost half her body exposed, and the other half clothed 
 largely with good intentions — such a man, I say, under 
 these circumstances may maintain a philosophical calm, 
 but any young fellow with red blood in his veins and the 
 elemental forces of nature operating in him, cannot so 
 easily do so, 
 
 THE BIBLE TEACHING ON WOMAN's DRESS 
 
 The really eamest-souled women of to-day need to 
 take these things more seriously to heart. They need 
 to heed what the Bible says upon the subject of correct 
 dress. They need to read again, for example, I Peter, 
 third chapter, and the third to the fourth verses, where, 
 in referring to woman's dress, it says : 
 
 "Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorn- 
 ing of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of 
 putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of 
 the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the orna- 
 ment of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight 
 
48 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 of God of great price. For after this manner, in the old 
 time, the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned 
 themselves." 
 
 They need to read also I Timothy, second chapter, 
 ninth and tenth verses, where it is written : 
 
 "In like manner also, that women adorn themselves 
 in modest apparel, with quietness and sobriety ; not with 
 braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array: But 
 (which becometh women professing godliness) with good 
 works." 
 
 The conditions in our country and in the world to-day 
 are too tragic and serious for the very strongest and most 
 capable elements of our society to fritter away valuable 
 time, money, and effort on mere frivolity, when there is 
 so much that is noble and truly constructive to challenge 
 our attention and to invite our efforts. 
 
 I once heard one of the most famous reform work- 
 
 > ers of this city explain why she gave up low-cut gowns. 
 
 ;■ She explained how she was ready to start to the theater 
 
 i one night in such a dress, when her little boy of five 
 
 I said to her, "But, mother, you are not going that way? 
 
 ? You are not dressed." And then, with trembling voice, 
 
 I she told us how all the evening through, as she sat in 
 
 the playhouse, she kept hearing that sweet childish voice 
 
 saying, "Not dressed! Not dressed! Not dressed!" until 
 
 at last with the blush of shame mantling her cheeks, and 
 
 with the realization that a Christian mother should dress 
 
 differently from the idle and Godless women of the 
 
 world, she drew her cloak about her and went home, 
 
 dressed — or rather undressed — for the last time in such 
 
 a costume! And after this experience she consecrated 
 
 her life fully to Jesus Christ in the holy work of help- 
 
SLAVES OF FASHION 49 
 
 ing to save and lift up the wayward girls of New York. | 
 She went down into ''Mulberry Bend" and other sections, i 
 and literally took those dear children out of the haunts j 
 of sin and shame. She carried them to the home which 
 she founded for that purpose, and she has given her 
 long and wonderful life to this blessed work. Doesn't 
 that sound a little better for a Christian woman than the 
 "Bal Bleu" ball? 
 
 These are tremendously serious and important things. 
 The most sinister and menacing figure of our modern 
 life is the cigarette smoking, cocktail drinking, pug dog 
 nursing, half-dressed, painted woman, who frequents the 
 theaters, giggles at the cabarets, gambles in our drawing- 
 roomys or sits around our hotels, with her dress cut "C" 
 in front and "V" behind! She is a living invitation to 
 lust, and a walking advertisement of the fact that many 
 of our modern women have lowered their standards of 
 life! 
 
 A NATIONAL COSTUME 
 
 Our country, we believe, has the finest, strongest, 
 sanest and most beautiful women on earth. May we 
 not hope, therefore, that the day will soon come when 
 American women will assert their independence and re- 
 fuse longer to pattern after the degenerate women of 
 Paris in their styles? Let the gifted and noble women 
 of this age, who are rising in ever greater numbers, 
 break this bondage, and they will serve thereby not only 
 the forces that are making for decency, purity and 
 health, but they will also serve the great cause of justice 
 to womanhood at every point, for the "woman move- 
 ment" of to-day is hindered by these follies. We assert 
 our individuality and independence in other ways. Why 
 
so THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY • 
 
 should we not develop in America a distinct and beauti- 
 ful national costume, as did the Greeks in their age and 
 as the Japanese people, for a modern example, have done 
 to-day? Such a costume would not only serve the cause 
 of common-sense and true economy, in this age of stag- 
 gering high prices, but it would also serve the cause of 
 art and beauty, by giving a wholesome and attractive 
 substitute to take the place of the hybrid monstrosities 
 of fashion, which are now brought from abroad to de- 
 plete our pocket-books and debase our taste! 
 
 Oh, for the sturdiness of a true independence to-day ! 
 It is glorious to see Caleb withstanding the clamor of 
 the other spies and following the Lord only. It is glori- 
 ous to see Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, alone amid 
 thousands of hostile people, going into the fiery furnace 
 rather than consenting to bow down to a false God. It 
 is magnificent to see Daniel refusing to serve his own 
 personal interests by compliance with heathen customs, 
 but choosing rather to open his window toward Jerusa- 
 lem and praying three times a day, "as he did aforetime." 
 That was the putting of a right fashion against a false 
 fashion ! It is glorious to see Martin Luther alone against 
 the world, starting a new fashion of freedom and un- 
 flinchingly standing by his convictions of truth. Any 
 fool or weakling can drift with the current, but it takes 
 strength and heroism to breast the tide ! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE AWFUL CORRUPTION OF THE MODERN 
 THEATER: SHOULD CHRISTIANS ATTEND? 
 
 I BRING here no arraignment of the drama or of dra- 
 matic art. A theater of proper character and under 
 proper control might be made an agency for great good. 
 Personally, I have been a student and a devotee of 
 dramatic art all my life. For years I had the privilege 
 of teaching oratory and the interpretation of literature 
 in one of our universities, and I recognize, therefore, the 
 place of the drama in the scheme of human life; for this 
 art is capable of serving the human race in high and 
 glorious ways. 
 
 THE theater's RELIGIOUS ORIGIN 
 
 The modem theater really began under Christian 
 auspices, with the "Miracle Plays" and other BibHcal 
 themes; and even when secular plays were introduced, 
 the theater was still largely under Christian control. In 
 1548 the Paris "Con-fraternity of the Trinity" built a 
 theater, which was licensed, as they expressed it, to per- 
 form "profane pieces of lawful and honest character." 
 But this early ideal has been abandoned in large part, 
 and the theater to-day is following the influences and 
 ideals of the Greek playhouse, which had its origin in 
 the degraded revels inspired by the god of w^ine, Bac- 
 
 51 
 
52 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 chus. The first Greek theater was simply an open space 
 near the temple of Bacchus, where the chorus danced 
 about the altar of the god. 
 
 Dr. Herrick Johnson, in his ^'History of Amuse- 
 ments," says: 
 
 "Dramatic representation had its origin among the 
 Greeks with a troupe of bacchanalians in rude and bois- 
 terous songs, interspersed with dances, conducted with 
 a high degree of licentiousness both in language and 
 action.'' 
 
 This same author says further: 
 
 "Theatrical exhibitions became popular amusements 
 among the Romans, just as they lost their stern love of 
 virtue, yielded to luxury, and grew weak and effeminate." 
 
 Beyond any question the playhouse to-day is following 
 its Greek rather than its Christian heredity. No one 
 who knows conditions to-day can deny these things. The 
 modern theater has so lowered its ideals that any ad- 
 vantage w^e might secure through it to the artistic and 
 esthetic nature is more than counterbalanced by the harm 
 it does to the moral and spiritual nature. It is poor 
 wisdom to wade a river of slime and filth to secure an 
 apple. And to have to wade through the moral mire of 
 the modern theater is not worth the apple of "art." 
 
 THE THEATER CONDEMNED BY ITS OWN FRIENDS 
 
 The playhouse is its own worst enemy, and the most 
 scathing criticisms of it to-day come from those who 
 know it best and who naturally are most friendly to it. 
 Dramatic art has just about been destroyed in the house 
 of its friends, by the conditions that prevail in the 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 53 
 
 modern theater. In his recent book on the "Popular 
 Theater/' Mr. George Jean Nathan, after fourteen years 
 of dramatic criticism and intimate acquaintance with the 
 theater, its plays, and its people, is evidently so discour- 
 aged with the institution, that he seems to be practically 
 disgusted with it. He reaches the conclusion that 
 
 "the place of the theater in the community is infinitely 
 less the place of the university, the studio, and the art 
 gallery, than the place of the circus, the rathskeller and 
 the harem." 
 
 And as discriminating a mind as that of the late Wil- 
 liam Winters was also emphatically discouraged concern- 
 ing the modern theater. In an article in the Philadelphia 
 Ledger, sometime sinc€, Mr. Winters said, among other 
 very scathing things : 
 
 "The condition of the American theater at the present 
 time, however, is in some ways peculiarly deplorable, and 
 such as no judicious lover of dramatic art can consider 
 without a mingled feeling of resentment and sorrow. 
 That condition will not be improved by pusillanimous 
 praise — the empty adulation of writers who wish to ride 
 into prosperous popularity by celebrating the present time 
 as the Golden Age of Everything on Earth." 
 
 The plays that are to be found upon the boards in 
 these later times, he calls "noxious trash," "pictures of 
 the proceedings of infatuated fools and sentimental de- 
 mireps from the 'seamy side' of life." And he says again: 
 
 "The fact is that the direction of the theater has been 
 almost entirely usurped by illiterate, unscrupulous specu- 
 lators, solicitous for monetary gain and the gratification 
 of their vanity, and under such managerial dominance, 
 the theater, practically, has been surrendered to an un- 
 
54 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 couth, ignorant, ill-conditioned democracy, unfit to direct 
 anything; and intellect, judgment, and taste are invited 
 to accept and applaud bad for good, right for wrong, 
 filth for purity, ugliness for beauty, the manifestation of 
 disease and decay for 'progress/ " 
 
 A JEWISH RABBI ON THE THEATER 
 
 This is all in line with what was recently said by 
 Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, in his sermon before the Free 
 Synagogue of New York, in which he declared that "as 
 a business, the theater is the dirtiest business in America 
 to-day." Dr. Wise is the Rabbi of the largest Jewish 
 congregation of New York, and he is in a position to 
 know what he is talking about when he speaks of the 
 modern theater, because the 'Theater Trust" is com- 
 posed almost entirely of a handful of Hebrews. Dr. 
 Wise said further: ^ 
 
 "I carry in mind one show in particular, that I saw 
 only last week in one of the leading theaters of the city. 
 I am told there are a dozen shows equally as bad in the 
 city. It was nothing less than the work of moral scav- 
 engers and filth producers. It was the product of moral 
 leprosy. The stage was filled with half-dressed women 
 — though no more so than the boxes of the theater itself, 
 or the lobbies of the average hotel. It was the vulgar 
 incarnation of impurity, spun about a display of hosiery 
 and underwear." 
 
 Dr. Wise also arraigned the press, asserting that it 
 does not give the public honest criticisms of the theater. 
 
 ''Only last week in another city," he said, "I saw an 
 advertisement of a former Broadway attraction It read : 
 'Go to the Blank Theater and see a classy, girly, jazzy 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 55 
 
 show/ Could anything be more impudently or sala- 
 ciously suggestive? Why can't critics say : 'This is a dis- 
 gusting, foul, salacious play'? Why should people per- 
 mit newspapers to lie to them about amusements? Are 
 the newspapers of New York going to let two or three 
 or four men dictate what is said about the greatest of 
 arts — men without the remotest idea of responsibility? 
 I wish we could put some of these 'chain theater' men 
 in chains.'* 
 
 "moral leprosy" 
 
 These deplorable and disgusting conditions are char- 
 acteristic of the theater, as an institution. They prevail 
 not only in New York but in all of our cities. The 
 theater — the institution itself — as Rabbi Wise truly says, 
 is suffering from ''moral leprosy." In the report of the 
 famous Vice Commission of Chicago, we find the follow- 
 ing statement (on pages 246 and 248) concerning con- 
 ditions as uncovered by that able and impartial Com- 
 mission. The investigator, who looked into these con- 
 ditions for the Commission, says in the report : 
 
 "The investigation of dance halls, cheap theaters, 
 amusement parks and lake steamers, show that these 
 places are surrounded by vicious dangers and tempta- 
 tions which result in sending many young girls into lives 
 of immorality, professional and clandestine. The im- 
 moral influences back of the stage are very bad. I know 
 of one case where two girls and two fellows simply shut 
 the doors of one of the dressing rooms, and stayed there 
 for a long while, and step by step the downfall of the 
 girls was brought about. Many theaters have little dress- 
 ing rooms, and many of the girls stay there over night. 
 Many girls sell themselves in order to get on the stage 
 before the public. Then they find they can make easy 
 money. Their one idea is to get before the public." 
 
S6 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 The utmost audacity of immoral display, as Dr. Wise 
 truly said, is often seen in what are called the *'best 
 theaters." Another investigator says : 
 
 ''Some of the so-called best people in the profession 
 are using the shimmy shake in song, dance and panto- 
 mime. Barefoot dancing with naked limbs being shown 
 through transparent nets, abbreviated skirts, with flesh 
 colored tights, emphasizing the form and contour ol the 
 body by effective colored lights, are all a part of the 
 nefarious business which escapes the ban under the guise 
 of 'art.' 'The Passing Show' appeals to the baser desire 
 of the sexes. Even the advertising is full of nasty, dirty, 
 ugly meaning. Posters of women partly in the nude, 
 with boldly displayed titles such as 'Twin Beds,' 'The 
 Virgin Widow' and 'French Frolics,' are placed in every 
 conceivable space where they will attract men, young and 
 old. Very often the programs in the higher grade houses 
 contain advertising that carries a double meaning." 
 
 CORRUPTION THROUGH CARNIVALS, ETC. 
 
 Here, then, is the picture of the modern theater as 
 drawn by its friends and by very impartial investigators. 
 And, mind you, the foregoing scathing arraignment in- 
 cluded the so-called "better class" theaters. When we 
 get down to the cheap "troupes" that tour the smaller 
 towns and cities, we find conditions that are positively 
 nauseating! Here, for example, is an account of the 
 experiences of the Superintendent of the New York 
 Civic League in connection with one of the "Carnival" 
 troupes that are now touring the country giving their 
 carnival and theatrical shows. He says of this one which 
 he attended : 
 
 "At the carnival just referred to they also had a most 
 shocking, immoral 'Women's Show.' The three pretty, 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 57 
 
 but of course lewd, women came out on a platform in 
 front of the tent in which they gave their show. Their 
 manager, in trying to give the large number of young 
 men there an idea of what kind of a show they would 
 see if they would pay their 20 cents and go into the tent, 
 made the most vile and foul hints and suggestions as to 
 what they would see in the tent — a continual appeal to 
 the very lowest and basest elements in human nature. 
 The lewd women in that show performed vile 'oriental' 
 dances and the nasty 'hoochee-koochee' dance, and went 
 through other revolting physical contortions, intended to 
 arouse the lower passions of the young men present. 
 When that show was over the manager jumped up and 
 said before the audience left : 'Say, boys, wait a minute. 
 Can you stand anything stronger? Would you like to 
 see the girls go the limit?' Of course many yelled : 'Yes, 
 sure.' Then he said : 'Well, if you will pay a quarter 
 more you can go into the back room of the tent, and see 
 something that will stir your blood. This is the same/ 
 show we give in the winter time before clubs in the cities,^ 
 and get a dollar each admission. You can see it to-night' 
 for a quarter, and if after you see it you don't think you 
 got your money's worth tell me so as you go out and I'll 
 return your money.' " 
 
 This observer then describes the revolting and shame- 
 ful indecencies which occurred in that back room. These 
 things cannot be described here. But that show was al- 
 lowed to go on several days longer, and these lewd per- 
 formances were given every half hour, including all day 
 Sunday! Think of such a show running on Sunday! 
 And think of its ruinous effects on the morals and health 
 of the young men of that town! The Superintendent 
 of the New York Civic League, who saw these things 
 personally, quotes facts later given him by one of the 
 physicians of the town in which that carnival and show 
 were given, proving that 
 
58 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 "more than loo young men in that town of 5,000 people 
 contracted venereal diseases from that one carnival! Yet 
 these young men were to be the future husbands of the 
 pure, trusting young women of that town. What untold 
 sorrow, pain and domestic tragedies await them!" 
 
 Can we not almost smell the sulphur of hell and see 
 the cloven hoof of the devil in such things as these? 
 
 This is plain talk, but surely plain talk is needed, be- 
 cause our boys and girls are being caught, often un- 
 warned, in these traps of the evil one. Happily we are 
 getting away from that false modesty which is not will- 
 ing to talk about such evils in order that they may be 
 exposed and corrected, but is willing to tolerate them in 
 guilty silence. We are now substituting the challenging 
 tones of truth for this cowardly and prudish reserve. 
 Surely we need the creation of a public conscience on 
 this issue. 
 
 Through the courtesy of a newspaper friend. Rev. Dr. 
 Robert Watson, Rev. Dr. Chas. H. Parkhurst and my- 
 self were given the opportunity of seeing the so-called 
 play, "Aphrodite," that we might protest to the mayor 
 against it, and seek to stop it. I sat through the entire 
 performance as a disagreeable duty, as we wished to be 
 able to testify at first hand concerning it. 
 
 This show is a challenge, not merely to religious con- 
 victions but to elemental decency. It is an affront to the 
 intelligence, as well as to the moral ideals, of our citizen- 
 ship. It is not "art" ; it is abomination. It is not "love" ; 
 it is lust. It is the apotheosis of everything that is vile 
 and degrading. 
 
 From beginning to end there was not a single appeal 
 to the intellect, or even to any right or decent sentiment 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 59 
 
 Nothing was left to the imagination. Every appeal was 
 merely to the sensuous and the fleshly. 
 
 It was a nightmare of nude men and women, with 
 bare-legged negro men, in addition to the white men, 
 squirming in and out and rubbing against the practically 
 naked white girls. It was an orgy of sensuality and 
 shame, with men and women, in a condition of almost 
 complete undress, hugging each other, and slobbering 
 over each other, and lolling on couches with each other, 
 and dancing in feigned drunken revelry together. 
 
 What possible good can come to our modern life from 
 digging up this filth from the "Grove of Aphrodite," etc., 
 which destroyed that ancient civilization in which it was 
 allowed to flourish? What possible "art" or entertain- 
 ment can there be in the silly cavorting of harlots and 
 degenerates ? 
 
 SMALL-POX AND IMMORALITY 
 
 Is it not a terrific arraignment of the moral torpor of 
 our citizenship that so little is said and done about these 
 truly horrible conditions? And is it not amazing that 
 Christian people should think it strange and ''extreme" 
 tJiat a preacher should cry out against these eznls that 
 are not only corrupting the morals of our youth, hut 
 that are striking at the health and the very life of the 
 race I What an indication of our mental and moral 
 paralysis to-day! 
 
 New York has seen so much of these evils and they 
 have been tolerated so long, and patronized by church 
 people, that_ I verilv believe if acts o f open shame were 
 jortrayed on the stage as a part of some "show." there 
 would be only a ripple of half -amused surprise, and per- 
 haps a mild protest or two that it was "bad form." Some 
 
6o THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 'theater managers have come almost up to that point to- 
 day, and if the pubHc conscience Hes dormant much 
 longer, will not some one of them, more daring than 
 the rest, go the limit of indecency? This would not be 
 much worse, indeed, than some of the things that have 
 been said and done already on our stage, about which 
 there has been no great outcry of indignation. We are 
 too self-complacent in New York in our familiarity with 
 these things. The words of Pope apply : 
 
 "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
 As to be hated needs but to be seen ; 
 Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
 We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 
 
 ' If it were known that, in that section of the city along 
 
 Broadway and 42nd and nearby streets, men, in order 
 
 that they might make mpney, were selling food or milk 
 
 that was notoriously laden with germs of awful diseases 
 
 — diseases that were destroying the bodies of the people, 
 
 I actually killing many of them, would such a condition 
 
 \ be tolerated for a single day? Would there not be an 
 
 vactive conscience over it? Would not the wisdom and 
 
 the moral judgment of the community arise in hot anger 
 
 and indignant protest, and stop such a diabolical traffic? 
 
 But is i t not even worse to tolerate conditions at the 
 
 very heart ot this city that wreck tHe spirituaLbodifiS-Oi^ 
 
 mr youth and destroy their moral _characte rs ? I speak 
 
 not only as a Christian minister, but as a father of five 
 children, a nd I say to you frankly to-day that I would 
 rather have one of mv preciousboys take in the germ of 
 smal l-p^x , that would fi nally lay his cherished bod y in 
 the grave, t hatPto have him in o ne of our play-houses 
 take into his moral and spiritual nature a germ of im- 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 6i 
 
 gurity that would lower his ideals, destroy his respect for 
 womanhood, and cheapen his entire views of life ! 
 
 THE MONEY POWER AND THE THEATER 
 
 In the light of the foregoing facts, I bring the follow- 
 ing deliberate indictment against the modern theater as 
 an institution. I indict it, first of all, as a covetous, 
 Mammon-worshiping, money-seeking institution. I hold 
 up to public scorn the defense of the theater that it ex- 
 ists for art. This is a false and ridiculous pretense, 
 in the light of the known facts. The theater ex- 
 ists neither for art nor for the elevation of the people, 
 primarily, but for dividends. The dollar m ark is over it 
 ^11^ Those who conduct it have demonstrated that they 
 will put upon the boards any play, however lecherous and 
 indecent it may be, if only the box office receipts are 
 enlarged. The excuse that the theater managers have 
 made, in replying to my attack, that they *' onlv p ^ive the 
 ^public what they want," is a lie. They themselves have 
 debauched the taste of the public, and now, for further 
 profit, they are catering to the low ideals of their con- 
 stituency, which they themselves have brought into be- 
 ing! They are like a doctor who makes a dope fiend 
 by starting him with small doses of opium, and then 
 later, when his poor, palsied victim demands his dope, 
 the doctor excuses himself by saying, ''I am only giving 
 him what he wants!" Away with such abominable 
 hypocrisy ! 
 
 Art has been prostituted to profit in the playhouses, 
 and the little handful of men who constitute the 'Theater 
 Trust" to-day — men who are utterly foreign to Chris- 
 tian ideals of life and conduct — have discovered that, by 
 
62 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 appealing to prurient curiosity, and by catering to those 
 elements in a community who applaud the salacious and 
 
 Y the impure, their dividends are increased, and it is this 
 fact which is the real secret of the decay of the modem 
 
 y drama and playhouse. 
 
 Never until this degrading bondage to 'Mammon is 
 broken will there be any health or wholesomeness in the 
 American theater. Think of the enormity of the crime 
 of capitalizing the sacrifice of womanly modesty and 
 making merchandise of the very female graces and 
 charms that God has designed for pure and holy ends! 
 And think of the even worse crime of condoning these 
 evils and patronizing them! How can any institution 
 which thus traffics in girls for gain be anything but a 
 monstrous iniquity? 
 
 THE MORALS OF THE THEATER AND ITS PEOPLE 
 
 I indict the modern theater, again, therefore, because 
 it appeals to the lower ins tincts of the race, r ather than^ 
 to its higher and nobler ideals . Sometimes a so-called 
 moral or religious play is put upon the stage, but it is 
 evidently only a bait to catch the unwary, for it is fol- 
 lowed immediately by others utterly degrading and de- 
 plorable in their influences, plays that, through the eye 
 and ear, do for the audience what the degraded dance 
 does through the sense of touch. The average modem 
 play is full of suggestion and innuendo for both eye and 
 ear. Undress that would not be tolerated in any respect- 
 able home, even among brothers and sisters, is common 
 on the stage. Conversation, which off the stage would 
 make a woman unfit for decent company, and postures 
 from which the face of modest virtue would turn in di^ 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 63 
 
 gust in any other place, are not only tolerated, but are 
 demanded by theater managers as the popular features 
 of the day. It was recently remarked by one who knew 
 that in employing girls, it was not a question with the 
 managers of "how much money they want ^^d ^^^^ '^^ h^y 
 near naked they were willing to appear on the stage." 
 The most popular themes in the theater of to-day are 
 unhol y love , j ealousy, e nvy, a ndabroad and silly humor. 
 And even in the midst of so-called religious plays and 
 the grand opera, ballets and other features are often in- 
 troduced which cannot fail to dull the edge of modesty 
 and to discount the sanctity and glory of womanhood. 
 
 COMMERCIALIZING A SPOT ON CHARACTER 
 
 Furthermore, t hat tl ie. morals ajLactors-and-actresses 
 are d^plnrnh ly low, the statements already giYgr_ariH the 
 ad missions of theater people themsel ves amply prove. 
 There are, I know, bright and shining exceptions to this 
 sad truth, but they are the *^ exceptions t hat prove the 
 rule," and they shine the brighter because of the moral 
 blackness around them. I have all sympathy for that 
 group of noble and gracious men and women on the 
 modern stage whose lives do exemplify right ideals of 
 life and conduct, and whose hearts I know, from some 
 of the letters I have received even recently, bleed because 
 of the shocking and shameful conditions around them. 
 An actress said recently to one of my ministerial friends, 
 when he asked her about conditions upon the stage, "It X 
 is hell, sirr 
 
 Even in Edwin Booth^s day, conditions were distress- 
 ing. I have a friend who knew at first hand of the 
 
64 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 incident in which Edwin Booth was asked by one of 
 
 his intimate friends — his attorney — when he was "going 
 
 to introduce his only daughter Edwina to the stage." 
 
 Booth idolized this child. He gave her his own name, 
 
 in feminine form; and at the time of the question she 
 
 was just passing from girlhood into womanhood. He 
 
 /replied to his friend's question by saying, "Lwould rather 
 
 3^ put her under the_sod." He followed that remark by 
 
 explammg tliat he knew all too well the moral conditions 
 
 on the stage. Since Booth's day, the stage, l^ond any 
 
 ^uestioB^ has become infinitely more__commercial, sordid. 
 
 andJmmoraljtKTnTt was tTien. The quotations already 
 
 given are ample proof of this. There is one sad and 
 
 striking fact that forever proves this proposition and 
 
 ^that is that the stage is the only place where a spot upon 
 a woman's character seems to enhance her popularity and 
 /j> JJLs^€cesSj|,^ 
 ^ ^^^^^y^^mQ oj. the_actors of to-day have had as many di-_ 
 T"^^ vprces and re-ma rriages as He nry V III: and the ax:- 
 V^ [ tresses that have had a string of husbands have attained 
 ^^ to the h ighest popularity . Consecutive polygamy is just 
 as bad as simultaneous polygamy and our modern s ociety 
 needs to learn that truth. If concrete facts, however, are 
 demanded to prove theevil conditions on the stage, they 
 are easily obtained. The nastiness brought out in the 
 vi Thaw trial, for example, is sufficient proof, on the basis 
 of concrete facts. 
 
 On September 13, the New York Society for the Sup- 
 pression of Vice brought to the attention of the District 
 Attorney a play that was being produced in one of our 
 theaters, and protested against it. In a letter to them 
 dated September 19, the attorney replied by saying: 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 6s 
 
 "I am in accord with your belief that the thing is in- 
 tended to be a lewd and suggestive production, and it is 
 deplorable that theatrical managers of this city have sunk 
 so low as to permit such productions in their theaters." 
 
 On October 14, the Society notified the same official 
 of still another play that was indecent, and in his reply, 
 dated October 17, the District Attorney says: 
 
 "In my opinion, it and the other bedroom farces are 
 a sad reflection upon the theatrical producers and upon 
 the public. I am of the opinion that prosecutions against 
 them would not effect the one thing which the producers 
 deserve, which is a jail sentence, and the prosecution it- 
 self, by reason of the publicity which it would give to the 
 plays, would probably be more harmful than efficacious.'* 
 
 These quotations seem to show that the officers of the 
 law believe that the "white light" district is more and 
 more taking the place of the old "red light" district. 
 
 It is useless, therefore, for some of the stage people 
 and their defenders to cry out against me because I have / 
 dared to raise a voice in opposition to this awful nasti-j 
 ness. What all the decent actors and their friends hadf 
 better do is to move promptly and with tremendous ; 
 determination and aggressiveness toward righting these 
 abominations, instead of vilifying a preacher who criesi 
 out against them. Let the stage repent and bring forth] 
 fruit meet unto repentance, and there may be some hope 
 of its salvation! 
 
 THE theater's LAWLESSNESS 
 
 I indict the modem theater, again, because it deliber - 
 at ely and pers istently violates God's holyj f^w yf^rtrpm^n^ 
 tlT eJ^abbath^ an d therebv puts itself into direct and deadly 
 
66 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 competition with the church and Sunday school. The 
 law of God requires, and the deepest needs of men de- 
 mand, that there shall be one day in seven for rest and 
 worship; but the modern playhouse persists in violating 
 this law. At the last session of the New York legislature, 
 the theater people stood and scorned those of us who 
 were speaking in defense of the American Sabbath. 
 Through their influence over a rotten political machine, 
 they succeeded in putting through the iniquitous laws en- 
 abling them to open their lecherous playhouses through- 
 out the state on Sunday, and thus to get more dirty dol- 
 lars for themselves. 
 
 The Sunday theaters in New York have done more to 
 
 \j reduce attendance at the churches and synagogues, be- 
 
 \ yond any question, than any other single force. Mr. H. 
 
 W. Hicks, Superintendent of the New York Sunday 
 
 School Association, states that, from the most careful 
 
 estimates that can be made, there are now in New York 
 
 VJ 250,000 children of school age (that is up to 16 years 
 
 old), belonging to Protestant homes, who are not in any 
 
 Sunday school. He states further that if you include 
 
 those who are between the ages of 16 and 24, another 
 
 200,000 would have to be added to that figure, making 
 
 almost an even half million of small children and young 
 
 people who are thus out of our Sunday schools. It is 
 
 a very significant fact, too, that this shrinkage in S unday 
 
 V / school and church attenda nce has been contemporaneous 
 
 ^ with the opening of Su n day m oving picture shows, thea- 
 
 ters, etc. It is beyond controversy that these things are" 
 
 trenching in tremendously upon our Sunday schools and 
 
 churches, and are doing thereby incalculable harm to the 
 
 children of both sexes. Recreation and amusement have 
 
 their legitimate place in the scheme of human living, but 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 67 
 
 if we are to make them a substitute for the deeper and 
 more sacred things of life then they become a curse in- 
 stead of a blessing. We are in danger of developing a 
 superficial, flippant and thoughtless citizenship by a 
 wrongly balanced mental and spiritual diet. 
 
 A visitor in the home of one of our members, who 
 was studying conditions in New York, went one Sunday 
 night to six theaters before finding one that it was pos- 
 sible to get into, because there were such crowds. 
 
 SCHOOL AND CHURCH VS. THEATER 
 
 New York, more and more, is substituting the theater 
 — this sordid and sorry thing which Mr. Winters, Mr. 
 Nathan, Dr. Wise, the States Attorney, and others have 
 described for us — New York, I say, is substituting the 
 degraded and silly theater for the church of the living ^ 
 God, even on the Lord's day. As it now e xists , the w^w 
 t heater is the deviFs church, and conditions have now^^ 
 reached the point where i7 is a real question as t^'^^ 
 whether the theater or the true church of God is ^^jf/ 
 mold and shape the moral ideals of the people in the^^'^^T* 
 future. Certainly one or the other must go down ! The.^^ ^ 
 church and the theater have absolutely nothing in com- a^^ 
 mon. The theaters are n ot exerting an upliitin^g influeiice,^!^^^'*^^ 
 nor are th ey accom plishing any practical work of utili^ 
 or beneficence in the worldT ihe churches, on the other 
 hand, are the soui savers of the community; they are 
 promoters of public education, and the foster mothers 
 of asylums, hospitals, orphanages, charities and all other 
 benevolent institutions. If the theater should at once be 
 suspended forever, society" w ould not feefthe'cFange ex^ 
 cept for the better, but if the churches sh ould be_ 
 
68 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and abandoned, it would mean the wreck and ruin of our 
 civilization within a few decades. 
 
 / These considerations apply also to the relationship be- 
 (tween the school and the moving picture business. There 
 are in the United States 281,524 school houses (accord- 
 ing to government statistics, 1915-1916), with 622,371 
 teachers. 
 
 There are in each of the two cities of New York and 
 
 J Chicago more moving picture houses than public school 
 
 houses. If the parish schools in large cities are added 
 
 to the number of public schools the picture houses will 
 
 ^ be about equal to the total of schools. Probably the num- 
 
 A ber of ^'movies" throughout the country is at least equal 
 
 to the total of all public schools. 
 
 The enrollment of children in the public schools in the 
 United States (1916) was 20,357,687, with an attend- 
 ance of 15,358,927 children from 5 to 18 years of age. 
 The hours of school attendance weekly does not average 
 more than 30 hours during 40 of the 52 weeks per year. 
 The moving pictures are open on the average about six 
 hours daily, or 42 hours per week, 52 weeks in the year, 
 and appeal constantly to 60,000,000 people of all ages 
 and occasionally to another 40,000,000. 
 
 It has been estimated by the magazines of the photo 
 play that more titan the equal of the entire population of 
 the United States attend '^movies:" every month. 
 
 The influence of these picture shows for recreation or 
 play, instead of being directed to subjects that are in- 
 / tellectually and morally healthy, and which thus prove 
 / a stimulant and aid to the school, are usually silly, fre- 
 / quently false to morals, and degrading in their tendency, 
 I filling the receptive mind of youth with suggestions of 
 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 69 
 
 every kind of vice and crime and making light of things/ / 
 sacred and domestically pure. / \ 
 
 Already the evil results of the people's abandonment 
 of the church for the theater and the harmful trend of 
 these educational facts are being seen in our cities. There 
 is a condition of immorality among the children on the 
 streets and even in the public schools that is almost un- 
 believable. As a pastor, in going about the streets of 
 New York, I see on every hand — in the well-to-do and 
 the poorer sections — groups of small boys shooting craps 
 — gambling for money — and when I stop near to observe 
 them, I hear them using the vilest language — not merely 
 oaths, but the putrid speech of moral degeneration. In 
 some of the schools there are conditions of insubordina- 
 tion and of gross immorality that are heart-breaking. If 
 time permitted, I could tell you of concrete cases whic 
 I personally know, where gangs of very small boys have 
 held up and robbed other boys of their knives, watches, 
 etc. I know of one case where there was bad blood be- 
 tween two boys. One of them laid in wait for the other, 
 behind a corner, and when the boy passed, this other boy 
 sprang out upon him, slapped a handkerchief over his 
 mouth, and almost choked him to death before he real- 
 ized how seriously he was hurting him. When confront- 
 ed later with this melodramatic act, hejLQii£essed_heJiad 
 fottenJJjeidea from the movies! And thus the immo- 
 
 rality and other evils among the school children are easily 
 accounted for. The church and Sunday school have been 
 neglected, and the poison of the moving picture house 
 and cheap theaters has been poured into the minds and 
 hearts of the rising generation. New York is beginning 
 already to pay the price of her worldliness, her neglect 
 of true religion, and her desertion of the church of God. 
 
70 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 I wish to ask what the ne xt gen eration willj)e ? The old- 
 fashioned church, with all of its short-comings and 
 faults, did produce a stable, sweet, and wholesome home 
 and community life; and the time is at hand when New 
 York will have to decide whether the moral ideals of the 
 people are to be molded and shaped by the church of 
 the living God or by the cheap and degraded theater.. 
 The time is at hand when New York must decide whether 
 she will follow God's teachers and preachers or a group 
 bf foreigners who control the theater business of to-day. 
 
 SHOULD CHRISTIANS ATTEND? 
 
 These considerations now bring us face to face with 
 the practical question, should the Christian attend the 
 modern theater? If we do attend, then beyond any 
 question we help the theater to destroy the sanctity of 
 the Lord's day and thus to undermine the church. 
 Further, if we attend we help to support all of the sordid 
 commercialism and the awful moral iniquity for which 
 the theater stands. We help to support it by the encour- 
 agement of our presence and by the money which we 
 pour into its coffers; and in doing that we cannot avoid 
 the conclusion that we thus help indirectly to cause 
 the fall of other lives. Is it not an awful thing, when 
 iwe stop to think of it seriously, that some Christians 
 will sit in a theater giggling at the display of gaudy- 
 'colored tights upon the stage, when, if they would pause 
 a moment to think, they would realize that the sj>ectacle 
 before them meant the blunting of maidenly modesty 
 and the breaking down of that womanly reserve which, 
 lat last, is the best bulwark of purity? The price of our 
 Imerriment and of our enjoyment in the modem theater 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 71 
 
 is too often the virtue and the very soul of those who 
 there entertain us. Unless the fathers of to-day are 
 willing that their own daughters should display their per- 
 sons, as the women of the stage are expected to do, then 
 they have no right to encourage and support the theater. 
 Why in the name of plea sure will we give countenance 
 to those who fTagraptl y Pi-nc\ persistently violate the high- 
 est and most sacred laws of God a nd ma n, and whose 
 
 narnp<;, were it nnt fof thpif gri-rallpri "art/^ wnnlH K^ 
 
 a Dv- word and a st ^ri^h in thp nnc;tri1c ; of all p ^ood people?^ 
 Why will Christian men pay fancy prices and carry their 
 wives and daughters to applaud those whose lives con- 
 travene the precepts which nurture pure and modest 
 womanhood, and whose example, if followed by all, 
 would plunge society into a moral quagmire within a 
 decade? Era7 <"n 1irpr||in{^c ; thev a re, o ften mothers of 
 illegitimate c hildren and scoffer s at the things that are 
 holy and p ureT^ And yet, for the sake of so-called rec- 
 reation, we help to support such women — women who \/ 
 stand as the very embodiment of the worst destructive 
 tendencies of our civilization. 
 
 REPEAL OF SABBATH LAWS 
 
 Instead of any sort of cooperation. Christian men and 
 women ought to assert themselves most vigorously and 
 earnestly in opposition to this whole institution as it ex- 
 ists to-day, with its silliness and its sordidness, its bed- 
 room plays and its salacious jokes, its sacrifice of female 
 modesty, its worship of money, its deliberate violation 
 of God's holy law, and its grossly immoral atmosphere. 
 There should be at the present time, a united, determined 
 and most aggressive movement on the part of all who 
 
72 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 believe in righteousness, for the repeal of the pagan Sab- 
 bath laws and the closing of the playhouses on the Lord's 
 day. 
 
 No improvement can be made in these things until 
 public opinion crystallizes definitely, and the better ele- 
 ments of the c ommunity assert th emselves in opposition 
 t o these abuses ! So long as we are content to drift along 
 in good-natured indifference or self-complacency, imagin- 
 ing all is right, when in fact all is wrong, our boys and 
 our girls will continue to be poisoned by the filth of the 
 modern playhouse, and our society will continue to de- 
 cline in its ideals and customs. 
 
 There are two principles which should animate the 
 Christian. The first is that of spiritual self -development 
 to the highest possible point. We are to ''grow in grace 
 and in the knowledge of the Lord." The other great 
 principle is service. We are thus to strive for growth 
 and development in Christian character, in order that 
 we may help others to find Christ as Savior, and to lead 
 them into His great Kingdom for growth and service. 
 Paul truly stated the Christian principle when he said, 
 in the words of our text, "Wherefore, if meat maketh 
 my brother to offend, I will eat no meat forever, lest I 
 make my brother to offend." We are in a very true sense 
 our brother's keeper, and the Christian's influence should 
 be consecrated only to good. Now certainly the modem 
 theater does not minister to either of those ends of growth 
 or service. 
 
 Some tell us to-day that we "ought to help elevate the 
 stage by patronizing good plays," but this argument is 
 foolish in the light of present conditions. The whole 
 theater — as an institution — smells to high heaven. Its 
 ownership, control and methods are wrong, and as lonj 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 73 
 
 as it is a commercial pro position, there is not much hope 
 oi real improvement. The few good plays that are put 
 on the boards are often merely blinds and baits, and 
 Christian men and women ought to refuse longer to be 
 a party to the crimes and sins of the modern playhouse. 
 
 Other forms of recreation can be found infinitely more 
 wholesome than these, and instead of being conformed 
 to this worldliness we ought to be transformed by the 
 renewing of our minds that we may prove what is ''that 
 good and acceptable and perfect will of God." As our 
 text enjoins, we ought to come out from among worldly 
 people. 
 
 The command is, "Come out from among them and be 
 ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean 
 thing, and I will receive you." And the further injunc- 
 tion is: ''Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works 
 of darkness, but rather reprove them, for it is a shame 
 even to speak of those things which are done of them 
 in secret." (Eph. 5 :ii-i2.) 
 
 Instead of making alliances with the theater to-day 
 and allowing it to soothe its unregenerate conscience by 
 a fellowship with the church, a concerted, determined, 
 and most aggressive warfare ought to be waged upon 
 this corrupt institution ; and all men and women who love 
 God and respect His holy law, ought to unite for the 
 closing of Sunday theaters of all sorts, and for the re- 
 establishment of the American Sabbath, which has been 
 one of the bulwarks of the republic. The three greatest, / 
 foundation stones of our Ano^lo-Saxon civilization are '*' 
 the strength of the home, the purity of womanhood, andx 
 the sanctity of the Sabbath day, and these are the very 
 three things that the theater most directly and constantly ^ 
 damages. 
 
74 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 In facing these issues we all have a tremendous re- 
 sponsibility to carry, not only as Christians but as patriot- 
 ic Americans. New York more and more sets the pace 
 for all America. Mayor Ole Hanson, of Seattle, in 
 speaking recently here of the anarchists and I. W. W. 
 fanatics that he fought during the Seattle strike, said: 
 
 "As we traced every one of these evil rats back to his 
 hole, we found that he came out of New York." 
 
 To even a greater degree, the same thing can be said 
 of the moral evils that flow from the stage even in the 
 smaller towns and cities. New York is the headquarters 
 of the Theater Trust, and the great center from which 
 the troupes that tour the country go out. I have had 
 pastors from the smaller centers complain to me of the 
 shows that were being given in their communities, like 
 that to which Dr. Wise referred, advertised as coming 
 "from Broadway." 
 
 NEW York's nation-wide influence 
 
 The theater, centering in New York and branching 
 out from here, in my deliberate judgment is doing more 
 to prostitute the youth of our country and to endanger 
 America's future than any other single force. 
 
 Certainly, as Christians, therefore, we need to beware 
 to-day what meat we eat, lest we cause our brother to 
 stumble ! 
 
 The real secret of overcoming power in all of these 
 things is to love Christ so well and to serve Him so 
 actively that these false pleasures will lose their charm. 
 
 One of our young women, who has become very active 
 in church work and soul-saving efforts, said to me re- 
 
CORRUPTION OF MODERN THEATER 75 
 
 cently: "I have always had a conscience on the subject 
 of going to the theater, because every time I attended, 
 the question would come to my mind, 'Could I have 
 invited Jesus here with me? Would I feel entirely com- 
 fortable if He were sitting by my side as my guest?' 
 And sometimes a tingle of shame would come to my 
 cheek because of something I was seeing or hearing on 
 the stage; and the conviction would come to my heart 
 that Jesus would not feel at home and that I would have 
 felt terribly embarrassed if He had been with me as my 
 guest." Then she added, *'So, pastor, I have given it 
 up. I have no time for those things. I have found some- 
 thing better to do." This young woman then expressed 
 to the pastor her willingness to give her life to the service 
 of Christ, as a missionary. 
 
 You have doubtless heard of the island where the 
 sirens sang so sweetly that all who passed in ships were 
 charmed by their music, lost control of themselves and 
 the ship, and the vessels were thus dashed to pieces on 
 the rocks. One vessel came near and the officer put wax 
 in the sailors' ears, then had them bind him to the 
 masts, and although he struggled to be free no one would 
 release him as the sirens sang. That is one way to over- 
 come the fascinations of the so-called popular amuse- 
 ments of the day. Some say, ''Make hard and fast 
 rules, and if the people break them turn them out of the 
 church." But I am sure this is not the best solution for 
 the problem. We can reach the highest possible to our 
 characters only by freely desiring and doing the better 
 things of life. In the story of the sirens, we are told 
 that another vessel came near, and though the sirens sang 
 their sweetest music, the sailors never turned their heads 
 to listen. They really did not know they were near the 
 
76 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 island, and all because they had Orpheus on board and 
 Orpheus sang a sweeter song than the sirens ever knew. 
 .When we take Jesus on board, He will give us overcom- 
 ing power against all worldliness and sin !* 
 
 * Those who are especially interested in the theater question may 
 /get a more extended discussion of the whole matter in Dr. Straton's 
 'little book on ''Church Versus Stage." It contains the above ad- 
 dress, and another address on "Will the Devil Complete the Cap- 
 ture of the Modern Church Through the Theater?" Correspond- 
 ence between Mr. Daniel Frohman and Dr. Straton, editorial com- 
 ments, etc. Price 50 cents. Published by George H. Doran Com- 
 pany. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 DOGS VERSUS BABIES: THE SHADOW OF A 
 
 GREAT SIN 
 
 The birth of a baby is the most important event that 
 happens on this planet. There is in it an element of ex- 
 quisite pathos. It is not only the price which the dear 
 mother pays, but there is the fact that the little stranger, 
 without any will or choice of his own, comes from the 
 mystery of the great unknown to be cast upon these 
 stormy shores of time. 
 
 What occurrence of earth is comparable for a moment 
 with this? It is an event of surpassing interest to the 
 scientific world when a new star sweeps into view. The 
 laying of the first cable across the ocean was acclaimed 
 with joy by the watching continents. The completion 
 of the first railroad marked a gigantic, step forward in 
 material progress. The first steamship to cross the ocean 
 meant an epoch in the history of the race. But the birth 
 even of the humblest baby is a more important event than 
 any of these, because locked up in every child are not 
 only infinite possibilities for human betterment, but also 
 the great issues of eternal destiny. 
 
 Look at any baby lying in his cradle ! What wonder- 
 ful things are possible to him ! He may become a great 
 statesman and mold the destiny of nations; he may be- 
 come a golden-tongued orator, and sway multitudes by 
 the magic of his speech; he may become a scientist and 
 
 77 
 
78 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 open to the world new discoveries of truth; he may be- 
 come a philosopher and explore the highest reaches of 
 human wisdom; he may become a poet and woo the 
 hearts of men by the music of his verse; he may become 
 a seer and unfold heavenly glories to the children of 
 men; while crowning it all, whatever his career upon 
 earth, there is before every human soul the deep perspec- 
 tive of eternity. What a tremendous thought, and what 
 an infinite significance it adds to every little child! 
 
 TEST OF CIVILIZATION 
 
 To rightly estimate the value of the baby is at last the 
 supreme test of civilization. New York needs to take 
 this truth to heart. Many in the so-called ''better classes" 
 of our city seem to think little of babies. Instead of the 
 beautiful picture of babies in their mothers' arms, we are 
 treated to the spectacle, all up and down our streets, of 
 women with puny little dogs at the ends of strings. 
 We love dogs, but as substitutes for babies they are shame- 
 ful. 
 
 A short time ago I enjoyed a bit of humor in connec- 
 tion with a young Sunday school worker who had re- 
 cently come to this city and who did not know conditions 
 here. The young lady was discussing with me the ques- 
 tion of a community canvass to secure children for the 
 Sunday school. She asked : 
 
 'Taking in a distance of a half mile each way from 
 this church, how many small children do you think could 
 be found?" 
 
 The pastor replied: 
 
DOGS VERSUS BABIES 79 
 
 "Well, to be liberal in the estimate, I would say that 
 you might find five children in that territory; but if you 
 were looking for dogs, I would say that you would find 
 5,000! If we should start here a Sunday school for dogs 
 we could undoubtedly pack it to the doors, but babies 
 and little children are woefully scarce in the better-to-do 
 districts of New York." 
 
 And certainly the declining birth rate among the well- 
 to-do classes of America should give us pause. On all 
 our "fashionable'* streets, dogs are takingi the place of 
 babies. Not big, noble dogs — there might be some con- 
 solation in that ! — ^but miserable little scraps of hair and 
 hide, with bleary eyes, wobbly legs, pink ribbons, and, 
 when the weather is chilly, little coats and pants upon 
 them, as they amble along at the end of their strings! 
 
 Would not a visitor from Mars, if he had any sense 
 of humor, laugh himself to death as he saw scores of ^ 
 women, with costly furs and sparkling jewels, serving in ( 
 the morning hours as nurses to contemptible little canines 
 all along our boulevards? 
 
 We could all laugh if these things did not prove the 
 existence of social sin and the avoidance of sacred duty. 
 The natural reaction, therefore, to it all is a feeling of 
 deep distress and even of disgust. One can not walk out 
 without seeing sights that produce that feeling, with 
 women, who ought to have something better to do, hold- 
 ing on to strings, all up and down the streets, and silly 
 little dogs at the other end of the strings in all sorts of 
 postures, — some of them the most ridiculous and at times 
 the most embarrassing to the dear ladies I The condition 
 of our sidewalks by the middle of the forenoon each 
 day shows the dominance of dogs. It behooves the citi- 
 
8o THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 zens of New York to protest against conditions, in the 
 name of sanitation if for no higher reason. 
 
 SIGNS OF SOCIAL SIN 
 
 But there are higher reasons. These things are proof 
 of social degeneration. The dog-versus-baby issue has 
 become acute in our metropolis. Though there are many 
 many liable s in America dying from undernourishment 
 and neglect among the poor, the so-called "better classes" 
 of our society are avoiding the responsibility of having 
 children, and on the other hand are spending annually, 
 we are told, $200,000,000 for dogs! Page after page 
 of advertisements of dogs are to be found in the fashion- 
 able women's magazines. While the babies of the poor 
 starve and their mothers work their hands off and eat 
 their hearts out in the hopeless task of trying to care 
 for them better, there are many servants employed in 
 New York, much of whose time is taken nursing and 
 caring for dogs! Shame upon us that it is so! And is 
 there any wonder that there is restlessness and discon- 
 tent within the ranks of the poor to-day, when they see 
 such things ? There are not only dog nurses to-day, but 
 there are dog doctors and dog hospitals and dog dress- 
 makers and even dog cemeteries — expensive, elaborate 
 ones, with tombstones, caretakers and all such things! 
 
 The substitution of the dog for the baby seems to be 
 just about complete in certain social circles of New York! 
 The pastor sometime since while walking through the 
 park saw a woman clasp to her bosom a bow-legged, pop- 
 eyed pug pup, and exclaim as she kissed him : "Come to 
 its muzzer! Does de 'ittle tootsie-wootsie *ove its muz- 
 
DOGS VERSUS BABIES 8i 
 
 zer !" My God — that we have come to that here in the 
 full light of the twentieth century! 
 
 SHOCKING SILLINESS 
 
 One of the leading doctors of New York told me a per- 
 sonal experience he had. A friend lived just opposite 
 him in the same apartment house. This friend had con- 
 fided to him his great disappointment that there were 
 no children in his home, and he had told the doctor 
 frankly why there were none, and how burdened his 
 heart had been, because of these things. There was a 
 pet dog, however, in the home. The doctor did not see 
 this dog for several days in the hallway of the apartment 
 house as he usually did, and then he noticed that there 
 seemed to be something wrong in his friend's apartment. 
 The man appeared preoccupied and burdened. Finally 
 he knocked on the doctor's door and said, *T wish you 
 would come over into my apartment and see if you can 
 help me. I cannot stand the situation any longer." 
 
 Somewhat mystified, but desiring to help, the doctor 
 went into the apartment and was led, by his friend, back 
 to his wife's bedroom. There he found the wife stretched 
 across the bed ; her hair disheveled, her eyes swollen from 
 weeping, and weak because she had not eaten for several 
 days. The doctor noticed a faint unpleasant odor in the 
 room. Still puzzled by the situation, he turned to his 
 friend and said, "What is the matter here ?" The friend 
 said, "Turn back the bed clothing and you will see !" The 
 doctor turned back the covers and there, lying upon a 
 pillow against which the woman was nestling, lay the 
 dead dog. It had been there for days, and the woman 
 in a spasm of grief had refused to let it be moved, until 
 
82 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 its presence was becoming positively offensive. With a 
 firm hand the doctor took hold of the situation and lifted 
 the carcass of the dog up and carried it out, as the woman 
 screamed ''My baby! My baby!" 
 
 The only consolation is that if that sort are to be 
 mothers, then we are better off with dogs than we would 
 be with babies! But the shame and disgrace of it all! 
 
 TOO MANY BABIES AND TOO FEW 
 
 Go over to the East Side, or anywhere in the poorer 
 sections of the city, and one finds children in such num- 
 bers that one can scarcely get along the streets for them. 
 Children huddled in miserable holes, called ''homes!" 
 Children scantily clad, stunted in body, underfed and 
 poorly attended, because their mothers are too driven by 
 the struggle of life to give them the time they need. But 
 where the "well-to-do" people live, investigation discloses 
 the fact that there are only an average of about five 
 babies to each mile of streets ! The very people who are 
 best equipped for caring for children are guilty of the 
 great sin of avoiding this responsibility. There is no 
 greater sin on earth to-day! There are great factories 
 running on full time in this country to supply the things 
 that make this sin possible. If we do not turn from 
 such iniquity must not the hot wrath of a holy God fall 
 upon us? 
 
 Our whole materialistic modern civilization seems to 
 be conspiring against childhood and a true home life. 
 Here, for example, is a letter to one of our papers from 
 a woman who had dared to have a child in New York. 
 This mother says: 
 
DOGS VERSUS BABIES 83 
 
 "Dr. G. Stanley Hall, the great psychologist and de- 
 fender of the child, says : 'Good parenthood, in all that 
 noble term involves, is the supreme end of man.' Will 
 some of your readers, preferably among landlords and 
 property owners, tell me how this end can be attained to- 
 day ? How can women even dare to have children when, 
 as the parents of the child, they become literally the out- 
 casts among tenants ? I know where applicants for rooms 
 with even a tiny baby have been turned away without 
 even a hearing. My own baby boy was admitted to the 
 house where we are as a great concession. He is per- 
 mitted to play in a tiny penned-off corner of the back 
 yard, in the blaze of the sun, with weeds under foot and 
 surrounded on two sides by brick walls. The rest of the 
 yard is given over to the grass and flowers. No chance 
 for the little human flower ! Our country has lost thou- 
 sands of its young men. Why does not the Government 
 take up this vital problem of making it possible to pro- 
 vide others to take their places ?" 
 
 Landlords will thus penalize one who has discharged 
 the noblest function of womanhood by bringing a new 
 life into the world, but they will fall over themselves to 
 welcome to their hotels and apartment houses fancy 
 dressed and idle women, with their little dogs! What a 
 commentary upon our Mammon-worshiping modern 
 life! 
 
 I well remember the impression that was made upon 
 my own mind and heart by observations in one of the 
 large apartment houses of this city. Every few days in 
 the elevator three people were seen taking a little weak- 
 eyed dog out for an airing. He was one of these little 
 thin-skinned, short-haired mites, but little larger than a 
 good-sized, able-bodied rat. He seemed to be a sufferer 
 from chronic chills. They had him dressed up not only 
 in a little suit of clothes, but also wrapped in a blanket, 
 
84 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and despite this he was shivering and shaking, and his 
 bleary eyes were watery and weak. The three people, a 
 man, a woman and the chauffeur, were there each time 
 dancing around him and petting him and seeking to keep 
 him quiet, as he whined the whole distance down the 
 elevator shaft. The managers of the house never ob- 
 jected to any of this, but there was immediate complaint 
 from the managers if any of the children who lived in 
 the house made the slightest noise! 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE LITTLE CHILD 
 
 The future of the world is in the hands of the little 
 child. How sacred is the charge ! Truly did the Bishop 
 of Ely say to the British people in a recent sermon : 
 
 "It may be that after ages will recognize in the falling 
 birth-rate a more momentous and a more devastating ca- 
 lamity even than the great war; for of what use is it for 
 a nation at infinite cost to vindicate Its liberty if it con- 
 sciously and deliberately condemns itself to be a dwin- 
 dling nation and condones its own crime of national sui- 
 cide? Or again, look out upon the future people in the 
 lurid light of the knowledge which by scientific and exact 
 inquiry we have gained as to the inheritance of disease 
 and misery which through sensual sins is bequeathed by 
 one generation to another. The uncleanness of the par- 
 ents predestines the poor children who shall be bom of 
 them to lives poisoned and vitiated and saddened from 
 the first.'' 
 
 The nation which has plenty of babies is the nation 
 that is safe for the coming time. When childhood fails, 
 a nation will inevitably decline; and America needs to 
 look more to a plentiful supply of the right sort of ba- 
 
DOGS VERSUS BABIES 85 
 
 bies — ^happy, well-fed, truly educated, and nourished in 
 the fear and admonition of God — than she needs to look 
 to armies and navies and financial power. The cradle 
 that held Paul held a new world; the mother who nur- 
 tured Luther directed the forces of a new age; the home 
 that produced Washington underwrote liberty for the 
 human race. 
 
 But the most interesting and important baby ever bom 
 upon this earth was Jesus, the "Babe of Bethlehem.*' No 
 royal palace sheltered the helpless head of the infant 
 Jesus; no silken robes wrapped His tender form, 
 yet locked up in that tiny bit of human flesh, as it lay 
 against the lowly Mother's breast, was the whole destiny 
 of the world. 
 
 "When Mary the Mother kissed the Child 
 And night on the wintry hills grew mild. 
 And the strange star swung from the courts of air 
 To serve at a manger with kings in prayer, 
 Then did the day of the simple kin 
 And the unregarded folk begin. 
 
 When Mary the Mother forgot the pain, 
 In the stable of rock began love's reign. 
 When that new light on their grave eyes broke 
 The oxen were glad and forgot their yoke ; 
 And the huddled sheep in the far hill fold 
 Stirred in their sleep and felt no cold. 
 
 When Mary the Mother gave her breast 
 
 To the poor inn's latest and lowliest guest — 
 
 The God bom out of the woman's side — 
 
 The Babe of Heaven by Earth Denied — 
 
 Then did the hurt ones cease to moan, 
 
 And the long-supplanted came to their own. 
 
86 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 When Mary the Mother felt faint hands 
 Beat at her bosom with life's demands, 
 And naught to her were the kneeling kings, 
 The serving star and the half -seen wings; 
 Then was the little of earth made great, 
 And the man came back to the God's estate." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY: 
 
 WILL AMERICA GO THE WAY OF THE 
 GREAT EMPIRES OF THE PAST? 
 
 All righteous human law is but the reflection of divine 
 law, and righteous law is not arbitrary but is founded 
 in the eternal nature of things. Twice two equals four 
 not because it is written in the arithmetic, but it is written 
 in the arithmetic because it is eternally true. The stars 
 do not move in their orbits because the laws of planetary 
 motion have been formulated by astronomers and written 
 in their books, but the astronomers observed how the 
 planets always acted, and their laws were written only 
 as a human statement of these eternal facts. The Sev- 
 enth Commandment is: ''Thou shalt not commit adul- 
 tery." (Ex. 20:14.) This law against impurity is not 
 binding merely because Moses wrote it among the Ten 
 Commandments, but he wrote it among the Command- 
 ments because it is eternally wrong to commit adultery. 
 
 All human governments that have laid any claim to 
 enlightenment have recognized the righteousness of the 
 prohibition which God has thus laid upon illicit relation- 
 ships between the sexes; and either by specific laws or 
 by established social customs, the transgression of the 
 law of purity has been rigidly prohibited. 
 
 How shall we deal with these evils to-day? Certainly 
 no longer by the "conspiracy of silence" which has been 
 
 87 
 
88 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 such an obstacle toward progress. Parents have been 
 criminally negligent of both their boys and girls at this 
 important point. They have allowed their children to 
 learn the most sacred and vital facts of human life from 
 ignorant and corrupt sources, whereas they should have 
 frankly told them the truths which they needed to know. 
 And the Christian pulpit has been negligent of its duty 
 in not more fully and specifically warning our modem 
 youth against the pitfalls of danger which are spread 
 on every side to-day. The influences of religion ought 
 to operate at this point as well as at the other important 
 points in our human relationships. If some parents could 
 hear the confessions that are poured into a pastor's ear, 
 they would understand better why he so earnestly desires 
 to warn his young people against these evils. Some par- 
 ents complain if a pastor raises a voice against the pop- 
 ular worldly amusements of to-day, and yet those same 
 parents never make a protest against the indecent bill- 
 boards and advertisements in the papers which their 
 children have to see. And those same parents will allow 
 their children to go to moving picture shows, where the 
 vilest suggestions are often given their minds; and the 
 parents themselves will attend the theaters that are sim- 
 ply paralyzing the moral ideals of our youth. Away with 
 such inconsistency! 
 
 THE ENORMITY OF COMMERCIALIZED VICE 
 
 This whole social evil, I well know, is age long. It is 
 part of that heritage of sin which belongs to a fallen 
 race, and it has been destructive and awful in its in- 
 fluences down the ages. But never until our own age 
 have we seen this evil organized and exploited in a 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 89 
 
 large business way. Never before have we seen the 
 passions of men capitalized for gain, and their sacred 
 power of propagation prostituted for profit. The most 
 awful fact of modern vice is this fact — that it is now 
 commercialized; that it is an organized business; a na- 
 tion-wide trust as it were. The significant thing, too, 
 about these modern conditions is that men and not 
 women are the organizers of the business and the final 
 and largest profiters from it. 
 
 And side by side with these infamous truths is the 
 other fact that this commercialized vice is used as a prop 
 for corrupt politics. The powers of political iniquity 
 entrench themselves behind these hideous forces and 
 fatten upon the unspeakable filth of the under-world. 
 The degraded politicians in our cities build up their ma- 
 chines from these ranks of infamy, and they use the 
 blood-money which they extort in the form of graft from 
 this infamous traffic to finance their campaigns and to 
 entrench themselves more deeply in power. 
 
 SEGREGATION A FAILURE 
 
 Of one thing we can now be absolutely sure, and that 
 is that so-called ^'segregation" of this evil is no remedy 
 at all. Among the scientists and sociological specialists 
 who are authorities for the statement that attempted 
 segregation, with medical supervision, etc., tends to in- 
 crease rather than decrease both the vices themselves and 
 the diseases that flow from them, are such men as Neis- 
 ser, Blaschko, Forel, Lesser, Van During, Fouernier, 
 Musterbury and Flexner. 
 
 Rexner, for example, in his book on "Prostitution in 
 Europe," after giving in detail the statistics proving his 
 
90 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 contention, summarized his conclusions upon the evils 
 of segregation by saying: 
 
 "Not only is such concentration or segregation imprac- 
 ticable ; it is highly undesirable. Prostitution, like crime, 
 is most dangerous and most offensive when it collects in 
 nests. The segregation of prostitution, even if feasible, 
 would be objectionable, precisely as the segregation of 
 criminals would be objectionable." 
 
 The Vice Commissions of Chicago, Minneapolis, Balti- 
 more, the western cities and other centers of population, 
 both in the old world and the new, bear out these con- 
 clusions of the scientists, and are a unit in declaring that 
 the segregation idea has absolutely failed. 
 
 THE HORROR OF IT ALL 
 
 We have become increasingly awake to the fact that 
 the most awful destruction possible to humanity flows 
 from the violation of this one of the Ten Command- 
 ments. Surely, as God told the race when He gave the 
 law, the sins of the parents are visited upon their chil- 
 dren "even to the third and fourth generations." 
 
 Think, for one thing, of the physical horrors which 
 flow from the violation of God's righteous laws. I shall 
 not shock you by going into any details about the horrible 
 consequences of the diseases that flow from this sin. I 
 will only give some general facts, taken from scientific 
 and governmental authorities. Apart from the record 
 in insanity, these authorities show that ninety-five per 
 cent, of the blindness of children is traceable to these sck 
 cial diseases, and that a very large p>ercentage of eye, 
 ear, nose and throat diseases are traceable to the same 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 91 
 
 source. Seventy-five per cent, of certain forms of dis- 
 eases of the heart, arteries, etc., and a very large per- 
 centage of tuberculosis is due to these diseases, inherited 
 or acquired, by breaking down the resisting force of the 
 individual and thereby making him more susceptible to 
 these deadly germs. Between sixty and seventy-five per 
 cent, of the cases of diseases peculiar to women, as shown 
 by hospital statistics, are due to these diseases. Eighty 
 per cent, of all women who die from pelvic diseases come 
 to their end through these causes. i\bout sixty per cent. 
 of the surgical operations performed upon women for 
 pelvic disorders are due to social diseases, almost all of 
 them innocently contracted or passed down by heredity. 
 Seventy-five per cent, of childless marriages are due to 
 this cause, contracted usually innocently and unsuspect- 
 ingly. Eighty-five per cent, of all children born from 
 parents tainted with these diseases are either dead at 
 birth or die soon after, or are feeble-minded, blind or 
 crippled for life. 
 
 It is stated by authorities and experts that practically 
 every woman leading this evil life becomes infected soon- 
 er or later. Usually it is very soon, and the deadly 
 danger to a community from these diseases is apparent 
 in the light of this shocking truth. A recent investigation 
 in the city of Baltimore, for example, showed that the 
 number of cases of these loathsome diseases was almost 
 as large as the cases of measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, 
 chicken pox, small pox, tuberculosis, and all other con- 
 tagions diseases combined . 
 
 And the health authorities both of New York City and 
 of the nation have been warning us recently, through 
 the public prints, that sixty per cent, of men are already 
 infected with these awful diseases. In the light of this 
 
92 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 truth, every father of to-day ought to see to it that the 
 man his daughter marries is at least physically clean! 
 
 NOT A ''necessary EVIL'* 
 
 But some say that this is a "necessary evil." Ther e is 
 no such thing as a necessary evil. Go d d id not build 
 tnis world tiiat way. '' Necessary ev il" is a contradiction 
 ^t terms. T he leading scientists of the world have agree d 
 t hat sexual indulg ence is not necess ary to the health or 
 well- being of men T Flexner pointedly says on this ques- 
 tion: 
 
 "Nothing is more readily susceptible of artificial stimu- 
 lation than prostitution and the recourse of men to pros- 
 titutes. For example, men can be led to believe immoral- 
 ity necessary and wholesome. Time was when European 
 medical men favored this view, and practice conformed 
 without opposition to this demoralizing theory. Now, 
 for the most part, they take precisely the opposite view. 
 They regard masculine continence as feasible and whole- 
 some ; sexual irregularity is in consequence less generally 
 condoned and is probably beginning to diminish." 
 
 Three hundred amL Afty-eight leading physicians of 
 the United States have signed a paper certifying that 
 incontinence is not necessary to physical health. 
 
 Again some have said that this is a "necessary evil" 
 'to protect decent women, but investigations by the Dis- 
 trict Attorney's Office of New York disclosed the fact 
 that crimes against women were committed in the vast 
 majority of cases by men who were frequenters of the 
 segregated district and not by those who did not go to 
 such places of vice. 
 
 The church must join hands with the scientists and 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 93 
 
 teachers of today in leading the children of men to see 
 that purity is the natural and normal state, and that im- 
 purity is not only unnecessary, but abnormal, abominable, 
 and unnatural. Why do we use such a term as "fallen 
 woman"? Fallen from what ? Why do we say "fallen"? 
 Is it not, as Mr. Harold Begbie asks, because it is instinc- 
 tive and natural that all women should be upon the 
 high plane of purity and honor? Why is it that even the 
 most compassionate think of a fallen woman with shud- 
 dering and disgust? How is it that men, the most coarse 
 and the most base, speak with scorn of a public woman? 
 Is it not because, consciously or unconsciously, men see 
 in a disreputable and bad woman the contradiction of an 
 original ideal, the disappointment and disillusion of a nat- 
 ural, an inherent, and an essential passion of the soul, — 
 namely, the passion for maternity? 
 
 According to the great authority, Forel, prostitution 
 never became estabhshed among primitive peoples; and 
 savage tribes designated the age at which their young 
 men were permitted to assume paternity. All the higher 
 tribes of monkeys even are strictly monogamous, and 
 many species of birds are faithful to one mate season 
 after season. Indeed, it is an interesting and important 
 truth that among all the lower animals, there is no female 
 ■creature that can he even remotely likeneH to a fallen 
 woman. Not even among the most degraded beasts of 
 the field and forest is there a thing so perverted. You 
 cannot find among any of the animals a search after lust 
 in itself and for itself; and this great biological fact is a 
 fundamental and final proof that purity is natural, while 
 impurity is non-natural. The church must proclaim thisV) 
 great truth, and thus destroy the devil's argument that A 
 the social sin is a "necessary evil." 
 
94 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 DANGERS IN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 
 
 We need also to recognize the fact, in connection with 
 the increase of social sins and the diseases that go with 
 them, that the congested conditions of our modern life 
 increase the dangers of moral laxity; and the nerve-rack- 
 ing strain under which the men and women of to-day 
 are having to work further increases the danger of re- 
 laxing the bonds of moral restraint. Especially is this 
 true of women. The change from individual work, with 
 personally owned tools, to corporation work, and the 
 modern wage system, did two things to woman : First 
 of all, it drove the poorer women out of the home, where 
 they had always labored, and put them into the factory, 
 the store, the office and the shop. Woman could no 
 longer weave her cloth with the hand loom at home, 
 when great mills were turning out the cloth at the rate 
 of thousands of yards a day, and so she had to follow 
 her work, just as man had done, from the home to the 
 marts of business and trade. So it was in every field 
 of Her activity. And the growth of poverty among the 
 masses, added to the increasing cost of living, has made 
 woman's struggle all the more difficult, and consequently 
 she has constantly before her the danger of being tempted 
 by want into unchastity. 
 
 SOLD OUT FOR A PAIR OF SHOES 
 
 Jane Addams tells the touching story of a working 
 girl who first yielded to temptation when she had be- 
 come utterly discouraged because she had striven in vain 
 for seven months to save enough money for a pair of 
 shoes. She habitually spent two dollars a week for her 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 95 
 
 room, three dollars for her board, sixty cents a week for 
 carfare, and she had found the forty cents remaining 
 from her weekly wage of six dollars inadequate to do 
 more than re-sole her old shoes twice. When the shoes 
 became too worn to endure a third soling, and she pos- 
 sessed but ninety cents toward a new pair, she gave up 
 the struggle. To use her own contemptuous phrase, as 
 she told her story to Miss Addams, she ''sold out for a 
 pair of shoes''! 
 
 The folly of organized society in tolerating present 
 conditions, is shown by the comparison between the 
 valuation that modern business puts upon a woman's 
 work and the valuation which the promoters of vice put 
 upon it. After showing that the yearly earnings of the 
 average prostitute are about $2,600 — one-half of which 
 goes to her net, that is, $1,300 per annum, or $25.00 
 per week, the report of the Vice Commission of Chicago 
 says: 
 
 'This is 5 per cent, on $26,000. The average wage 
 paid to girls in a department store is $6.00 per week, or 
 $300 per annum. This is 5 per cent, on $6,000. In other 
 words, a girl represents a capitalization value of $26,000 
 as a professional prostitute, where brains, virtue and all 
 other good things are *nil,' or more than four times as 
 much as she is worth, as a factor in the industrial and 
 social economy, where brains, intelligence, virtue and 
 womanly charm should be worth a premium." (The 
 Report of the Vice Commission of Chicago, p. 104.) 
 
 I can never forget how the force of this economic 
 pressure in human life was brought home to my own 
 heart. During my pastorate in Chicago, there was a 
 widow and her daughter who were members of our 
 church. The daughter was a beautiful girl of eighteen. 
 
96 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 She and her mother both worked. The mother earned 
 $6.00 a week and the girl $5.00, and by combining their 
 salaries they managed to live. But I saw that dear moth- 
 er lie down and die and leave that girl alone to battle 
 with the terrific conditions of modern city life. At that 
 time I had not given much thought to these great ques- 
 tions and therefore was careless of the girl's welfare. 
 The pastor and deacons of our church did not stop to 
 remember that, with the mother's slender wages gone, 
 the girl would not possibly have enough to pay room- 
 rent, clothe and feed herself and care for the other 
 necessary expenses of her life. We were all, therefore, 
 shocked, and greatly distressed to learn a few weeks 
 after the mother's death, that that girl had been swept 
 down into the terrible whirlpool of vice ! 
 
 THE SINS OF *'HIGH SOCIETY" 
 
 But those who fall in the humbler ranks of society are 
 not the only sinners of to-day. A campaign of agitation 
 and publicity ought to be conducted, not only against the 
 crass and vulgar vices of the underworld, but also 
 against the more refined and yet equally ruinous abomi- 
 nations of so-called ''high society." The indulgences of 
 men and women in such society set the pace and give the 
 example for the city all down the line. Let all such be 
 branded before the community for what they are. Let 
 us sweep as a pestilence from the face of the earth the 
 b usiness man whoTives a double life, and is thus a traitor 
 to hi s home , the covetous man who makes abnormal prof- 
 its by renting his property foFuriholy purposes, and the^ 
 gay libertine who parades our streets with a smirk, ruins 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 97 
 
 defenseless ^girls, and th en b oasts of his standing in so- 
 ciety ! 
 
 Justice demands the abolition of the double standard 
 of morals. Justice demands that men be held equally 
 guilty with women, when they transgress God's law of 
 chastity. It is useless for society to ostracise a girl — ■ 
 often a weaker personality — because she has transgressed, 
 when the man who has ruined her is still welcomed into 
 the best homes and is allowed to flourish as a "leader'* 
 of business and of society. 
 
 And surely New York needs the creation of a right 
 conscience upon these tremendously important questions. 
 We have passed laws for the abatement of commercial- 
 ized vice, and have abolished the segregated district, so- 
 called, and yet public opinion in this city has been so 
 lax in connection with the conditions in the theaters, 
 cabarets, and even in high social circles, that the increase 
 in clandestine immorality is simply staggering. We have 
 made some progress upon the surface, but at heart our 
 modern society is rottener than it has ever been. The 
 increasing brazenness of stage vulgarities, the increasing 
 indecencies of women's dress, and the alarming increase 
 of social diseases are all symptoms that prove these sad 
 and tragic truths. It looks as though any man, especially 
 in New York, who has money enough and social posi- 
 tion enough, can do anything that he wishes and get off 
 scot free with it. 
 
 THE SHONTS' CASE 
 
 Without mentioning the less notable cases, of which 1 
 there have been many in recent times, think for a mo- 
 ment of the case of that prominent business man and 
 
98 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 club and social favorite, whose death a short time ago 
 brought publicity concerning his desertion of his home 
 and his wife, and his willing of his fortune to the other 
 woman in the case. He was the president of one of 
 our greatest corporations, a member of the leading clubs, 
 and a member of the church, and yet he brazenly 
 flaunted his vices before the city's eyes, going to hotels 
 with the other woman, driving with her through our 
 streets, maintaining a second home where she reigned, 
 and then, when death claimed him, he left his money 
 to her before the world! 
 
 All of these facts about him and his life were of 
 necessity known in the high social and business circles 
 of this city, and yet nothing was done about it. No 
 cluB expelled him, no church took any notice of these 
 notorious wrongs, and even in connection with the 
 funeral no moral lesson was drawn by preacher or press, 
 but a eulogy was pronounced because of his large busi- 
 ness services to the community. So far as New York 
 seemed to care, this man could have violated every one 
 of those great principles of purity and righteousness, 
 which are the very foundation stones of all civilization, 
 and yet New Yorkers would have done nothing about 
 it. That case has profoiiiidly injured the moral tone 
 of this community. I have heard of young men who 
 excused their own moral laxity by pointing to this no- 
 torious wrongdoing at the very top of the social and 
 business scale, which has gone unrebuked by press or 
 pulpit. If the wronged wife is finally robbed, and the 
 other woman gets this money, j^ill not the tendency be 
 for every weak girl in the city to aslc herself the ques- 
 tion: **If she did these things, and got away with it, and 
 now flourishes, why may not I?" 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 99 
 
 These, my friends, are tremendous issues. There are 
 none more vital or important. They go to the very 
 foundation of all stable and wholesome social life. 
 
 In the light of God's eternal truth, I wish to raise the 
 question here, whether there are any moral standards 
 at all now left in New York City? I have dared to raise y 
 my voice from time to time against some of the more 
 flagrant indecencies of the city's life. I have done 
 this not only as a minister of religion, but as a father 
 who is trying to rear a family of five children in this 
 city. Many have thought me extreme; many have ridi- 
 culed me; many have laughed at me; many have abused 
 me; many have poured out the vials of their wrath in 
 scurrilous letters and even in the public prints; but once 
 more, despite all this, I lift up my voice in humble pro- 
 test against the conditions that are winked at and accepted 
 in our city. They are ruinous conditions. They are the 
 same conditions that overthrew the beauty of Athens 
 and Rome; that made ancient Nineveh a desert, and 
 that brought down the very fires of God on Sodom and v 
 Gomorrah. 
 
 A BUSINESS man's TESTIMONY 
 
 The only consolation I have is that I see at last some 
 few evidences of the stirring of New York's sluggish 
 conscience over these tremendous evils. I have here 
 before me, for example, a mo st thoughtful article from 
 a keen and well-equipped observ er, printed in one of I 
 gtir nnancial m agazines. This man, note you, as he 
 himself says, is not a preacher nor a moralist, but a 
 business man. The following extracts from his very 
 frank and very truthful article, therefore, are the more 
 striking and weighty. He says : 
 
lOo THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 **Tlie principal topics of conversation seem to be sex 
 j and sexuality. The jazz craze shows this excess of sexu- 
 al i ndividua lism in a rnost""virulent f offfT I visited one 
 of the most famous midnight show^s on Broadway the 
 other evening. The place simply reeked with the com- 
 mingled odors of cheap perfume and expensive food. One 
 suggestive song followed another. The dances of the 
 performers were exactly the same as those performed for 
 men only in 'resorts' in former years. Not content with 
 singing these songs on the platform, the singers formed 
 in line, the girls sandwiched between the men, and 
 marched around between the tables, swaying in the most 
 suggestive manner possible. Not a single person sitting 
 at the tables protested. In fact they all smiled their ap- 
 / proval. And as for the ^shimmy' craze, it is worse than 
 the jazz craze. I have seen dancing in many parts of the 
 world. I have watched the natives dance in Algiers. I 
 have witnessed similar performances in Constantinople, 
 and I have been familiar with many dances in Paris, but 
 I have never seen any dancing more lascivious than the 
 present day 'shimmy.' Yet it is publicly danced by our 
 so-called 'best people.* Every first-class restaurant has a 
 space reserved for it. Ten years ago such dancing was 
 only tolerated in places of evil repute. To-day it is ac- 
 cepted as part of our life, without a blush. The shimmy 
 has spread from the 'dive' to the restaurant, from the 
 restaurant even to the home. Now I am not a moralist. 
 I am not a preacher. I am not a custodian of the public's 
 I morals. Nor have I any authority or power to change 
 / existing conditions. I am merely an onlooker. I do not 
 / visit cabarets, for I prefer to dine where I can hear my 
 ' companion talk. Nor do I indulge in jazz dancing. I 
 avoid crowds whenever it is possible. But I take notes 
 on conditions from time to time. The more nearly the 
 New York woman of fashion can dress like the demi- 
 monde, the more pleased she seems to he. The women 
 members of our best families dress as only the most 
 brazen women of the underworld abroad would think of 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY loi 
 
 dressing. They leave nothing to the imagination. Then, 
 too, our magazines and books reflect the general trend of i 
 mind. The most successful magazines are those filledj 
 with stories of sex. Every book on sex and sexuality ij 
 in demand. The effect of all this sex literature cannot 
 be otherwise than bad." 
 
 THE MORAL EVILS IN THE HOTELS 
 
 This same writer then frankly and fearlessly states 
 the fact, that all who are familiar with conditions know, 
 namely, th ^ many hotels _a nd prominent apartment 
 houses of this city a re filled with women , su^goJlSd-bjL 
 wealtny men from the outside. He says of these women : 
 
 'They dine nightly in the hotels and restaurants. Time 
 hangs heavy on their hands. They fill the theaters, and 
 after the performance, the cabaret is their dumping 
 ground. The number of these women is appalling. One 
 of the most fashionable hotels in New York, which shel- 
 ters many notable New Yorkers, including a friend of 
 mine, also shelters no less than forty-four of these wom- 
 en. I had a detective ma^e all iiivesttgatiajl-Oft m3rbwn 
 account, to ascertain these facts. 
 
 "In foreign cities certain places of amusement, for 
 instance, are restricted to the demi-monde. Here in New 
 York the respectable young matron and the demi-monde 
 dine in the same restaurants and dance on the same floor. 
 The very music they dance to has become corrupted. 
 Ja.zz has a sensuous rhythm which is demoralizing.'' 
 
 This well-informed business man and thoughtful ob- 
 server then gives us what, in his judgment, are the 
 causes of this excess of sexual individualism. He says 
 that New York is suffering from these evils because: 
 
 "All existing social barriers have been broken down.! ' 
 New Yorkers have no restraint of any kind. There is '^ 
 
102 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 no restraint of tradition, because we have no tradition. 
 There is no restraint of reHgion, because we are not re- 
 ligious. There is no restraint of custom, of nationahty, 
 of anything. The individual is placed above everything 
 else." 
 
 In other words, according to this well-known business 
 man, writing in a financial magazine connected with one 
 of our strong business firms. New York is already just 
 about completely paganized! Coming from such a 
 source, this is indeed a terrific indictment. No individual, 
 no race, no city can disregard elemental decency and 
 violate God's righteous law without finally paying the 
 full penalty for it. Every great civilization of the past 
 has decayed precisely at this point. Juvenal had to de- 
 scribe the Roman woman as : 
 
 "Lewd, petulent, and reeling ripe with wine." 
 
 When Rome's women reached that stage, the last hope 
 for their civilization was gone ; and unless we of to-day, 
 even with all of our enlightenment, our scientific achieve- 
 ments and our vast wealth, come back to the paths of 
 purity and obedience to God, the fires of judgment will 
 bum out the very heart of our society, and all our boasted 
 greatness will be of no avail. 
 
 "protective association" for wives 
 
 The unholy triangle of husband, wife and lover is one 
 of the most menacing facts of modern society. This is 
 the well-nigh universal theme in the modern novel, maga- 
 zine, and theater, and conditions have become so alarm- 
 ing that the women are beginning to organize in self- 
 defense. The news dispatches of yesterday brought the 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 103 
 
 account of such an organization in one of the smaller Penn- 
 gylvanian cities. A group of sixty-six of the leading 
 women of that community have organized for the purpose 
 of getting the moral pedigrees of their husbands. These 
 women propose to establish a sort of moral credit bureau, 
 for the purpose of gathering all the requisite facts re- 
 garding each husband's conduct, keeping these facts on 
 file at headquarters, to be submitted in a confidential 
 manner to any woman who suspects her husband and 
 asks his rating. 
 
 If this reported organization is bona fide, it certainly 
 is a terrible commentary on moral conditions. It seems 
 from one viewpoint an absurd thing, and yet there is so 
 much of double living on the part of men to-day that 
 unless the forces of Christianity are looked to, to re- 
 establish a right home life, and unless the seventh com- 
 mandment of God's law is obeyed, it will not be long be- 
 fore such steps will be taken by women everywhere. 
 
 God knows modern womanhood is guilty of much 
 folly in the matter of indecent dressing, dancing, etc., 
 and all of these things have tended to lower the moral 
 standards and to destroy men's reverence and respect 
 for womanhood, but the men of to-day deserve the con- 
 demnation which such an organization as this in Penn- 
 sylvania has passed upon them. Too long has it been 
 the case that many men have regarded women as their 
 legitimate prey. 
 
 And apart from this reported organization of wives, 
 certainly the decent fathers and mothers of to-day ought 
 to maintain a closer watch-care over their daughters, and 
 it is a solemn duty that a father owes to his daughter 
 to know that the man whom she is marrying is at least 
 physically clean. 
 
104 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 But all of our laws of eugenics, and all of our organ- 
 ization of wives will not solve this problem. The hu- 
 man heart must be changed so that it will love the things 
 that are holy and true and will gladly obey God's 
 righteous law. Once more at this point the disregard of 
 religion and the decay of the churches has resulted in 
 these colossal sins, which are endangering the very foun- 
 dations of human society. 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION BOTH AT STAKE 
 
 The pulpit, the press, the parents of our city, and 
 every man and woman within our borders who stands 
 for decency and who loves righteousness, ought now to 
 bestir themselves for the tearing down of the strong- 
 holds of Satan, the reestablishments of faith in Al- 
 mighty God, and of obedience to His righteous laws. 
 We need once more to hear the thunders of Sinai say- 
 ing, *'Thou shalt not commit adultery." And that ap- 
 plies as much to the millionaire as to the hobo! The 
 mere gilding of vice does not change its pernicious char- 
 acter. Vice is vic e, 'rerlj.ftl^fr dr^.^xpd i.i^ rqrf^ and pfgf- 
 
 tised in a hovel , or dressed in purple and practised in a 
 \_palg££^ 
 
 We need to hear not only the thunders of Sinai, but 
 we need to also hear the voice of Jesus Christ proclaim- 
 ing to us His yet higher standard of ethics, when He said 
 that even one who looked upon a woman to lust after 
 her committed sin in his heart. We need to hold up to 
 wrath and scorn not only those who transgress the laws 
 of righteousness, but also those who allow purity and 
 dignity to be soiled by loose talk and loose company : the 
 reader and the writer of filthy books ; the publishers of 
 
SCARLET STAIN OF SEXUAL IMPURITY 105 
 
 obscene pictures in our newspapers; the caterers to lust 
 in our theaters ; and even those high in social and busi- 
 ness position who disregard the sanctity of the marriage 
 bond, which has been the glory of our Anglo-Saxon home 
 life. However much we may excuse or pity those who 
 have gone astray, we need to hold to the stern standards 
 of God's righteousness. No circumstances can justify 
 us in making light of that which, disregarded in one case, 
 becomes a danger to all, which lost in one case means 
 the ruin of all. And let us well know this, that if pres- 
 ent tendencies continue, it means not only the loss of 
 Christianity, but also the loss of civilization, the defeat 
 of liberty, and a relapse into Barbarism. 
 
 What shall it profit us if we gain the whole world, 
 and yet lose our own souls? Our towering office build- 
 ings, our commercial success, our beautiful boulevards 
 and our piled up treasures of money and science and 
 art, are all of no avail, if these noble and austere ideals 
 of righteousness are lost, which gave us in the past a 
 womanhood, graced with the jewel of chastity, a man- 
 hood honorable and true, a home life that was clean and 
 wholesome, and a religion that pointed the children of 
 men up to the shining heights of Heaven! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF A RIGHT HOME 
 
 LIFE, THE MAINSTAY OF THE 
 
 REPUBLIC 
 
 The fundamental need of human society to-day is 
 the reestabHshment of a right home Hfe. Out of the 
 home, at last, flow all of the forces that make our edu- 
 cational system, our religion, and our society what they 
 ought to be. The proper care of childhood and, meet- 
 ing that, the reverence and love of parents by children, 
 is set forth in the fifth commandment, and in the sixth 
 verse of the twenty-second chapter of Proverbs. The 
 commandment reads, "Honor thy father and thy mother, 
 that thy days may- be long in the land that the Lord thy 
 God giveth thee" (Ex. 20:12), and the verse in Proverbs 
 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and 
 when he is old he will not depart from it.** God prom- 
 ises all who heed these precepts, the blessing of long 
 life. This promise applies to the modern man as much 
 as it did to the ancient Jew. We Americans cannot ex- 
 pect to have, as a heritage, the goodly heights of Lebanon 
 and the forests of Gilead, the snow-crowned summit of 
 Mount Hermon, the beauties of the Sea of Galilee, or 
 the picturesque wonders of the Jordan valley; and yet 
 the obligation of parents to rear their children aright, 
 and the obligation of children to hold in tender affection 
 and highest honor the parents who gave them life and 
 
 106 
 
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF HOME LIFE 107 
 
 nurtured their tender ^ears, has not been diminished, but 
 rather has grown with the passing centuries. The love 
 of a son for a good mother, the respect of a child for 
 a true father — these are among the holiest and most 
 beautiful things of earthly life. 
 
 Personally, I can never get away from the debt which 
 I owe to my own parents. My memories of my home life 
 are altogether lovely. To me, childhood was a paradise, 
 and the joys of youth were mixed with but little of 
 shadow, because of a godly father and a tender and lov- 
 ing mother. And these home memories and influences 
 have been the strength and inspiration of my life. 
 
 THE DANGER POINT TO-DAY 
 
 Is it not true that the greatest danger point in cr.r so- 
 ciety to-day is the decay of the home life of the people? 
 We are surrendering more and more to the materialistic 
 conditions of our modern life, and the home circle is 
 being broken up. The family altar has decayed almost 
 universally, and more and more we are going outside 
 of our homes for recreation and pleasure. With multi- 
 tudes of people to-day, it seems that home is the last 
 place they want to be. When everything else has played 
 out, they go home. For any family to really develop 
 along wholesome and normal lines, the members of the 
 family need to be much together. But with the father gone 
 all day in business, and the mother also often gone all 
 day in society and at club and theater, the unity of the 
 home life is sadly broken up. Instead of gathering 
 around the fireside or at the piano, as in the olden days, 
 for loving fellowship and joyful songs, as soon as sup- 
 per is over, the members of the average home to-day 
 
io8 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 scatter, far and near. The young people go to the thea- 
 ter, the movie, or the dance hall, or some worse place of 
 resort, and even the mother and the father are often 
 found leaving their homes seeking their social satis- 
 factions elsewhere. These conditions are fundamentally 
 harmful. 
 
 After many years of observation as a pastor in the 
 homes of the people, I record it here as a profound con- 
 viction of my mind and heart that the modern theater 
 and movie show have done more than any other 
 single force to mar and destroy the holier things of hu- 
 man life. Especially have they harmed the home life 
 and the children of to-day. I rejoice to see that my old 
 friend, Dr. M. P. Boynton, of Chicago, has recently de- 
 nounced these evils in most scathing terms. His denun- 
 ciation, is none too strong. He truly says that the aver- 
 age show, both in theater and movie house, appeals to 
 the grosser lusts of the flesh and strikes at those very 
 ideals which in the past have made the home strong and 
 young people clean and respectful to parents. 
 
 The modern show maker thinks the public wants the 
 wicked side of life exposed, and so he makes assault 
 upon the fundamentals of civilization. The crook is 
 made a joke. Stealing is funny. Swearing is enter- 
 taining. The double meaning is the end of wit. Infi- 
 delity and illicit love are the real spice of life. The silly, 
 smoking, swearing, shocking woman is the regular fel- 
 low. The home is tame. The shop and store 
 are drudgery. Prohibition is a calamity and drunken- 
 ness a lost virtue. The clergyman is a fool and the 
 Church a misty memory of those funny Sunday school 
 days. Even mother is no longer revered and father is 
 
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF HOME LIFE 109 
 
 always a sly old rascal. God is a convenient swear word 
 and Heaven is the biggest joke of all. 
 
 THE PERTNESS OF MODERN CHILDREN 
 
 Do we not see already on every side the evidences of 
 the evil fruitage from this wrong sowing? The pertness 
 of many children to-day, their sophistication, even when 
 they are very young, and their flippant attitude toward 
 their parents and all grown people is often shocking. 
 The use of such expressions in connection with the father 
 as "the Governor," and in connection with mothers as 
 "the old lady'* are distressing symptoms of wrong ten- 
 dencies. Do we not, however, need to face the question 
 whether the parents are not really the ones who should 
 be blamed for such unfortunate conditions wherever they 
 exist? If parents do not bring up their children in the 
 way they should go, need they be surprised if in the 
 after years, those children are lacking in reverence, re- 
 spect, and even love for them? 
 
 When we look thoughtfully at the motherhood of to- 
 day, how much of it can we say is really Christian f Cer- 
 tainly not that part of it in which wives and mothers 
 seem to live for nothing except the vapid vanities of so- 
 cial life, with its selfish ambitions, its feverish haste and 
 its disgusting and vulgar efforts at display, where the 
 hostess tries to outdo all the past performances of her 
 rivals. The type of mother that turns over the care of 
 the children to the tender mercies of hired nurses and 
 spends her time gambling for cut glass punch bowls at 
 bridge whist parties, or attending the theater in a half- 
 dressed condition, can surely not be called, by even any 
 stretch of charity, a Christian mother. Such mothers 
 
no THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 may belong to all the churches and go through all the 
 forms of religion, hut they know nothing of the real 
 Christ, or of the meaning of His great Kingdom. Nor 
 can they expect to command much real respect or rever- 
 ence from their children. 
 
 There is a tremendous over-emphasis to-day on the 
 frivolous side of life. These things do not make for 
 reverence and respect for parents on the part of the chil- 
 dren. 
 
 I heard recently of one home where the spring dress- 
 making campaign was on. The mother and four daugh- 
 ters had been engaged for some months in studying the 
 fashion plates and reading the dress magazines, and now 
 at last the dressmakers were on hand. Day after day 
 the tremendous business of preparing the ''purple and 
 fine linen" for five society-struck women was in full blast. 
 In the midst of it all, when the little daughter of six was 
 saying her prayers one night, at the conclusion of her 
 usual prayer, she exclaimed, "And, O Lord, make us 
 very fashionable!" She had caught the atmosphere 
 around her. That was a "Christian" home; yet Jesus 
 said "take no thought what ye shall put on !" 
 
 THE HIGHER MOTHERHOOD 
 
 And when we turn even to the higher type of mother, 
 can we claim that in all cases they are truly Christian? 
 When we remember what Christianity really is; that 
 it is the revelation of a new life; the impartation of a 
 new hope; the seeking after a new Kingdom higher than 
 the kingdom of earth, must not the conventional type of 
 womanhood, even in its higher reaches, be said to fall 
 below the mark? A woman who devotes herself to her 
 
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF HOME LIFE in 
 
 home life, who is a faithful wife, affectionate parent, 
 who comforts her husband, and looks carefully to the 
 well-being of her children, even before any consideration 
 of her own happiness; who is industrious, loving, hos- 
 pitable, given to good works; when we see such a type 
 of woman to-day, must we not go further and ask in 
 what manner does this woman differ from the good 
 women of other nations and ages who are not and were 
 not Christians? How is such a mother to-day superior 
 to the pagan Roman matron, or better than the Greek 
 mother who worshiped her gods and schooled her chil- 
 dren in virtue? ''Do not even the Publicans the same?" 
 asked Jesus concerning these ordinary duties, and then 
 He adds, *'Be ye therefore," instituting thus once more 
 the sharp comparison between the Publicans or the un- 
 regenerate and those who are Christians — "Be ye there- 
 fore perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is 
 perfect." 
 
 Must not the truly Christian mother then be some- 
 thing higher and greater than the ordinary "good" 
 mother? Harold Begbie says, in this connection: — 
 
 "For, then, instead of considering the worldly futures 
 of their children, and the good repute of the family 
 name, and instead of making religion something laid 
 over the surface of our lives, not something bursting 
 from the inmost depths, these good mothers would have 
 been inspired with enthusiasm for humanity, would have 
 striven to make their children heroes of God. And this 
 is the supreme difference between the good mother and 
 the mother to whom Christ is in very deed the revelation 
 of a new life. Not that her children may succeed in the 
 world, but rather that they may help those who do not 
 succeed; not that her children may be prosperous and 
 renowned, but that the name of humanity may lose its 
 
112 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 reproach ; not that her children should keep the laws and 
 observe the< conventions of the respectable world, but that 
 they should keep only the two great laws of Christ — ^love 
 toward God and love toward men; not that her children 
 should strive, struggle, and wrestle with the world, but 
 that they should stand apart in the simplicities and radiat- 
 ing peace of wills that rest in God, — this is the passion 
 and these are the ideals of the woman whose motherhood 
 is consecrated, beautiful, and rendered divine by the 
 Spirit of Christ." ("The Crisis of Morals," p. 136.) 
 
 / Such a mother as this will dress modestly and live 
 discreetly. She will inculcate true principles of chastity 
 
 y' and virtue, both in her sons and her daughters, and thus 
 remove the immoral stain from the world. Short of 
 that, there is no permanent hope for the future. 
 
 Let us not be afraid, either, to exalt such an ideal of 
 motherhood, for the other type of womanhood and 
 motherhood has failed. It has failed before our very 
 eyes. It is false and pagan and without passion and 
 without beauty. It is vain and selfish and light and frivo- 
 lous. The mothers of the future must be truly Christian 
 mothers, living for the beauty of holiness and the glory 
 of service, rather than for the emptiness of society, the 
 vanities of dress, and the corroding indulgences of self ! 
 
 THE FATHER IN THE HOME OF THE FUTURE 
 
 And with the same frankness let us ask what type of 
 fatherhood does the rising generation need to insure 
 its purity and growth into righteousness? Surely not 
 the type of father who puts money and business success 
 above every other earthly consideration, even to the 
 neglect of his children. 
 
 While I was living in the State of Texas, there oc- 
 
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF HOME LIFE 113 
 
 curred a tragedy that shocked the State. A young man 
 of nineteen belonging to one of the finest famihes of 
 Dallas was shot down during a drunken debauch in a 
 house of ill-repute. His father was one of the best known 
 men of the city and had amassed a large fortune. He 
 stood in the darkened parlor where the body of his boy 
 lay in a coffin. Only his pastor was there with him, as 
 with broken-hearted agony, he stretched up his hands 
 to heaven, and cried, "O God, if you will only give meW 
 back my boy, I will give up all the dirty dollars thatA^ 
 I have piled up while I have been neglecting his young 1/ 
 lifeT^ ^ 
 
 Equal with the responsibility of motherhood is the 
 responsibility of Christian fatherhood in trying to right 
 the wrong conditions of to-day, to rear a God-fearing 
 generation, and to heal the moral sore of our modern so- 
 ciety. The mppant father, the slick, selfish, over-fed, 
 luxury-loving, church-neglecting, ease-seeking biped of 
 to-day, the man who indulges in impure stories, who is 
 inclined to smile at sanctity and wink at evil, and who 
 accepts immorality as a matter of course with a shrug 
 of the shoidders, is no tridy Christian father and he can- 
 not raise a son or a daughter who will truly respect hinu 
 or who will help make this world what it ought to he. 
 
 Sometime ago as I walked toward the church for the 
 night service, in another city, I saw a crowd of young 
 boys gathered under the street light at the corner. Some- 
 what startled by the profanity and lewdness of their 
 conversation, I stopped in the shadows just outside the 
 circle of light and quietly listened. The conversation of 
 those boys and young men was positively nauseating, 
 with its profanity and its immoral filth. And as I listened 
 and watched I saw the older boys take up a collection 
 
i 
 
 i 
 
 114 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and send one of the younger boys into the drug store 
 /across the way to buy cigarettes for the crowd. This 
 /was upon Sunday night, and the buying and the selHng 
 of cigarettes to a minor and on Sunday night was con- 
 trary to the law. But I saw that Httle lad in knee 
 breeches make the purchase and then come out and light 
 his cigarette with the other boys, as they continued their 
 degrading talk. I passed on down the street, heavy at 
 heart, and on my way, in going by the home of the boy 
 who had purchased the cigarettes, I saw the father of the 
 lad in the front room with his feet on a chair and a big 
 cigar in his mouth, as he read the sporting pages of a 
 Sunday newspaper! His little boy was going to hell in 
 the streets of the city, without any proper restraint or 
 direction, and he, the father, though the church bells were 
 ringing, was sogging in laziness and self-indulgence, and 
 almost imbecile ignorance of the harm that was being 
 done his offspring! We cannot raise a pure race, nor 
 
 an we create a righteous society with such fathers as 
 
 hat! 
 
 OUR country's strength 
 
 The time has passed for mincing words about these 
 matters, and in the face of the terrible conditions in the 
 world, we need to face the facts and humbly before God 
 strive for a better ideal of life and for truer and nobler 
 Qiristian living. The home life of the people is at last 
 the hope of the Republic. If that fails, all has failed. 
 Many are deploring to-day the decay of the church and 
 the growth of a wrong spirit of bitterness and strife in 
 the state; but we need to face the fact that all of these 
 unfortunate conditions have a deeper cause, and that is 
 the decay of the home life of the people. Unless we 
 
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF HOME LIFE 115 
 
 strengthen our homes and build them up, and especially 
 unless we reestablish our family altars, and rear our 
 children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, we must 
 suffer the consequences. 
 
 Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman related how, a few years ago, 
 a missionary who had been in China for twenty-five years 
 returned home on his first furlough. He had had such 
 a passion for his work, and such a desire to serve his 
 Master, that he had been unwilling to leave his field of 
 labor even for a needed rest. When he reached the 
 shores of the home land the editor of a great newspaper 
 sent a representative to call upon him, and told him that 
 they wished him to travel up and down the Pacific Coast 
 for thirty days, and then to submit to an interview. He 
 was also told that he would be asked to tell the readers 
 of this newspaper what impressed him most in America 
 after his absence of a quarter of a century. Inasmuch 
 as he was traveling as a guest of the paper, he made very 
 careful note of the conditions with which he was con- 
 fronted, and in the interview he gave most striking an- 
 swers to the general question. The editor of the paper 
 said he imagined this aged man would be impressed with 
 the advance along scientific lines, the almost universal 
 use of the telephone, binding the cities together, or with 
 the fact that in his absence men had discovered the wave 
 currents of the air and were sending their messages with- 
 out the means of cables to London and back in twenty 
 minutes, but these things were not mentioned. The mis- 
 sionary said, however, "When I left America twenty- 
 five years ago the majority of Christian homes had in 
 them family altars, and now that I have returned after 
 so long an absence, I find that it is the rare exception 
 to find a family altar in a so-called Christian home.'* And 
 
ii6 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 then, speaking like a prophet, he said : "When the family 
 altar breaks down the home is in danger, and with the 
 home endangered, there is serious trouble ahead for the 
 country." 
 
 Well did Dr. Chapman say: 
 
 ''The influence of family worship is as lasting as Eter- 
 nity. Many a boy who appears restless at the family 
 altar has the impression made upon him which comes 
 back to him with tremendous force afterwards, when he 
 is out in the world and is battling with sin. Many a girl 
 is kept from doing that which is inconsistent because of 
 her recollection of the trembling tones used in her father's 
 prayer, and the sound of her mother's voice in song. iSo 
 many times we find ourselves drifting, and suddenly we 
 stop as if a hand had reached out to lay hold upon us. It 
 was impossible to drift further, and all because the hand 
 was a memory, and the memory brought before us the 
 time of family worship when our fathers were praying, 
 and the very atmosphere of Heaven was round about us." 
 
 I can never forget the impression made upon me when 
 I first visited the National Capital. My heart thrilled 
 as I stood in the presence of the majestic Capitol Build- 
 ing, and saw the golden dome of the Congressional Li- 
 brary. As I went along the exquisite boulevards and 
 looked upon the Treasury, the dignified and beautiful 
 White House, the home of the President, and the other 
 buildings of state, I thought of the greatness of our coun- 
 try. I thought of the Congress, the Senate and the Su- 
 preme Court, and of the mighty Army and Navy behind 
 it all; and I said, ''Here is the strength and power of our 
 great Republic." 
 
 But a few days later I went down into old Virginia 
 and visited a country home. I saw there, a self-reliant 
 
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF HOME LIFE 117 
 
 and successful farmer — independent, sturdy and true. 
 I saw him going with joy and skill about the duties of 
 his daily task. I saw his noble wife, busy with her house- 
 hold work, singing through the long day, and brooding 
 over her children with a true mother's love. I saw the 
 shadows of night gather around that home, and darkness 
 fall with its holy peace. I saw that mother and father 
 gather the children about the open fireplace, and then I 
 saw the father — the high priest in the home ! — take down 
 the old family Bible, reverently read from the Word 
 of God, and lift up his voice in prayer for the Divine 
 blessing upon them all. And as I looked upon that scene 
 of parental responsibility and domestic strength, I said, 
 "No, I was mistaken on my visit to Washington !" For- 
 gotten was the vision of the marble Capitol and the 
 greatness of the Army and Navy; and I said, ''Here, here 
 in the homes of the people are the hope and strength of 
 the Republic!" 
 
 And even here in New York, while we cannot have 
 such conditions as those that surround country homes, 
 we can, nevertheless, have true homes with family al- 
 tars . . . where love reigns, and respect and reverence 
 for parents bring down the blessings of God. A house 
 is not a home. Home is a spiritual fact ; home is an at- 
 mosphere. One poor room — the humblest tenement in 
 this city — may be a true home if only the right spirit is 
 there. And any man and woman who builds such a 
 home will not only receive the blessings of Almighty 
 God, but they will have the consolation also of knowing 
 that they are serving their country in higH and holy ways 
 and doing the noblest work this world will know until it 
 is transformed into the Paradise of God I 
 
ii8 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 "Nor need we power or splendor, 
 Wide hall or lordly dome; 
 The good, the true, the tender, 
 These form the wealth of home." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE GREAT AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 
 
 Gambling is one of the oldest vices of the human 
 race. In the pictures of dice-throwing among the an- 
 cient Egyptians and the records of casting lots among 
 the early Chaldeans we find the evidences of this sin 
 there at the very dawn of history. Tacitus tells us that 
 not only among the early Romans, but among the primi- 
 tive peoples whom they conquered, this vice flourished, 
 and human sin is seen at its blackest when we behold 
 men gambling for the garments of the Son of God, even 
 at the foot of the Cross. 
 
 The story of Samson is a pathetic and striking illus- 
 tration of a strong and noble man who came to his fall 
 through gambling. His wager over his riddle of the 
 honey in the carcass of the lion he had killed, his dis- 
 honesty in robbing others to get means for paying his 
 gambling debts, the infamy of his own life in betraying 
 him in connection with his bet, are all characteristic of 
 gambling and gamblers in every age. 
 
 THE EVILS OF GAMBLING 
 
 Gambling is a practice evil in itself, because it is bom 
 of avarice — the desire to get something for nothing, and 
 that, too, at another's expense. It is the staking or 
 winning of property upon mere hazard, and it is the vice 
 
 119 
 
120 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 detestable, because selfishness is its sire, and avarice its 
 dam. It has not one single redeeming trait in it; it has 
 not one generous impulse behind it, not one beneficent 
 result from it. It honeycombs the soul with the basest 
 of passions. It is a vice whose root is greed, whose trunk 
 is cruelty, and whose fruit is ruin to mind and soul. 
 
 Gambling is an evil because it undermines self-reliance 
 by leading its devotees to depend for success upon luck 
 and fortune instead of upon courage and self-reliant ef- 
 fort. This means defeat and despair at last, because for- 
 tune is fickle and luck will turn. The wisdom of all ages 
 has so taught. Confucius says: 'The wheel of fortune 
 turns incessantly around; and who can say within him- 
 self, 'I shall to-day be uppermost'?" Seneca declares: 
 ''Whatever fortune has raised to a height she has raised 
 only that it may fall." Horace says : 
 
 "Curst is the wretch enslaved to such a vice, 
 Who ventures life and soul upon the dice." 
 
 Pope phrases it: 
 
 "Who thinks that fortune cannot change her mind, 
 Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind." 
 
 When luck has thus turned on one who gambles, it 
 leaves him utterly without resource, for, having habitu- 
 ated himself to depending upon luck and chance, when 
 that fails him he has not the strength of character t6 
 win out success by his own efforts, and so goes down 
 to failure and despair. An editorial in "The Saturday 
 Evening Post" sometime ago said : 
 
 "To have his swing in Wall Street is the consuming 
 desire of every man with the money craze in his blood 
 
AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 121 
 
 and brain, yet most of the 'ex-kings of Wall Street' died 
 poor unless they had other sources of income; their liv- 
 ing successors dare not try to retire by converting their 
 holdings into cash. Outside of Wall Street the final ex- 
 periences of thousands of envied men have been similarly 
 bad. An ex-millionaire, once supposed to be the shrewd- 
 est of the shrewd, is keeping a cheap restaurant in Bos- 
 ton; another is an object of charity in Chicago, and many 
 monetary meteors, to whose names 'Lucky' was prefixed 
 a few years ago, would exchange all their luck that re- 
 mains for a permanent assurance against the wolf at the 
 door." 
 
 John E. Madden, who has made a million dollars out 
 of horseracing, says that defeat and nothing but defeat 
 awaits the bettor on cards or horses ; and of all the fools, 
 he says, the biggest is the man who bets on "a sure 
 thing." Madden has followed the business for a quarter 
 of a century, and says : '*! quit betting years ago, and if 
 I ever bet again, it will be because the disease has gotten 
 the better of my business judgment." 
 
 Gambling is an evil because it leads to many other 
 forms of vice. Its feverish excitement diseases the mind, 
 corrupts the imagination, weakens the will, prostitutes 
 the affections, and thus utterly unfits one for the serious 
 and noble duties of life. It breaks up the home-life by 
 undermining habits of domestic constancy and affection. 
 Its excitement of the senses develops the desire for in- 
 toxicating liquors, because when the super-excitements 
 at intervals subside their victim cannot bear the gloom 
 of the reaction, and by drugs or liquor winds up his 
 system to the glowing point again. When the double 
 fires of dice and brandy blaze beneath a man he will 
 soon be consumed. If gamblers are found who do not 
 drink they are more noticeable because exceptions. It is 
 
122 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 for these reasons that the gambling den, the brothel 
 and the saloon are always connected. 
 
 That these unfortunate tendencies actually fructify in 
 evil deeds is amply proved by facts. The shocking dis- 
 closures here in New York, in connection with the 
 Becker murder case, prove them all. The late Anthony 
 Comstock, when he was president of the Society for the 
 Suppression of Vice in New York, made this statement : 
 
 "In one year we kept in the office of the society a 
 scrapbook, into which we entered the names of those who 
 had become either thieves, defaulters, embezzlers, forgers 
 or suicides. It shows that 128 persons were either shot 
 or stabbed over gaming tables; six attempted suicide; 
 twenty-four committed suicide; sixty persons were mur- 
 dered in cold blood, while two were driven insane. Ninety- 
 eight youths were ruined by gambling and betting upon 
 horseracing. Among the crimes committed to get money 
 to deposit in these plague sports were two burglaries, 
 eighteen forgeries, eighty-five embezzlements, while 
 thirty-two persons, holding positions of trust in banks 
 and other places of mercantile life, absconded. These 
 embezzlements, defalcations and robberies amounted to 
 nearly three million dollars. This is the record of gam- 
 bling for one year." 
 
 SOCIETY GAMBLING 
 
 When we speak of gambling to-day, we do not mean 
 merely the professional gamester, who makes his living 
 by fastening himself like a parasite on the body of so- 
 ciety. Some of the worst gambling in our country to- 
 day is done in the drawing-rooms of elegant homes. The 
 creation of a strong public sentiment is urgently needed 
 at this point, for the mere gilding of such a vice does 
 not change its pernicious nature. The society woman 
 
AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 123 
 
 who plays the game of chance for a cut-glass punch 
 bowl is just as much and as truly a gambler as is the 
 negro who shoots his craps in the back alley, because the 
 motive inspiring each of them is identical — the desire to 
 get something for nothing in a game of chance. 
 
 A woman came home and showed her husb'and a beau- 
 tiful vase. '*Just look what I won at the, card party! 
 Isn't it lovely?" she exclaimed. Whereupon the husband 
 with a grin took a large roll of bills from his pocket and 
 said: ''J^st look what I won on the races!" The wife 
 staggered against a chair to support herself as she ex- 
 claimed : "Oh! husband, do you gamble?" 
 
 Rev. Dr. Wm. R. Huntington, of Grace Church, New 
 York, when preaching the annual sermon to the New 
 England Society some years ago, discussed the obliga- 
 tions which the early Puritans had left to their descend- 
 ants. The speaker touched especially upon the question 
 of games of chance, saying: 
 
 "Is it possible that leaders of society lend themselves 
 to the encouraging of amusements forbidden by the very 
 law of the land? Is it true, that hostesses of our higher 
 circles let youths depart in poverty from drawing-rooms 
 to which the hostesses themselves have invited them? Is 
 it true that young women exhibit with pride jewels 
 bought out of the profits of the gaming table? What 
 use is the raiding of poolrooms and the like, if such things 
 as these go on behind closed doors which detectives dare 
 not enter? I have drawn illustrations from the lives of 
 women. Why? Because men are largely what women 
 make them." 
 
 Playing among women has gone on and on from the 
 putting up of simple "prizes" a few years ago in "card 
 
124 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 parties," to out and out gambling for money, as every 
 one conversant with our modern life well knows. 
 
 STOCK MARKET GAMBLING 
 
 Again, there are numbers of men in our modern busi- 
 ness life who would resent it if they were called gamblers, 
 yet they are responsible also, in part, for the prevalence 
 of this vice to-day. Plain statements are needed about 
 these things, for multitudes of young men are rushing on 
 to their ruin and encouraged by the example of those 
 sometimes high in the business circles around them. The 
 man who thus plays the stock market or who puts up 
 money on the contingency of the rise or fall of the prices 
 of commodities, like cotton, wheat, etc., is a gambler, 
 even more destructive in influence than the blackleg who 
 bets upon the horses or who plays in a professional poker 
 game. These higher types of the vice are even more 
 destructive than the grosser types, because they robe the 
 hideous form of chance in the garment of respectability 
 and by their example and influence breed a contagion for 
 gambling on the smaller scale. 
 
 Because of these things, we have seen gambling in- 
 crease in our country in recent years until there is at the 
 present time a perfect epidemic of the vice. It extends 
 all the way from the small boy flipping his pennies for 
 "keeps," up through the playing of the races, and the 
 society gambling, already discussed, to the gigantic opera- 
 tions in the field of ''high finance," where the stock 
 market is exploited for unearned gain, and great railway 
 systems are looted by millionaire adventurers. 
 
 It was highly significant that when the policemen went 
 on strike in Boston and the bonds of restraint were thus 
 
AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 125 
 
 loosened, immediately the streets were filled with men 
 gambling. William T. Jerome, when District Attorney 
 of New York County, made a vigorous arraignment of 
 these evils, in which he said : 
 
 "When I went into the gambling houses in this city 
 and found there a principal of a great pubhc school play- 
 ing faro; when I found the I.O.U.'s of officers of the 
 United States army for sums they could not afford to 
 lose and support their f amihes ; when it came to my ears 
 that embezzlements and crimes of the character of lar- 
 ceny were committed as a result of losses in gambling, I 
 became convinced that the gambling house, or open gam- 
 bHng, was a very serious evil." 
 
 Of all the forms which the vice of gambling takes, 
 perhaps that at the race course is the most vicious and 
 disreputable. It gathers everywhere a class of men and 
 women more degraded, if possible, and more dangerous 
 to the entire community even than those who assemble 
 before the prize ring. It is defended by some, on the 
 ground that it encourages the development of good 
 horses, but for every horse which the race track develops 
 it destroys the moral characters of a thousand men and 
 women. 
 
 WAR STAMP GAMBLING 
 
 One of the most insidious and dangerous forms which 
 this gambling craze in our country has ever taken is the 
 prostitution of patriotism before the altars of chance in 
 connection with war charities and the marketing of war 
 savings stamps. 
 
 The "block parties'* which were held not only in New 
 York but throughout the country, to raise funds for war 
 charities, frequently featured lottery schemes that were 
 
126 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 nothing else than camouflaged gambling devices, and the 
 fact that children participated largely in these events 
 made them all the more dangerous. 
 
 And what shall we say about the War Savings Stamp 
 gambling? It is a thing almost incredible, yet it is true, 
 that on City Hall Square, in front of the Public Library 
 on Fifth Avenue, and at other points in our city, regular 
 roulette wheels were set up in New York City during 
 the War Savings Stamp drive, and those who had them 
 in charge openly and brazenly violated the laws of the 
 State and Nation by selling lottery tickets in connection 
 with the war stamps, so that the one who held the lucky 
 number, when the wheel was turned, would receive sums 
 many times larger than the stake of twenty-five cents, 
 fifty cents or one dollar put up for the tickets. 
 
 I have a picture, taken from one of our newspapers, of 
 the wheel which was erected at Forty-second Street and 
 Fifth Avenue. It shows a large wheel with a young man 
 standing beside it, exhorting the crowd to take chances, 
 and another young man with him to assist in the opera- 
 tion. 
 
 It was announced that "For fifty cents a chance a 
 player can win $30 in war stamps if he holds the lucky 
 number." The game attracted great crowds, and stamp 
 salesmen, serving as volunteer "barkers," kept the crowd 
 in good humor and appealed for players. People of all 
 ages and both sexes were swept away by this gambling 
 craze, and the harm done, particularly to boys and girls, 
 can never be estimated, for when once the gambling fever 
 gets into the blood it is hard ever to get it out again. 
 
 Not only in New York, but in many other cities and 
 towns of our State, and in other States, these nefarious 
 practices have been resorted to. In some cities, in ad- 
 
AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 127 
 
 dition to the regular prize, special prizes were offered by 
 outsiders to the holders of the lucky number. In one 
 city there was one of these special prizes of $1,000 of- 
 fered, and the result was that the whole community went 
 wild on the gambling craze. While the tickets were be- 
 ing sold, we are told that girls and boys went up and 
 down the streets with the tickets exclaiming, ''Take a 
 chance! take a chance!" Not *'Buy a stamp" but "Take 
 a chance." It was an out and out appeal to the gambling 
 spirit instead of the patriotic spirit. These things are 
 an outrage upon public decency and American patriotism. 
 I cite these instances as illustrations of the extremes to 
 which these modern tendencies are often allowed to go. 
 The righteous elements of every community ought to be 
 on their guard against such things. 
 
 The laws of both our State and Nation are explicit 
 and strong in prohibiting all lotteries and all gambling 
 schemes. Every State in the Union prohibits gambling 
 and lotteries. Sections 1370, 1371, and 1373 of our 
 own State Penal Law defines and condemns lotteries 
 thus : 
 
 "A 'lottery' is a scheme for the distribution of prop- 
 erty by chance, among persons who have paid or agreed 
 to pay a valuable consideration for the chance, whether 
 called a lottery, raffle, or gift enterprise or by some other 
 name. A lottery is unlawful and a public nuisance. 
 
 "A person who sells, gives, or in any way whatever 
 furnishes or transfers, to or for another, a ticket, chance, 
 share, or interest, in or dependent upon the event of a 
 lottery, to be drawn within or without the State, is guilty 
 of a misdemeanor." 
 
 Section 1372 of our State Penal Law makes it a 
 felony to get up or assist in a lottery. 
 
128 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 "A person who contrives, purposes or draws a lottery, 
 or assists in contriving, purposing, or drawing the same, 
 is punishable by imprisonment for not more than two 
 years, or by fine of not more than one thousand dollars, 
 or both." 
 
 These sections of our Penal Law show that every per- 
 son who thus sold or offered for sale a dollar's worth of 
 Thrift Stamps, with prizes attached for those drawing 
 lucky numbers, and every person who bought the stamps 
 with the intention of taking a chance to win a prize, have 
 made themselves guilty of engaging in a lottery and are 
 guilt}^ of a misdemeanor and can be punished by a 
 maximum penalty of $500 fine or six months in jail or 
 both. Moreover, the persons who offer these prizes, or 
 draw or assist in the drawing of these prizes, are guilty 
 of a felony, which' is a State's prison offense. 
 
 GAMBLING BY CHURCH PEOPLE 
 
 It does not legalize a lottery, therefore, to have it 
 conducted by a church to raise money for religious pur- 
 poses. It only shows the church to be without spiritual 
 vision, disloyal and criminal. 
 
 I take the liberty of quoting the following passage 
 from a letter written me by a brother pastor of another 
 denomination. He says : 
 
 **It is a shame that people who are engaged in good 
 works should resort to illegal means. Local chapters 
 and auxiliaries of the Red Cross frequently offend in this 
 respect. The local auxiliary here recently advertised a 
 card party with prizes to raise money. As such a thing 
 is against the law of the state of New York, and as 1 
 have taught my church people that such things are wrong, 
 and as some of my people were officers in the auxiliary 
 
AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 129 
 
 and were taking part, I thought it would be well to have 
 some one else besides myself inform them of the illegality 
 of their proposed card party, inasmuch as they paid no 
 attention to what I had told them. 1 wrote and asked the 
 New York Civic League if the proposed card party was 
 against the law, and the League informed the Red Cross 
 officers that it was. Unfortunately, the letter from the 
 Civic League w^as not received by the ladies in charge 
 of the affair until the very day of the party. After the 
 players had arrived, they were informed that the prizes 
 could not be given, and they were auctioned off. There 
 was great indignation, and when it became known that 
 I was the one who had written to the Civic League, a 
 number, even of my own people, turned against me, and 
 a decidedly unpleasant situation was created. The Red 
 Cross here still holds card parties to raise funds, and has 
 a Thrift Stamp on each table as a souvenir for the win- 
 ner at that table. It seems to me that this practice is 
 just as objectionable as the other. The element of gam- 
 bling is still there." 
 
 How shocking all of this is, when we remember that 
 these were all church people! And what a commentary 
 on the moral and spiritual decline of the churches that 
 these women should feel "indignant" at a pastor because 
 he had done his simple duty, as the spiritual shepherd 
 of a flock! Is the're any way to awaken such church 
 people and to convince them that such practices are not 
 only completely unchristian and a shameful surrender 
 to worldliness, but that they are also plain violations of 
 the fundamental law of the land ? Lotteries and gam- 
 bling are not only prohibited by our State Penal Law, 
 but are also prohibited even by the State Constitution, 
 as Article I, Section 9, says : 
 
 "Nor shall any lottery or the sale of lottery tickets, 
 pool selling, bookmaking, or any other kind of gambling 
 
I30 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 hereafter be authorized or allowed within this State; and 
 the Legislature shall pass appropriate laws to prevent 
 offenses against any of the provisions of this section." 
 
 It is not a question of the motives of those who en- 
 gage in these practices, either of those who sell or those 
 who buy. Some say that the "end justifies the means," 
 but the Bible says the exact opposite. It says, ''Shall we 
 do evil that good may come?" And the laws of our 
 State and Country say that gambling shall not be engaged 
 in under any circumstances whatsoever. 
 
 Germany is the greatest gambler in the world's history. 
 She threw her men by the millions upon the wheel of 
 chance and ground them to death in order that she 
 might win the glittering prize of a selfish and vain world 
 supremacy for her little ring of Junkers, lying diplomats, 
 false prophets, military swellheads, and Krupp profiteers. 
 As our noble boys come marching home with victory 
 perched upon their banners, we want them to come to a 
 Nation worthy of their heroism and their self-reliant 
 manhood, and not to a society debauched by vice and 
 sin. 
 
 The things that will correct the gambling fever, now 
 cursing not only New York but our entire country, are 
 simple at last. First, we need more fear of God, less 
 greed for gain and less love for gold. Secondly, we need 
 the creation of a stronger public sentiment and a faith- 
 ful enforcement of our present laws. Thirdly, we need 
 a revival of home authority in the rearing of youth. 
 Fourthly, we need to honor the steady, self-reliant, 
 plodding worker above the more spectacular type of man 
 who endeavors to reach his goal by the "short-cut" route 
 of questionable methods. 
 
AMERICAN GAMBLING CRAZE 131 
 
 A PARABLE OF SUCCESS 
 
 Several years ago, in visiting Yosemite Valley in 
 California, I undertook to climb the highest mountain 
 point overlooking that marvelously beautiful valley and 
 its surrounding country. On the journey upward, as we 
 zig-zagged painfully and slowly along the face of the 
 precipice, we came to a pile of stone that is called 
 "Agassiz Point," and here we were told by our guide 
 that the summer before a young college man from the 
 University of California had endeavored to take a short 
 cut from that point to the heights above, rather than 
 to follow the long and laborious trail around the 
 precipice. But as he journeyed onward, the friends, who 
 were with him, and who were watching his efforts, were 
 suddenly horrified to see him lose his footing, and to see 
 his body plunge downward 2,000 feet, bounding from 
 rock to rock and from point to point, until it lay a life- 
 less mass of bleeding flesh and broken bones on the rocks 
 below. 
 
 We were touched by the story of the young man's fall, 
 but after we had toiled on laboriously and painfully up- 
 ward to the mountain height, we were rewarded for all 
 the discomforts and sufferings of the way. There be- 
 fore us the magnificent panorama of nature was spread 
 out in well-nigh matchless beauty. The flat floor of the 
 bewitching valley, carpeted with green grasses, dotted 
 with smiling lakes and groups of majestic fir trees, and 
 intersected by the silver ribbon of its swiftly rushing 
 river, delighted the eye. On one side of the valley the 
 Yosemite Falls, leaping down over 2,000 feet, were 
 sparkling in the sunshine. At the head of the valley an- 
 other mighty waterfall plunged over its precipice, and in 
 
132 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 its foamy whiteness looked in the distance like a gigantic 
 inverted ostrich plume waving in the summer air; and 
 above it all towered "El Capitan" and the ''Half Dome" ; 
 and beyond these, standing in glorious majesty against 
 the deep blue of the silent heavens, were the kingly forms 
 of the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas. 
 
 We looked at all that ravishing beauty, and our hearts 
 were satisfied. We felt rewarded for the heat and the 
 toilsome w^eariness of the upward way. It was a parable 
 of the successful life, sweet in the attainment of well- 
 earned victories, and the experience brought home to our 
 hearts, the tragedy of the thoughtless youth who never 
 saw the glories of those silent and inspiring heights, be- 
 cause he tried to take ''the short cut" way ! 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 GOD OR MAMMON? A MESSAGE TO THE MIL- 
 LIONAIRES OF NEW YORK 
 
 We find ourselves witnesses of a very interesting 
 meeting between two striking young men when the Rich 
 Young Ruler came to see Jesus. One was very rich 
 and powerful, for he was a ''ruler" of his people. He 
 was doubtless a popular young fellow — handsome and 
 debonair, as Hoffman in his great picture has painted 
 him. He represented all the wealth, power, aristocracy 
 and pride of the best of the Hebrews; and there was 
 much, as we shall see, about him that was lovable, as 
 well as interesting. 
 
 The other party in this meeting was a young country- 
 man from the hills of Nazareth. He was a carpenter by 
 trade, and His hands were calloused by honest toil. Un- 
 like the other young man, no rich garments were about 
 His shoulders and no royal jewels flashed upon His 
 hands. He came attired in the plain, substantial gar- 
 ment of a working man, with His feet encased in the 
 simple, strong sandals of His people. We know that 
 He was very poor, for He Himself said, "The birds of 
 the air have nests and the foxes of tlie ground have 
 holes, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
 head." He did not have any earthly home that He 
 could call His own, and yet strange to say, that young 
 man was the Creator and Owner of the universe! *Tor 
 
 133 
 
134 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 by Him were all things created that are in the earth." 
 (Cor. I :i6.) 
 
 One of these youths, then, was very rich and yet 
 pathetically poor. The other was pathetically poor and 
 yet immeasurably rich. Let us see them with the eye of 
 imagination, as they stand here face to face and talk 
 heart to heart about some of the great eternal issues of 
 human life. And, particularly, let us study a little closer 
 this first young man. We will notice two things about 
 him. First, his possessions and, secondly, his poverty. 
 This is a paradox in statement, and yet we shall see that 
 it contains the truth. 
 
 GREAT POSSESSIONS 
 
 We are told that this young man had "great posses- 
 sions." What were these possessions? They were not 
 all merely material things. First, I would say that he 
 had youth, and that is indeed a great possession. Youth 
 is a beautiful thing. It is the golden period of man's life, 
 when the possibilities of his future spread out like a 
 lovely land before him ; when his cheeks are ruddy with 
 health, and the rich blood of high ambition and noble 
 purpose leaps along his veins. Yes, youth is indeed a 
 great possession. Oh, that we all might appreciate it 
 and use it aright and not squander its splendid treasures ! 
 
 Then, again, this youth had wealth. The term em- 
 ployed in the Scriptures is "great possessions." He was 
 the owner in his own right of flocks and herds and 
 houses and lands; and doubtless other forms of wealth 
 that had come down to him from a rich and powerful 
 family. So great were his possessions that his fame had 
 gone abroad. Doubtless as he walked along the 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 135 
 
 streets people would stop and look back at him and say, 
 "Yes, that is the rich young Mr. So and So," and per- 
 haps some of the pretty girls in the community were 
 setting their bonnets for him as a good ''catch." 
 
 Again, he had place and power. He was a *'ruler," 
 and his position gave him great prestige and social dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 And this was not all. He had yet another great posses- 
 sion, and that was an earnest desire for eternal Hfe. 
 We are told here that he ''came running" to Jesus and 
 "kneeled to Him" and said, "Good Master, what shall 
 I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Here then is the 
 manifestation of a very beautiful spirit on the part of 
 this interesting youth. He was not a spoiled and super- 
 cilious snob — ruined by the possession of his money. He 
 was a youth who intuitively recognized the nobleness and 
 worth of this rugged prophet of Nazareth, and without 
 either condescension or cant, he kneeled in the very dust 
 and asked instruction of Him. Some to-day are so 
 utterly indifferent to the welfare of their immortal souls, 
 that they not only will not run to inquire concerning 
 these matters, but it requires almost a surgical opera- 
 tion to induce them to condescend even to come to 
 church ! 
 
 Notice, again, that another great possession which this 
 interesting youth had was a pure life. He had that 
 magnificent jewel of true character, masculine purity. 
 When he asked Jesus the question concerning the way 
 of eternal life, the Master quoted to him the moral 
 law, "Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal," 
 etc., etc. ; and the young man answered, "Master, all 
 these have I observed from my youth. From the time 
 when I was a little child about my mother's knee, I have 
 
136 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 followed her wise and loving precepts and kept myself 
 pure and unspotted." We know that this was not a vain 
 or idle boast, because Jesus believed it. He saw honesty 
 and purity in the young man's face and He never denied 
 his claim nor rebuked him for it. When the manhood 
 of to-day becomes pure and the double standard of 
 morals is wiped out, we will have made a vast advance. 
 And this young man of the long ago had this treasure. 
 Notice, finally, another one of his great possessions 
 was that he had the personal love of Jesus Christ. It 
 is stated here that ''Jesus, beholding him, loved him." 
 There are only five people mentioned in the Bible of 
 whom it is recorded that they had the personal love of 
 Jesus. These were Mary, Martha, Lazarus, John, and 
 this Rich Young Ruler. And of all that favored group, 
 this splendid youth was the only one who was lost. Yes, 
 it is a sad thing, a tragic thing to have to say, and yet 
 if we are true to the record, we know that this youth, 
 with all of his beauty and promise and his great posses- 
 sions, was a lost soul. We are taught here that he did 
 not accept the summons of Jesus, but that he "went 
 away grieved (or sorrowful), for he had great posses- 
 
 sions.** 
 
 We do well to inquire, now, why he was lost, and this 
 leads us to an earnest consideration of his poverty. 
 
 THE POVERTY OF RICHES 
 
 Yes, with all his great possessions, this interesting and 
 lovable youth was very poor. There was one great, 
 glaring defect in him, and Jesus discovered that. He 
 said to him, "One thing thou lackest." This young 
 man's case, then, was not a complicated case, although 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 137 
 
 it seems to be, for we ourselves have also grown to love 
 him as we have studied his bright and interesting charac- 
 ter. His was a simple disease, and Jesus Christ, the 
 Master Surgeon, discovered it immediately and put His 
 hand upon it. 
 
 I had a friend who was in ill health and who started 
 on a journey to Old Point Comfort, Va., for rest and 
 recuperation. He was taken so ill, however, that at 
 Charlotteville, Va., he had to be removed from the train 
 and carried to the hospital. A skillful surgeon gave 
 him a hurried examination. He heard his statement 
 about how he suffered, and when he referred to a pain 
 in his side, the doctor laid back the sheet and said, ''May 
 I just press here to locate the place of the pain?" And 
 he laid his hand upon his body with a firm strong pres- 
 sure, then, moving his hand slightly, he pressed again, 
 and my friend exclaimed, "Oh, don't. Doctor!" "Ah," 
 said the doctor, "So it is there, is it?" And they oper- 
 ated upon him immediately for appendicitis, and he is 
 now well and happy. 
 
 Jesus is the greatest moral and spiritual surgeon that 
 this world ever knew, and He found the seat of this 
 young man's trouble without delay. He applied one 
 test to him. In reply to his question as to how he might 
 inherit eternal life, Jesus said, "One thing thou lackest: 
 go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the 
 poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven : and come 
 take up the cross, and follow me." And the young man 
 flinched at the test. We can hear him exclaim, "What, 
 
 Master! you say sell all? But, Master, may I not ?" 
 
 ''Alir "Why, Master, I have not thought of such a 
 thing as that. Whoe\xr heard of such a demand? I 
 
138 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 cannot!" And he turned sorrowfully away, "for he had 
 great possessions." 
 
 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 Now, what was the trouble with this young man? 
 What was the one supreme lack that, despite all his 
 promise and all his possessions, shut him out from 
 eternal life? You have already anticipated the answer 
 to that searching question. He did not really know the 
 true God, and he was not willing to find the way to 
 Him. The trouble with this young man, and the reason 
 why he was a lost soul, was that he trusted money 
 instead of God! 
 
 Notice then, clearly, the teaching that he was not 
 lost simply because he was rich. The disciples made the 
 mistake of thinking that, in the light of Jesus' first re- 
 mark. When the young man went away sorrowfully, 
 we are told here that "Jesus looked round about, and 
 saith unto His disciples, 'How hardly shall they that 
 have riches enter into the kingdom of God !' " And then 
 it is stated that "The disciples were astonished at his 
 words" ; because, you see, they were understanding him 
 to say that no rich man could be saved. But divining 
 that difficulty in their minds, it is stated here that 
 "Jesus answered again, and said unto them, 'Children, 
 how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into 
 the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go 
 through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter 
 into the kingdom of God !' " Let no poor man ever assert 
 that Jesus Christ said that no rich man could be saved! 
 And, on the other hand, let no rich man be over-much 
 proud, for surely the ground which Jesus gave the rich 
 to stand upon is very slender ground! Whether the 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 139 
 
 figure of the camel and the needle's eye relates to the 
 smaller gateway for the entrance of man within the 
 larger gateway to the oriental city, or whether Jesus 
 meant to use a stronger figure still by a reference to the 
 eye of a literal sewing needle and the difficulty a camel 
 would have in getting through it, it is not necessary for 
 us to say. But it is especially necessary that those who 
 have great possessions should understand that they also 
 carry with them great difficulties in connection with the 
 spiritual life, and that unusual concern should be in the 
 mind of every rich man over his spiritual interests. If 
 this splendid youth, with all his morality, his clean life, 
 his popularity, and his possession of the personal love of 
 Jesus Christ was lost, then surely the rich man to-day 
 has here a most solemn warning. If I were a rich man, 
 I would tremble for my soul's safety. And certainly I 
 would be most faithful to God and the interests of His 
 Kingdom. I would be found most diligent to ''make 
 my calling and election sure," and to "work out my own 
 salvation with fear and trembling" realizing most humbly 
 the while, that it *'is God that worketh in us, both to 
 will, and to do of His good pleasure!" 
 
 THE DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES 
 
 We cannot here go into the full teaching of Jesus con- 
 cerning what He calls "the deceitfulness of riches" ; but 
 there is surely such a thing, and it was this that finally 
 destroyed the soul of this promising youth. He could 
 not bow his will to God's will and trust the true and 
 living God through Jesus Christ, because he was un- 
 consciously a worshiper at another shrine. Jesus had 
 said, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." (Matt. 6:24.)^ 
 
I40 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 There are, then, two gods to which men give allegiance ; 
 and I believe, in final analysis, there are only two. Men 
 really worship either this great god Mammon, with all 
 the worldly blessings that he promises, or with resolute 
 faith they turn their backs upon this false god, with his 
 deceptions, and give the loyalty of their lives and the 
 devotion of their hearts to the one true and living God, 
 who made heaven and earth, and who directs our eternal 
 destiny! And according as men choose between these 
 two Gods, they are lost or saved. 
 
 The rich man, as we learn from the meeting between 
 Jesus and Zaccheus, the publican, can easily and quickly 
 be saved, provided he will obey Christ and walk in the 
 right way. 
 
 But this Rich Young Ruler was a lost soul, because 
 he had been so blinded and deceived by riches that he 
 put his ''trust" in riches, — ^that is, in the great god 
 Mammon. The trouble, therefore, with him was that 
 he had in his nature the seeds of a growing selfishness, 
 which would eat like a cancer in his heart, and at last 
 completely alienate him from God, who is Love. He 
 wanted the things that his money would buy for himself 
 • — the place and the power, the adulation of people, rich 
 clothing, sumptuous food, and all of the soft luxury that 
 Mammon gives to its worshipers. Because of this, all 
 of his morality could not save him, for salvation means 
 harmony and union with God, and God is not selfishness 
 but Love. If, then, one's character drifts more and 
 more into selfishness, it means a further and further 
 alienation from God, until at last there is the eternal 
 separation which means a lost soul; and all of this, in 
 the case of this young man, because of the "deceitfulness 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 141 
 
 of riches" that had led him to worship Mammon in- 
 stead of the true God. 
 
 FRIENDLY MESSAGE TO NEW YORK'S MILLIONAIRES 
 
 What, then, is the message from this incident to the 
 man of to-day? In announcing this subject, I employed 
 the term "New York's Millionaires," but a man does not 
 have to be a millionaire in order to be caught by the 
 whirlpool of destruction through money. Even a poor 
 man, in his struggles and ambitions to rise, may become 
 a Mammon worshiper; and often, at this period of his 
 life, he is in more deadly danger than the man who has 
 already accumulated a fortune. Any man who puts his 
 trust in money instead of God is subject to the dangers 
 of money. What are these dangers? 
 
 Well, the first danger of money is that it often makes 
 a fool of a man. In his parable of the Rich Man and 
 His Barns, Jesus pictures this type of character— who 
 makes money so fast that his head is turned and he 
 becomes a fool. 
 
 "And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground 
 of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully; And he 
 thought within himself, saying. What shall I do, because 
 I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he 
 said. This will I do ; I will pull down my barns, and build 
 greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my 
 goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much 
 goods laid up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, 
 and be merry. But God said unto him. Thou fool, this 
 night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall 
 those things be, which thou has provided? So is he 
 that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich to- 
 ward God." (Luke 12:16-21.) 
 
142 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 This man was a colossal fool, just as Jesus said. He 
 was a fool because he did not wisely consider the brevity 
 and uncertainty of life; because he slaved away his days 
 piling up money that others would enjoy, and because in 
 doing all this, he lost his immortal soul. Yes, Jesus was 
 right. What a fool he was ! And what a fool any man 
 is who becomes a slave and worshiper of money! 
 
 Another, and all-comprehensive, danger from money 
 is that of covetousness, which simply means the inordi- 
 nate desire and lust after money. To give it a biological 
 name, we might say that covetousness is ''chronic ac- 
 cumulitis," and that is one of the most deadly dangers 
 to the spiritual life, because it paralyzes the nobler and 
 more generous side of our natures, — that side that leads 
 us to love and to serve God. When a man is afflicted 
 badly with "chronic accumulitis" he comes to the point at 
 last where he turns his back on the religion of Jesus 
 Christ, and instead adopts the philosophy of Benjamin 
 Franklin as the guide of his life. 
 
 In our money-loving age, we are prone to over- 
 emphasize thrift, shrewdness, etc., as virtues, and they 
 may be virtues if a man is a steward and a worshiper of 
 the true God. If a man is making money for God and 
 for the advancement of His kingdom, instead of for 
 himself and his own luxurious living, then God can bless 
 him and at last save that man. But when the opposite 
 motive prevails, covetousness grips the soul, and it is 
 more destructive to true moral character than drunken- 
 ness, sensuality and other gross sins. These sins ma^ 
 be largely connected with the weakness of the flesh- 
 but covetousness is a hideous monster that slays the 
 soul. I have seen some drunkards and outcasts who 
 really had more true nobility — more generosity, more 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 143 
 
 charity, more good fellowship — than certain prim and 
 proper people who were highly respectable and very well- 
 to-do, but whose souls were eaten out by covetousness 
 and the false pride and vanity that the possession of 
 money often brings ! 
 
 Just listen to the company that covetousness puts one 
 into. Here is what Paul says, for example : "For this ye 
 know of a surety, that no fornicator, nor unclean per- 
 son, nor coveteous man, who is an idolater, hath any 
 inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God." (Eph. 
 5 14. ) In writing again to the Colossians, Paul says, 
 "Put to death therefore your members which are upon 
 the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desires 
 and covetousness, which is idolatry." (Col. 3 :5.) And 
 again in writing to the Romans, Paul said, "Being filled 
 with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, 
 maliciousness; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, 
 insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, dis- 
 obedient to parents." These are merely sample quota- 
 tions of what the Bible has to say from cover to cover 
 against this great cardinal sin, which leads to Mammon 
 worship and damns the soul. This is the sin that made 
 Achan a thief ; that made Gehazi a leper white as snow ; 
 that made Ananias a liar, so that he was struck dead, and 
 that made Judas a traitor to Christ and a suicide at last. 
 And this is the kind of sin that the modern pulpit is not 
 saying very much about ! Surely the rich men of to-day 
 do need the solemn, loving warning of God's truth, for 
 many of them are plunging on to death. 
 
 This is "the deceitfulness of riches," that it blinds 
 men's eyes to the deeper values of life, and leads them 
 step by step farther away from the true God until, like 
 this rich young ruler, they are unconscious worshipers 
 
144 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 of Mammon. This is the reason why it is written in 
 I Tim. 6:9, 10: 
 
 "But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a 
 snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which 
 drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love 
 of money is the root of all evil ; which while some coveted 
 after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced them- 
 selves through with many sorrows." 
 
 And when this has happened to a man, he gets into 
 the state described by James in the fifth chapter of his 
 epistle, the first six verses: 
 
 "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your 
 miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are cor- 
 rupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold 
 and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a 
 witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were 
 by fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last 
 days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped 
 down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, 
 crieth : and the cries of them which have reaped are en- 
 tered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived 
 in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton ; ye have nour- 
 ished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have 
 condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist 
 you.'* 
 
 Now the encouraging thing about it all is that the rich 
 man has it in his power to resist these subtle temptations 
 that flow from money, to devote himself to God and to 
 the service of his fellowmen through his money, and 
 thus to put himself in the company of those whom Paul 
 addresses in the same writing in which he warned the 
 rich men, when he says : 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 145 
 
 "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be 
 not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the 
 living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that 
 they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to 
 distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store 
 for themselves a good foundation against the time to 
 come, that they may lay hold on eternal life." (Tim. 6 :i7, 
 18, 19.) 
 
 TRANSFORMATION INTO TRUE CHARACTER 
 
 The message of the Word of God to the milHonaires 
 and moneyed men of New York in this twentieth century 
 is the same message that Christ and His inspired apostles 
 gave to the world in the first century. 
 
 Addressing, then, the millionaires and moneyed men of 
 our city, directly, frankly, and in the most fraternal 
 spirit, I would point out to you, gentlemen, that the 
 Bible teaches most clearly and emphatically first of all 
 that a man who lives only for money and makes money 
 his god is a fool. Secondly, that such over-devotion to 
 money-making produces covetousness, paralyzes the 
 spiritual energies and even the higher and nobler qualities 
 of the mind. Thirdly, that wrong methods for the ac- 
 cumulation of wealth and the over-congestion of wealth 
 leads to social envying and strife and brings retribution 
 upon those who exploit wrong conditions for their own 
 gain. The Word of God teaches plainly on this subject 
 that money may be a blessing and may be made a bless- 
 ing to others, but that its misuse and a wrong relation- 
 ship to it leads to the final and eternal loss of the souh 
 
 You will certainly, therefore, gentlemen, be wise 
 enough to cease the lavish and foolish squandering of 
 money in soft luxuries and high living, if these con- 
 siderations really take hold of your minds. The seduc- 
 
146 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 tions of the devil are just as subtle to-day and his nets 
 before the feet of men are just as numerous as they 
 were in that far away time when Christ warned against 
 Mammon worship. And never has there been a period 
 when men of wealth ought to search their hearts more 
 closely, that they may draw nearer to God, than in this 
 time of great world chaos and unrest. 
 
 REACHING THE BETTER BUT MISSING THE BEST 
 
 So we come back, in the close of our thought together, 
 to glance once more at this young man of the long ago. 
 As we look upon him and study this incident, it seems 
 to us at first blush that the Rich Young Ruler acted 
 upon motives of prudence and sound judgment. For 
 the moment, it seems as if Jesus was asking him to wreck 
 his whole earthly career. But Jesus knew what he really 
 needed for true success, and I have often thought if he 
 had done what Zaccheus did — offered to give up his 
 money and thus prove to Jesus that he would worship 
 God instead of riches — that the incident would have 
 taken a very different turn. Jesus saw for one thing, 
 doubtless, that this young man had been merely a 
 dreamer of deeds of good, and that he needed to step 
 out upon the pathway of human brotherhood and service 
 to find his true greatness. 
 
 An American visitor in Paris some years ago, in mak- 
 ing a round of visits to the studios, was carried by an 
 artist friend into a dingy garret, where his friend told 
 him that he would show him *'the most glorious dreamer 
 in France." The American found the walls covered over 
 with pencil sketches; every inch of the walls and the very 
 floor plastered over with outlines. Every morning found 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 147 
 
 the artist at his canvas. In one ceaseless procession the 
 visions passed before him — angels, seraphs, sunsets, trees, 
 castles, scarred cliffs, golden clouds, palace, hut, canoe, 
 ocean steamer, mound, volcano, peasant, prince, tropic 
 luxuries — ten thousand sketches — but not one of them 
 complete ! A thousand dreams and faces in the air, but 
 no power to pin them down to a canvas, and fix them 
 there forever. Jesus saw that this young man needed to 
 be a doer of deeds and not merely a dreamer of dreams. 
 
 Again, Jesus doubtless knew that this young man's 
 strongest gift was with men and not over things. This 
 earthly property came to him by inheritance, and through 
 his position in life, he was bound to be a popular leader. 
 And yet Jesus discovered that he was prostituting his 
 talents and holding back the possibilities of his higher 
 development by too much immersion in mere money in- 
 terests. A bird is perfectly content to walk on its two 
 legs, and this is all that it can do, while it is young and 
 flabby, but there comes a time when it will find its wings, 
 and it can then soar out in triumph to meet the morning 
 and to greet the coming day with song. 
 
 Jesus looked upon this youth and knew the man he 
 was, and he sought to flash before him the vision of the 
 man he ought to be. It was an austere and searching 
 test. He said in essence to him, ''Turn from your luxury 
 loving, and your money making, turn from your soft 
 living and your self-pleasing habits. Take up your cross 
 and follow me. To-night there will be no downy couch 
 for you, and no delicate food. We will tramp through 
 the long day in works of good to men, bringing them 
 the messages of God. To-night, you will have the open 
 field for your bed-chamber, the dusty highway for your 
 anteroom, the stars for your tapers, and for your pillow 
 
148 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 a stone ! Come with me ! Share my lot 1 I am a man 
 of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The foxes of the 
 earth have holes and the fowls of the air have nests, but 
 I have not where to lay my head. To-morrow we will 
 eat what is given us. Then there will be a snatch of 
 sleep, another dry crust, perhaps, a drink from the brook 
 beside the way, — and then on in our mission of mercy 
 and helpfulness. Come, and you shall have the deeper 
 visions, the glories of right character, the gratitude of 
 men, the joys of fellowship with God, and Heaven at 
 last!" 
 
 But the young man could not meet the test. He turned 
 sorrowfully away ''for he had great possessions." There 
 he settled his eternal destiny. Jesus saw that the young 
 man had already achieved the better life, but he sought 
 to win him to the best. He failed in that test — tragically 
 failed; for the greatest tragedy of life at last is that 
 of a splendid youth who is satisfied with the better and 
 does not press on with glorious purpose to attain the 
 best! This man might have immortalized himself. He 
 might have written his name on the highest scroll of 
 fame through noble service. He might have become a 
 second Paul. His life and influence might have blessed 
 the children of men forever! But he failed when his 
 hour of destiny struck, and he sank down to the tragedy 
 of the commonplace, the vapid wastes of mediocrity and 
 the increasing spiritual paralysis that flows from selfish 
 living. Yes, doubtless from that day, this young man 
 started on the downward path, and Jesus foresaw it. 
 With His heart bursting with love and pity, He turned 
 to His disciples and exclaimed, in practical effect : *'He is 
 a lost soul !" 
 
 Dante's interpretation is probably correct. In his 
 
GOD OR MAMMON? 149 
 
 great classic, *'The Inferno/' in picturing their journey 
 through hell, Dante turned to Virgil, who was guiding 
 him through the regions of the lost, and putting his hand 
 on the poet's arm, he whispered : *'Who is yonder patri- 
 cian, gnawed with remorse and memory?" And Virgil 
 answered : "Let us flee ! It is that youth who made the 
 great refusal!" The sight of a soul so noble in its possi- 
 bilities, and yet that had fallen so far from God, so 
 moved him that he could not stand that vision and could 
 find relief from it only in flight. 
 
 And all of this story brings vividly and sharply before 
 our minds that searching question which in another place 
 Jesus propounded to those who would be rich, when he 
 asked : ''What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
 world, but lose his own soul?" 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE RAGE FOR R.\G-TIME RELIGION 
 
 It is here at last — "rag-time" religion! 
 
 Literature underwent the transformation, and the 
 world has been flooded with the tide of trash that reaches 
 all the way from the sentiment of Laura Jean Libbey to 
 the corruption found in the magazines, the latest novel 
 and the yellow newspapers that litter the center tables 
 in many homes, where good books ought to be found. 
 Politics also fell into line, and the noble and classical 
 statesmanship of the past was supplanted by the ward- 
 heeler, the boss and the demagogue. Rag-time music? 
 Yes, oceans of it! ''After the Ball," ''Johnny, Get Your 
 Hair Cut,*' "Goo-Goo Eyes," and "Everybody's Doing 
 It," until one cannot walk the streets without having one's 
 ears offended with the discordant jangling of barbarous 
 sounds. In art, too, the rage for rag-time is rampant. 
 We see it in the horrible monstrosities of the ten-cent 
 theater, and right down the line to the "cubist's" insane 
 nightmares ! 
 
 But the very latest is rag-time religion! 
 
 Let us turn to Christ's letter to the Laodicean church, 
 as applicable no less to the Laodiceans than to the church 
 to-day. It is a scorching, terrible indictment that Christ, 
 the great Judge of the church, brings against that institu- 
 tion, though in spite of all its limitations and imperfec- 
 tions the church has been the most glorious institution 
 
 150 
 
RAG-TIME RELIGION 151 
 
 our earth has known. It has had its periods of victory 
 and true progress and its periods of backsHding and 
 terrible dechne. Even in the picture that is drawn here 
 of the conditions in the last time there is a note of en- 
 couragement to those who are faithful, stimulating them 
 to make greater efforts in the service of Christ and his 
 truth, until he shall come again. 
 
 THE FAULTS OF THE CHURCH AS CHRIST PICTURES THEM 
 
 Here is Christ's indictment of the church because of 
 its lukewarmness. He says that it is ''neither hot nor 
 cold." Surely, this is true of our churches to-day, par- 
 ticularly in our great cities. I sound no note of pessi- 
 mism, but rather one of earnest warning. Think seriously 
 of the lack of soul-winning zeal and enthusiasm in the 
 church to-day ! In the beginning all the Christians were 
 soul-winners, and the ''Lord added to the church daily 
 such as were being saved." To-day the addition of mem- 
 bers in our city churches comes so seldom that it is al- 
 most a notable event. There is but one thing that the 
 Master has left the church to do in the world, and that is 
 to save souls. A great deal of work is being done by 
 the official boards, committees and societies to keep the 
 ecclesiastical wheels turning, but the proportion of time 
 and energy put by the church on soul-winning is de- 
 plorably small. Statistics carefully gathered a short time 
 ago from a large group of our Baptist churches disclosed 
 the fact that only four per cent, of the members in these 
 churches were engaged in any sort of soul-winning ac- 
 tivity, and this included the teachers in the Sunday 
 schools ! 
 
 We have another illustration of this lack of soul- 
 
152 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 winning zeal in the fact that many of our great city 
 churches close their doors, some of them for as long as 
 three or four months in the summer — the very season 
 of the year when the best work might be done for Christ's 
 cause. It is depressing to see churches of financial 
 strength and social prestige thus shutting up shop for the 
 summer months and early fall and turning the city over 
 to the Catholics and the devil! And I mean no dis- 
 courtesy or disparagement in putting it that way. I am 
 glad of the fact that the Catholics never shut up shop. 
 From the cathedral down to the humblest mission in this 
 city they continue their activities twelve months in the 
 year. I am altogether at t he opposite pole from them 
 in all my theological and religious thmkmg, but I do sav. 
 in fr ankness and honesty that thev are giving to the city 
 a far more consistent w itness to their convictions than 
 are man y of our ir 'rotestant churches. , Some complain 
 of Catholic success in New York. Why should not 
 Catholics succeed with this situation? They deserve to 
 succeed, and we deserve to fail because of this lack 
 of zeal. 
 
 My experience here in New York city the first sum- 
 mer of this pastorate, which was during the war, 
 not only amazed but staggered and stunned me, as I saw 
 how our Protestant churches seemed to be "sitting at 
 ease in Zion." The conditions were really distressing. 
 The city was not only crowded with soldiers and sailors, 
 but with their mothers and fathers, who were coming 
 with their burdened hearts to tell their boys good-by. 
 What did they find here? Instead of finding churches 
 wide open to bring them a message of cheer and comfort 
 and hope and faith, they found the churches closed, and 
 pastors and leading laymen alike away in the mountains 
 
Jazz Band that performen for Church. Young women dressed as men '. 
 
RAG-TIME RELIGION 153 
 
 and at the seaside. Not only were there not enough 
 Protestant preachers in this city to marry the people and 
 to give perplexed hearts and minds Christian counsel, 
 but there were not enough even to bury the dead decently. 
 I have heard of cases where no preachers could be se- 
 cured for funerals and where the burial service was 
 read over the dead bodies of church members by a ''lady/ 
 visitor!" 
 
 Does any one dare say that something ought not to 
 said and done about such conditions ? Does any one dare 
 charge that it is unkindness to criticize such weakness or 
 such appalling indifference? 
 
 Within our own Baptist denomination, for example, 
 here on Manhattan Island, more than a dozen churches 
 have died during the past few years. We now have left 
 only one self-supporting Baptist church on the eastern 
 half of Manhattan Island from the Battery all the way 
 to the Bronx, though there are more than 1,000,000 peo- 
 ple in that district. This sole survivor continues be- 
 cause it is buttressed by endowments, given by the conse- 
 crated people of previous generations. 
 
 What is true of our denomination seems also to be true 
 of others. Recently three of the world-famous churches 
 of one denomination were merged into one. In speaking 
 of the tendencies within his denomination a minister of 
 one of the other denominations remarked to me a short 
 time ago that their ''Church Extension Society" oughts 
 really to be called "T jie Church Extinction Society.'vV 
 They were burying churches or merging them with otheT 
 churches so rapidly that the change of name seemed ap- 
 propriate. 
 
154 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 WORLDLINESS IN THE CHURCHES 
 
 Think, my friends, what the heart of Christ must feel 
 as he sees the worldHness in many of the churches of 
 to-day. This applies to both Protestants and Catholics. 
 We see the whole religious community of New York 
 advertised in connection with the famous ''Bal-Bleu 
 Ball" at the Ritz-Carlton, and linked up not only with the 
 ball, but with the theater ballet, which was given as part 
 of that entertainment, and all in the name of charity and 
 religion! We see other churches inviting opera "stars'' 
 to sing at their services, and securing ''movie artists*' in 
 the frantic effort to attract the crowd, and the papers 
 gave an account of one church recently which employed 
 a professional whistler "who held forth to the great de- 
 light of a large congregation." To which was added the re- 
 mark that Mr. Bain, the performer on lips, is a "sweet and 
 penetrating whistler," and that he was "engaged and ad- 
 vertised as the musical feature of the afternoon!" 
 
 New York papers recently told of a pastor who had 
 introduced a "jazz band" into his services. The pastor, 
 as quoted in the papers, said: "I tried something new 
 at my services Sunday. We had a vaudeville service. 
 Mr. Reef, the banjo king of jazz band players, attended 
 our services and played his regular program, accom- 
 panied by our org^n. The success was greater than you 
 can imagine. Our program was arranged like that of a 
 high-class theater, and the people enjoyed the treat along 
 with hearing a good Gospel sermon. I have something 
 further along this line for coming Sunday evenings. If 
 the people want life I am going to mix it with the Gospel, 
 and then I am sure they will come to church every Sun- 
 day." 
 
RAG-TIME RELIGION 155 
 
 Lord help us ! He_gr omises "som ething" f urther_along_, 
 tiiisJine^lLas though the introduction of vaudeville into / 
 the church was not the "limit!" Think of people being 
 bought in these ways in order that they might be induced 
 to condescend to listen to a Gospel sermon, when what j 
 they ought to have had was a rebuke for their worldli- 
 ness and sins and an invitation to turn to the higher 
 things of life! 
 
 Anothe r of our gre at histo ric churches announced that 
 i t had advanced its hour of morning wors hip from eleven 
 to ten oVlock, in order , as the rector p ut it, that his mem - 
 b grs might have m ore time for Sunday after nooQ ^sp'^nt l, 
 Think of the folly and sha me of thus s huttle-cocking 
 the__servicesof Almighty God from hour to hour. an d_ 
 
 maki ng frantic ettorts to shorten the period of worsh ip 
 
 m order that worldlv-minded church me mbers may have, 
 more time and better opportunity to desecratf^ HrvH^c V|fv ]y 
 jay by s porty and otViPf «;e1fic;Vi ^ndn^gpnrp'^^ in dWert 
 viola tion of one of the Ten Commandments ! 
 
 No wonder that our modern city churches are shorn 
 of power to save souls and are slowly shriveling up and 
 dying of spiritual dry-rot, when their members are not 
 only not rebuked for wearing themselves out during the 
 week in Mammon worship and the mad race for money, 
 but are allowed, even by their spiritual leaders, to be- 
 lieve that such worldly lives are all right, and that it is 
 entirely proper to push even the worship of God off 
 into a corner on Sunday, in order that they may steal 
 part of God's day for the recreation necessary to fit them 
 for another week of strenuous chasing of the dollar and 
 the worldly pleasures which the dollar buys! I do not 
 wish to seem unkind or harsh in judgment, but I cannot 
 stand by and see these things, which I feel are treason 
 
156 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 to the holy cause of Christ, without entering a humble 
 and earnest protest. 
 
 I believe that these new church methods are a shame- 
 less surrender to the worst tendencies of the times. What 
 are all of these jazz bands and banjo players and whis- 
 tlers but an open catering to the prurient curiosity of 
 the thoughtless crowd? What are they but a surrender 
 to the consuming thirst for novelty, sensation, something 
 to stare at, the craving for "entertainment," which the 
 degenerate taste of the times demands? 
 
 This is "rag-time" religion with a vengeance! 
 
 And the next stage — what shall it be? More pro- 
 nounced vaudeville features ? Tight-rope walking across 
 the heads of the congregation from the gallery to the 
 choir loft? "Consecrated" clog dancing and the "reH- 
 gious" ballet between the preacher's "stunts"? Are we 
 to have this? At least it seems possible. When the pres- 
 ent brass-band- whistler-ban j o-opera-star-religious-drama 
 program has lost its novelty, how will our dear brethren 
 draw the multitude, save by a stiffer stimulation of the 
 appetite for the startling, the curious and the outre f If 
 we are to compete with the vaudeville theater by getting 
 down to its level, must we not outdo our competitor or 
 lose out in the struggle? 
 
 Sad indeed is the spectacle that these things present to 
 the thoughtful eye. To those who know religion as an 
 experience of grace in the human heart, who believe that 
 regeneration means a change of heart, a turning about, 
 through the power of God, from the "natural man" of 
 thoughtlessness, vanity, selfishness and sin, to the "new 
 creature in Christ Jesus," a being of faith and humility 
 and gentleness and love — to such as these how alarming 
 must these modern methods appear! 
 
RAG-TIME RELIGION 157 
 
 Strange, is it not, that Paul nor Augustine nor Savona- 
 rola nor Wesley nor Spurgeon nor Moody ever adopted 
 such tactics? There were no jazz bands nor whistlers at 
 Pentecost. There were only unity, earnestness, *'stead- 
 fastness" in prayer, and the bold and fearless preaching 
 of Peter, reproving them for their "wicked hands" — 
 and then came the tongues of fire and the parting of the 
 waters by 3,000 of the regenerated and redeemed! 
 
 liythechange ? Havewe lost faith in the efficiency 
 
 o f the p lai n Gospel? Is it not simply to "know the 
 truth" that makes us "free"? Is the province of the 
 pulpit other than to proclaim the truth with sweetness, 
 strength, earnestness and love, leaving the "increase" in 
 the hands of God? Why the vaudeville attachments? 
 Why the bargain counter methods? Why cheapen and 
 degrade a puissant and noble religion with such gim- 
 crackery and patent-medicine pranks? Does the church 
 of the living God need to be propped up with theaters 
 and brass bands? Does it need bolstering with vaude- 
 ville stars and side-show stunts? God forbid! 
 
 Whence come th ^p^f t^ingrQ ? Xhe tap root, the great- 
 est, longest, most powerful of all the feeders of rag-time 
 r eligion, is the presence of a question mark in the pulpit 
 6i to-day ! Doubt among ministers is the central fact 
 that has caused these unfortunate results. Preachers are 
 not just certain where they "stand." Many of them no 
 longer have a positive and definite message. The worldly 
 inclined are always ready with a positive policy tO' secure 
 if they can greater latitude for worldhness, so they easily 
 rise and overshadow the weak and halting pulpit. The 
 co nvictions of many ministers are so unsettled by the 
 
 fi^ve takf^ n into "scientific" 
 faTth in the authority and sufficiency of 
 
158 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Holy Writ has been so shaken by superficial study of 
 Ahe. "higher criticism'' that tb^V ^^ally liayf^ liftlp left 
 which they can p rorlaim with fervor, parne.q tness and 
 convic ting force. Doubting constantly, or believing but 
 littlentiTemselves, it cannot be expected that they will 
 help other doubters and lead them to the rock of faith. 
 When the '^lind lead the blind," shall not both "fall 
 into the ditch"? "If the trumpet give an uncertain 
 sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" 
 
 Having but little of the old faith that they can preach, 
 and facing the need of preparation of two services for 
 the coming Sunday, many preachers are thus led to 
 resort to "rag-time" methods to attract and satisfy the 
 people. 
 
 THE LEAN SHEEP OF TO-DAY 
 
 *'Feed my sheep" is the divine command. We are 
 not to cater to curiosity nor to silly vanity. We are to 
 feed the flock on the Gospel of God. How little they 
 are fed to-day — the poor, lean sheep! Here on the 
 Lord's Day they are gathered in the earthly fold. Their 
 eyes are lack-luster and sunken from dissipation, their 
 cheeks are sallow, their spiritual blood is thin, and their 
 nerves are wasted from the excitement, the grind, the 
 bustle and the haste of our busy age. Ah, how the water 
 of life would refresh them! How the saving food of 
 God's simple but potent truth would nourish and 
 strengthen! But they are denied it. They are fed on 
 the same husks of sensation that have choked them dur- 
 ing the week, and when the Lord's Day is done they have 
 only seen the "whistler," heard the banjo, and applauded 
 the tooting of the horns ! 
 
 The question that confronts us to-day is: Shall we 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE iCi 
 
 is Sunday to the home, evolving all its elements in one 
 fair blossom." And a poet has quaintly sung: 
 
 "The Sundays of man's life, 
 
 Threaded together on time's string, 
 
 Make bracelets to adorn the wife 
 Of the eternal, glorious King." 
 
 These definitions and descriptions show the esteem in 
 which the high souls of the race have held this holy day. 
 But not only is the Sabbath beautiful, it is of the greatest 
 practical value. 
 
 THE SABBATH AND RELIGION 
 
 For one thing, no really vital and adequate church life 
 is possible without a right observance of the Sabbath. In X 
 the South, where the Sabbath is observed, the churches 
 are vigorous and strong. In the North, where the Sab- A 
 bath is increasingly disregarded, the churches seem to \J 
 be weakening year by year. ^ 
 
 i I hear some friends saying that they can worship God 
 A as well by going to the country and enjoying the beauties 
 of nature as they can by attending the sanctuary. I con- 
 y f ess, however, that I cannot understand such psychology 
 'lOr such spirituality. A hot fire can be kindled only by 
 y heaping up the coals. Take a glowing coal from the 
 heart of the fire and lay it by itself on the corner of the 
 / hearth, and how speedily does it lose its heat and blacken 
 until it is cold and dead. We need to receive the fire of 
 other lives, and we need to give our own warmth in re- • 
 turn. This ass ertion that we can isolate our selves from 
 t , he rhnrch and Still be Christians is Totly with which 
 indolence and disobedience cheat the soul. What tEi •- 
 
1 62 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Bible says is this : "Forsake not the assembling of your- 
 selves together." And that means attendance upon the 
 sanctuary as a due part of the proper observance of 
 God's holy day. 
 
 We need just what God seeks to give us, through the 
 church, week by week. When the children of Israel 
 were marching through the wilderness God sent the 
 manna fresh to them every morning. If it became stale 
 it grew distasteful and unwholesome. We cannot live 
 upon our past religious experiences. There must be a 
 renewal of God's good grace in our hearts and lives day 
 by day, and week by week ; and His holy Sabbath is the 
 time when we can gather the manna fresh and sweet 
 from the storehouse of divine love and care. When the 
 Sabbath is disregarded, therefore, the individual spiritual 
 life weakens, and the decay of the church is inevitable. 
 
 THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER 
 
 How insidious and terrific are the assaults which Satan 
 is making to-day upon this Gibraltar of God's truth — 
 the Holy Sabbath. Think, for example, of the ruin 
 wrought by our Sunday newspapers. What I say here, 
 I say absolutely without prejudice or bitterness. I have 
 been a newspaper man myself. I know and honor the 
 American newspaper fraternity, and I believe that our 
 American papers, on the whole, exert a noble and won- 
 derful influence upon our national life. They are the 
 greatest organs of public opinion which we have, because 
 they reach the people so immediately and so universally ; 
 but there is one glaring flaw in the splendid diadem of 
 usefulness and power which they so worthily wear; and 
 that is their desecration of God's holy day. 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE 163 
 
 For one thing, they prevent their employees, especially 
 the army of newsboys who sell and distribute the papers, 
 from attending Sunday school and church. It has been 
 conservatively estimated that at least 500,000 newsboys 
 are employed every Sunday in distributing Sunday pa- 
 pers, and their duties come at such an hour in the day 
 as to keep them effectively out of both Sunday school 
 and church. Is it nothing to us that these 500,000 of our 
 American youth are being denied the priznlege of 
 religious training in the house of Godf Is it nothing to 
 us that they are being taught to violate one of the Ten 
 Commandments for gain? 
 
 Not only so, but the Sunday newspapers unconsciously 
 influence many of their readers from attending divine 
 worship, by giving to them a fascinating counter-attrac- 
 tion presented just at the church hour, thus building up 
 slowly but surely the non-churchgoing habit. 
 
 Further, though there is usually considerable good 
 matter in the Sunday papers, by far the greater propor- 
 tion of it has to do with the same exciting, nerve-racking, 
 heart-depressing, worldly interests which have worn out 
 the people, body and mind, during the week. The aver- 
 age Sunday newspaper is a conglomeration of advertise- 
 ments, market reports, baseball slang, political hurrah, 
 society scandals. Bowery murders, silly sentiment. 
 Buster Brown humor and utilitarian ethics — a dose suffi- 
 cient to paralyze the moral energies of the people for the 
 following week! 
 
 Surely we ought to have one day in seven in which 
 our minds and hearts could be rested from all of these 
 things. The stress and strain of our complex modern 
 civilization is killing even at best, and we need the 
 mental relaxation and rest which come from a periodical 
 
1 64 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and radical change of thought from worldly things to 
 the higher things of life. 
 
 The Sunday paper is not a necessity of our system of 
 life. The Sunday paper is an unfortunate legacy of our 
 own Civil War, and in Canada and England the few 
 Sunday papers now printed are one of the evil results 
 of the last war. Prior to 19 14 there were no Sun- 
 day papers in Canada or England, and we believe that 
 the people — including the newspaper men themselves — 
 would be infinitely better off if another edition of the 
 Sunday papers was never published. 
 
 SUNDAY THEATERS 
 
 The Sunday theater and moving picture shows are 
 also crying evils, because such institutions win the peo- 
 ple away from the churches, particularly the young, and 
 train them into habits of neglect of the House of God. 
 
 Mr. H. W. Hicks, Superintendent of the New York 
 Sunday School Association, states that from the most 
 careful estimates that can be made, there are now in 
 Greater New York 250,000 children of school age (that 
 is up to 16 years old), belonging to Protestant homes, 
 who are not in any Sunday school. If you include those 
 who are between the ages of 16 and 24, another 200,- 
 000 would have to be added to that figure, making almost 
 an even half million of small children and young people 
 who are not now in any Protestant Sunday school. Mr. 
 Hicks further states that, while exact figures are not 
 available, there has nevertheless, within the last year or 
 so, been an enormous and alarming shrinkage in the 
 number of children and young people attending our 
 Sunday schools. It is a very significant fact, too, that 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE 165 
 
 this shrinkage has been contemporaneous with the open- 
 ing of Sunday moving picture shows, etc. It is beyond 
 controversy that these things are trenching in tremen- 
 dously upon our Sunday schools and churches, and are 
 doing thereby an incalculable harm to the children of 
 both sexes. Recreation and amusement have their legiti- 
 mate place in the scheme of human living, but if we are 
 to make them a substitute for the deeper and more sacred 
 things of life then they become a curse instead of a 
 blessing. We are in danger of developing a superficial, 
 flippant and thoughtless citizenship by a wrongly bal- 
 anced mental and spiritual diet. 
 
 Laws for opening the movies on Sunday, for permit- 
 ting Sunday baseball, etc., are all wrong in principle and 
 entirely uncalled for, because the people already give a 
 disproportionate amount of their time and strength to 
 such things, as compared with the really necessary and 
 noble things of life. Nothing has done so much to break 
 down the churches, and also the home life of the people 
 in New York City, as the secularizing of the Sabbath 
 Day. All citizens who believe in God and the more 
 sacred things of life, ought to move always energetically 
 for the defeat of such measures. The very foundation 
 of our modern civilization is endangered by these ten- 
 dencies to destroy the influence of the church and the 
 integrity of the home life of the masses. I 
 
 THE UNITY OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 
 
 People may laugh at those who defend the old- 
 fashioned Sabbath, and call them old-fogyish and im- 
 practicable, ]put the fact neve rtheless stands — a . fact writ- 
 ten all over history— ^that the nation that tramples the 
 
1 66 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Lord/ s day un derfoot is trpa^ ^in g the downward way to 
 moral and spiritual death. Modern Europe has amply 
 illustrated this truth. 
 
 God's law is plain and emphatic. In Exodus 20:8-11 
 it is written: 
 
 ''Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. 
 
 "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but 
 the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: 
 in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor 
 thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, 
 nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : 
 for in six days the Lord made Heaven and earth, and 
 the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh 
 day: Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and 
 hallowed it." 
 
 What are we going to do with that? Have we modern 
 people gotten to the paint where we are ready to abolish 
 the Ten Commandments, either for the sake of business 
 success, or for the sake of our enjoyment? 
 
 We cannot claim God's promise in one place if we 
 violate His law in another. We need to understand that 
 every promise of the blessings of heaven upon us as 
 individuals and as a people is conditioned by our 
 obedience to the divine laws. And if we have a right 
 to violate God's law of the Sabbath, then why have we 
 not an equal right to violate any other one of the Com- 
 mandments which we may desire to break? 
 
 The cashier of a bank, who was recently sentenced to 
 the penitentiary for stealing, charged the officials of the 
 bank with indirect responsibility for his crime. He said : 
 "When I began work for the bank I was a religious man 
 and believed in obeying all of God's laws; but the bank 
 officials compelled me to work more or less on Sundays, 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE 167 
 
 and thus to break one of the Ten Commandments, and 
 this undermined my regard for all of the other Com- 
 mandments." Is there not a tremendously significant 
 point in this statement ? Oh, business man, if you require 
 your employees to disregard the Sabbath do not hlame 
 them too severely if they steal from your till! If you 
 hazfe the right to rob God of His day, why liave they 
 not a right to rob you of your money? If you teach 
 them to disobey one of the Ten Commandments, upon 
 what ground shall you insist that they obey tlie other 
 Commandm en ts ? 
 
 As one observes conditions in New York City, one is 
 not surprised to see the falling off in church attendance, 
 and other indications of a loss of real religious power. 
 In the morning, just at the church hour, comes the 
 voluminous Sunday paper; then in the afternoon comes 
 the Sunday golf and automobile "joy ride," and then 
 at night the Sunday theater, concert, "patriotic" rally, 
 etc. The wonder is that there is any religion at all left/ 
 in New York with this terrific combination for the breaki 
 ing down of God's holy day! 
 
 We hear a great outcry to-day against what is termed 
 the "Puritan Sabbath"; b ut we had better have som e 
 of the old-fashioned Puritanism r ather than the hell-born 
 Impuritanism of this age! Better even the rigid Blue 
 taws ot' New tLngland — iT it comes to a choice between 
 the two things — than the lax habits of to-day, which 
 have transformed the Sabbath from a holy day, first to 
 a holiday, and then from that to a hollow day — a day 
 of sin and self-indulgence, and worldliness! 
 
i68 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 SABBATH OBSERVANCE AND SECULAR SUCCESS 
 
 The Sabbath again is a necessity for physical well- 
 being, without which no abiding temporal success is pos- 
 sible. The effort was made during the French Revolu- 
 tion to substitute the plan of one day's rest in ten, in- 
 stead of one day's rest in seven; but the results were 
 disastrous. 
 
 Dr. William D. Love says: 
 
 "Laws for rest are stationed all along the physical na- 
 ture. The lungs rest after every breath we take. The 
 blood vessels rest between the heart beatings. The nerves 
 and brain will have rest, and will revenge themselves upon 
 us, if we cut short the supply. The ordaining of day 
 and night to follow each other in quick succession through 
 all the ages of the world was a merciful appointment of 
 God. Without it the human species would probably have 
 become extinct at a very early period of time. But ex- 
 perience and observation have shown that the rest of 
 night and all forms of daily and nightly rest put together 
 are insufficient for the highest end of man's physical well- 
 being. There must be days as well as nights of rest." 
 
 Even dumb brutes are subject to this universal law 
 of nature. The superintendent of one of the great car 
 companies of London stated to the British Association 
 for the Advancement of Science, that his company, by 
 not working the horses on Sunday, made a saving of 12 
 per cent. It is a well-known fact that the pioneers who 
 traveled across our continent in the early days found 
 that it paid to keep the Sabbath. We are told that those 
 who rested themselves and their horses on the Sabbath 
 reached the Pacific earlier than those who traveled the 
 seven days in the week. A professor of hygiene in Leip- 
 sic University said, "If religion calls the seventh day the 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE 169 
 
 Day of the Lord, the hygienist will call Sunday the day 
 of man." 
 
 When the great war broke out, as we all know, Eng- 
 land was not prepared, and the leaders of England sup- 
 posed that it was necessary to lengthen the hours of 
 labor and to work employees all day Sunday that thereby 
 more munitions might be turned out. I read with inter- 
 est the report of the English Commission on the Welfare 
 of Munition Employees. Their investigation demon- 
 strated the fact that the output of munitions was not 
 satisfactory under this plan of excessively long hours. 
 The report showed that, after the hours were reduced, 
 and when the Sabbath work was abandoned, the em- 
 ployees turned out more munitions than they did under 
 the old plan. That proves again that God's law and 
 man's best interest are always one. This is one reason 
 why Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, wrote a 
 message on November 8th for the Thirtieth Anniversary 
 of the Lord's Day Alliance of the United States, as 
 follows : 
 
 **The world has learned, even in war, that Sabbath 
 Observance is not only a Christian duty, but an industrial 
 necessity. We have been fighting for eighteen months 
 to guarantee the civilization of which the Nazarene was 
 the inspiration, and any relaxation of the observance of 
 the Sabbath of Christ would lessen the American morale." 
 
 Henry Van Dyke says: 
 
 "The preservation of the Lord's Day for the higher 
 and nobler purposes of man is one of the most important 
 issues of the after-war work which the world must face." 
 
 The American working people have as great a stake 
 in this question of Sabbath observance, therefore, as 
 
I70 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 have the leaders of the churches. Commercial interests, 
 for selfish ends, are seeking to legalize on Sunday the 
 operation of "non-essential" industries. Already nearly 
 four million laborers are at work every Sunday, half or 
 more of whom should be released. For example, 1 50,000 
 caddies are on the golf links every Sunday in season, 
 tempted away from Sunday school by men (many of 
 them church members), who for selfish Sunday pleasure 
 are robbing the boys of moral and religious opportunity 
 and training. We must fight earnestly against these 
 abuses; and what a vigorous fight will accomplish is 
 illustrated by the movement which brought about the 
 closing of the first- and second-class post offices on Sun- 
 day, which means Sunday rest for 100,000 letter carriers 
 and clerks. 
 
 The forces of labor, therefore, should stand with the 
 church and battle for this vital necessity of one day's 
 rest in seven. Well did Rabbi Hirsch, of Temple Israel, 
 Chicago, say : "The Sabbath sentiment has thrown 
 around the American workman the rampart of protec- 
 tion. It has given him what no other laboring man on 
 earth has — the feeling that on one day out of seven he 
 is a free man, free from the shackles of slavery." In the 
 light of these truths it must be apparent that the best in- 
 terests of all our people, even at the practical point of 
 business efficiency, is at stake In these great issues. Sab- 
 bath observance is indeed the highest form of social 
 sanity. 
 
 THE SABBATH A NATIONAL NECESSITY 
 
 This leads me to say that the inspirations of patriot- 
 ism as well as the interests of religion should lead us 
 rightly to observe the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath is a 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE 171 
 
 national necessity. Whatever is for the physical, mental, 
 moral and spiritual good of the people is for the good 
 of the nation. "Righteousness exalteth a nation,*' and 
 without obedience to the laws of God, there can be no 
 true national righteousness. If we would see our coun- 
 try continuingly and increasingly great, then we must 
 dig again the wells from which our fathers drank, and 
 learn to walk again in the old paths. The true greatness 
 of a nation cannot be measured by successful wars, 
 towering office buildings, mighty navies and armies, piled 
 up treasures of wealth, or a triumphant commercial 
 system. 
 
 "Sad fares the land^ 
 
 To hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates, 
 
 And men decay." 
 
 IManhood is the measure of national greatness; and 
 we should covet that * 'righteousness which exalteth a na- 
 tion," above every material gift and power; for then the 
 "heritage of Jacob" will be ours, and the rich blessings 
 of the good God will rest upon our beloved land. 
 
 Not only is the command of God on the side of Sab- 
 bath observ^ance, but the inspirations of His promises are 
 also ours when we obey. Some ask to-day : "Why should 
 there be laws to fortify the Christian Sabbath, when 
 there are many people in this free land who observe an- 
 other day?" We answer that by saying that from its 
 foundation this country has been recognized as a Chris- 
 tian land. Those who have come to us of alien race or 
 faith ought to realize that the majority have a right to 
 rule, and they ought to show their appreciation of the 
 blessings which our Christian civilization has brought 
 
172 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 to them by cooperating with us to preserve inviolate that 
 institution which is one of the main pillars in the temple 
 of our national greatness, namely, the Sabbath Day! 
 
 The Christian Sabbath had its origin in the resurrec- 
 tion of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To honor 
 Him and to memorialize the blessed truth of His resur- 
 rection, the Sabbath was changed from the last to the 
 first day of the week. Our Christian Sabbath, therefore, 
 has in it not only the law of the Old Testament, but the 
 gospel of the new ; and resting upon it is the hope of all 
 the future. To desecrate the Lord's day is not only to 
 violate the law of rest, but to treat with contempt the 
 resurrection of Christ. 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE OLD FASHION 
 
 Oh, how we need to come back to the paths which our 
 fathers trod! I am no pessimist concerning the future, 
 but I see, I see clearly, some of the danger points that 
 are confronting us to-day. We need to follow God's 
 guidance. We need to-day, as we need nothing else, to 
 return to the old-fashioned habits which made our fathers 
 great and our mothers good. The age at every point is 
 living too fast. We are grinding ourselves to pieces, 
 body, mind and soul. 
 
 We need the old-fashioned home, where children were 
 taught to obey their parents; where there was a family 
 altar; and where the members of the home found their 
 chief satisfaction within the home, instead of in the 
 dance hall, the theater, the card room, and other even 
 more questionable places of amusement. We may be 
 able to grow a sturdy generation upon a diet of downy 
 beds, overheated houses, fancy food, lazy hours, moving 
 
SABBATH OBSERVANCE 173 
 
 picture shows, ice cream cones, chewing gum, cigarettes, 
 and tango dances; but if we do, we will accomplish the 
 supreme miracle of the ages. 
 
 We need the old-fashioned church, where prophets 
 of God stood in the pulpit instead of animated question 
 marks, and where the everlasting Gospel of the Son of 
 God was preached, instead of a thousand foolish fads. 
 And above all, we need the old-fashioned Lord's Day 
 in which the plow rested in the furrow and the sweet 
 Sabbath bells sounded across the silent fields and the 
 quiet cities — calling the people from the feverish activities 
 of the week and turning their thoughts to those divine 
 and heavenly realities,- which constitute at last the true 
 life of man! 
 
 By some means, if our city and country are to con- 
 tinue in health and safety, then these true and tried 
 ideals of our fathers must be saved to the race. 
 
 Particularly is this true of our own rushing city. The 
 foundation of New York's greatness was not laid by men 
 who frequented cabarets and violated the Sabbath. The 
 foundation of the greatness of this city and of this na- 
 tion was laid by men who believed the Bible; who prayed; 
 who attended the sanctuary; and who kept the Sabbath 
 Day holy; and by women who did not wear their com- 
 plexions in the bureau drcmier; who were not postmasters 
 in bridge whist, nor iinislied artists in the fox trot, the 
 tango, and the bunny hug; women who would not brook 
 familiarities from men; who found their homes more 
 attractive than the playhouses; who htew more about 
 their Bibles than about Ibsen; who did not qualify for 
 high society by a record in the divorce courts or a scandal 
 in the newspapers; and who would rather own a baby 
 than a pug dog! 
 
174 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Some say that we are making great moral progress 
 to-day ; but t his is ope n to serious question. We need 
 to beware oFthe deadly danger that while getting rid of 
 the more repulsive and spectacular elements of public 
 wrongdoing, we do not, through a relaxation of moral 
 effort, allow a great increase in clandestine social evils 
 and secret sins. 
 
 The great question at last is, not whether society is 
 more refined and orderly upon the surface, or even 
 whether it is more moral as measured by human stand- 
 ards : the great question is, Is there an increase of vital 
 Godliness f For without that there can be no true prog- 
 ress and no genuine morality. Morality without religion 
 always fails. Greece and Rome had splendid art and 
 literature, refined and elegant social customs, high ethical 
 codes, and noble philosophical principles, but those 
 civilizations rotted and died because they did not have a 
 knowledge of the true God. And what New York needs 
 to-day more than anything else is for the preachers, edi- 
 tors, parents, and all other forces of righteousness, to 
 unite for the reestablishment of a right home life among 
 the people, for the proper rearing of children, and for 
 the recreation of that reverence for God and His Word 
 which will give us back the old-fashioned American Sab- 
 bath, in its truest and highest form, instead of the "Con- 
 tinental Sabbath" which has rapidly undermined religion 
 in our great cities, and is now leading toward the moral 
 chaos which has wrecked modern Europe! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 WILL NEW YORK BE DESTROYED IF IT DOES 
 
 NOT REPENT?* 
 
 In His mercy and grace God gave His prophet, Jonah, 
 a second chance, after chastening and purging him 
 through suffering, and thus preparing him for his great 
 mission. And what was the message that the prophet 
 brought to the wicked city? It was a message of judg- 
 ment. In verse four of the third chapter of the story we 
 read : ''And Jonah began to enter into the city, a day's 
 journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days and 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown." Notice, too, that this 
 message came from God. In the second verse of this 
 chapter God said, "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great 
 city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." 
 
 God's message, then, to the wicked city is the message 
 of warning and of impending doom. Many in this age 
 have gotten a mushy idea of God. They seem to think 
 that God is an amiable, easy-going, spineless sort of 
 Being, who will wink at any iniquity rather than cause 
 any one inconvenience or trouble. But God is no such 
 Being as they imagine. God is not a good-natured 
 grandmother, pampering and spoiling the children. No! 
 He is the righteous Ruler of the universe. "Shall not 
 the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. i8 \2$.) God's 
 government is founded on morality, and therefore He 
 ♦This sermon was preached while the war was still in progress. 
 
 175 
 
176 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 will not wink at iniquity, nor allow the ungodly to go un- 
 whipped of justice. There is no message that this easy- 
 going age needs like the message of judgment, and God's 
 true prophets need to sound forth the warning loud and 
 clear, even as Jonah did to wicked Nineveh. 
 
 New York does not seem to realize the solemn 
 grandeur of the days in which we live. When the great 
 German drive was at its height last Spring and the out- 
 look for the Allied cause was dark in the extreme, Presi- 
 dent Wilson, following the example of President Lin- 
 coln in the supreme crisis of the Civil War, called for 
 a day of fasting and prayer for victory. The annual 
 Memorial Day was set aside for that sacred purpose. I 
 studied conditions in New York that day, going from 
 hotel to hotel and club to club, and also making inquiries, 
 as far as I could, among friends as to conditions in the 
 homes of the people. It would seem that instead of fast- 
 ing that day it was made a day of feasting. The tables 
 were piled high with luxurious food, though half the 
 world was in the shadow of starvation, and I saw men 
 and women in the hotels, cabarets and clubs gorging 
 themselves with luxurious viands and expensive drinks. 
 The churches were empty and deserted, but every 
 theater in the city was packed to overflowing. I saw 
 long lines of people standing before the box offices in 
 many places, almost scrambling for the privilege of 
 getting in. In the world's greatest crisis the President 
 had called the city to fasting and prayer, but instead of 
 that, New York, on that sacred holiday, seemed to have 
 turned out en masse to giggle over "Bing Bang," "The 
 Follies," 'The Kiss Burglar," "The Rainbow Girl," "Flo- 
 Flo," "Rock-a-Bye Baby" and other rag-time monstrosi- 
 ties that were upon the boards. 
 
WILL NEW YORK BE DESTROYED? 177 
 
 The following Sunday I put the matter to the test be- 
 fore the congregation assembled at night in Calvary 
 Church. There were about 1,000 people present, and we 
 found that there were only six people out oi the 1,000 
 who could say that they had followed the President's 
 suggestion and complied with his request. 
 
 On that same holiday in several places I saw half- 
 drunken men and flushed and giddy women coming out 
 of the cabarets, piling into automobiles and into each 
 other's laps in positions of flagrant indecency in broad 
 daylight on the streets of the city. 
 
 GLUTTONY IN THE CABARETS AND HOTELS 
 
 Facts recently made public prove beyond dispute that 
 the people spent $7,500,000 in the cabarets of this city 
 during one month, and that in the face of war conditions 
 and the request of our national administration that we 
 use great economy and frugality in our eating at the 
 present time. The spending of that amount of money 
 in a day of war in any such way was a sinful and un- 
 patriotic waste, to say the least of it. 
 
 I attended a few nights ago a banquet and entertain- 
 ment given by the New York society of one of our 
 southern states, in honor of the wounded soldiers from 
 that state who were in the hospitals of New York. A 
 number of these young men who were able to attend 
 were brought to the banquet hall, and after the dinner, a 
 ballet troupe of young women, dressed in tights, gave an 
 entertainment. I have had the privilege of visiting many 
 wounded soldiers in the hospitals, and have noted with 
 great joy the deep earnestness of spirit which these 
 young men, who have faced death for high ideals in 
 
178 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Europe, are now manifesting. Not only their Chap- 
 lains and other religious leaders, but the military au- 
 thorities, from General Pershing down, have been try- 
 ing most earnestly to teach the men ideals of purity and 
 a right attitude toward womanhood. And yet, at this 
 home-coming entertainment, these boys, many of whom 
 had come from country homes in the South, by arrange- 
 ment of the committee in charge, were confronted by 
 this group of young girls, painted and powdered, who 
 were paid so much a head to display their physical forms 
 in public. On the other side, these men were taught the 
 ideal of purity, but when they landed here they were 
 given a pagan and indecent show. That seems to be 
 New York's idea of "a good time!" 
 
 THE DOOM OF WICKED CITIES 
 
 New York should take these things seriously and 
 earnestly to heart. Have we stopped to think that there 
 has never been a Godless city in the history of the human 
 race that was not eventually destroyed? Where is 
 Babylon with its hanging gardens? Where is Nineveh 
 with its vaunting pride? Where are Sodom and 
 Gomorrah with their unspeakable infamies? Where are 
 Memphis and Palmyra and Tyre and Sidon with their 
 sins? They are all heaps of dust to-day! The wild 
 jackals make their lairs where their magnificence once 
 gleamed in the sunlight. Why were these great cities of 
 the past destroyed? Why is it that the glory has de- 
 parted from the Attic plain and the yEgean shores ? Why 
 has the greatness of ancient Athens gone glimmering like 
 a dream? How pathetic is its history! Once it was 
 called, because of its charms, 'The Eye of the World," 
 
WILL NEW YORK BE DESTROYED? 179 
 
 but its beauty has faded forever. Its temple of Theseus 
 is in ruins. Its Parthenon is the home of the bat and 
 the owl, and even the tombs of its heroes are but as the 
 dust which they were vainly intended to commemorate ! 
 Why? 
 
 Why is it that "The Eternal City," too, has fallen, and 
 that the glory of imperial Rome has perished from the 
 earth? Its Coloseum is moldering away. The pathetic 
 silence of its forum is unbroken by the eager elo- 
 quence of its great orators. No triumphal procession 
 passes along its streets. No golden throated bugle sounds 
 the thrilling tocsin of war, and the tread of the Rom.an 
 legion shakes the earth no more forever! Why? Why 
 is it that these majestic achievements of men, these great 
 cities of the past ages, have been wiped literally from 
 the face of the earth? There is but one answer. It is 
 written: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all 
 the nations that forget God" (Ex. 9:17). These cities 
 forgot God. In the pride of their material glory, in 
 their selfishness and their sins they turned away from 
 their Maker, and his righteous judgment and his holy 
 wrath turned against them. 
 
 WILL NEW YORK BE DESTROYED? 
 
 You ask me if I really think that such a fate as this 
 could ever fall upon the great and splendid metropolis 
 of America — our own proud and beloved New York, 
 and I answer, yes! It not only could fall upon New 
 York, but it will fall upon it — the wrath of God — unless 
 it also puts on the sackcloth of repentance and turns 
 from its folly and its sins. 
 
 There never was a moment in history so solemn as the 
 
i8o THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 present moment or one more pregnant with eternal des- 
 tiny. Our easy-going optimism will not bring us by the 
 righteous wrath of a just and holy God. Listen ! Two 
 days before San Francisco was destroyed an editorial 
 appeared in its leading newspapers proudly pointing out 
 the greatness of that city and the matchless promise of 
 its future. The editorial rehearsed the achievements of 
 that wonderful metropolis of the far West; how it had 
 come up from small beginnings and gone on from 
 achievement to achievement until it had taken its place 
 with the great cities of the world. And then the 
 editorial closed with a reference to the future and 
 said, ''Nothing can now hold our city back from an 
 im.mediate and matchless success.'* Yet within forty- 
 eight hours after that prophecy was written San Fran- 
 cisco was a pile of smoking ruins — all of its proud beauty 
 leveled in the dust! I stood shortly afterwards and 
 looked out upon the miles of wreck and ruin where the 
 beautiful city had once flaunted its proud banners to the 
 sky, and thought of that editorial and of the Weakness 
 and folly of man! 
 
 Was there no connection between the insufferable wick- 
 edness, which had become rampant in San Francisco, 
 and the doom that finally fell upon it? Political cor- 
 ruption flourished so flagrantly that, as shown later in 
 the courts, mayors, councils and legislatures were bought 
 up by graft money and used as the instruments of vice 
 and greed in the robbing of the rich and the exploitation 
 of the poor. Gambling flourished unrestrictedly, and the 
 seething immoralities of the ''Barbary Coast" smelled to 
 high heaven. The churches were all but deserted, and 
 the devil was in the saddle in San Francisco more notori- 
 ously than in any city on this continent. Say what you 
 
WILL NEW YORK BE DESTROYED? i8i 
 
 will about that catastrophe, the fact stands that San 
 Francisco has been subdued by sorrow and chastened by- 
 suffering, and at least the more glaring of its sins have 
 been banished from its borders. It has been rebuilt in 
 greater splendor and cleanness. 
 
 THE FORCES OF VICE 
 
 God's call is coming now to New York and to all 
 America. He called to us in the sinking of the Titanic, 
 and we would not heed. He is calling now in the thun- 
 ders of the world-war. Shall we hear? Do we realize 
 the solemn grandeur of the days in which we live? Do 
 we understand that the destiny of the human race for 
 hundreds of years to come is now in the balance? Can 
 we escape, then, the righteous judgment of God if in 
 this hour of humanity's Gethsemane we here in our great 
 American metropolis continue to live selfishly and upon 
 the glittering surface of things? Millions of our noble 
 men are making every sacrifice, even to death, on the 
 sea and in the trenches. Dare we, then, here in the 
 home land, luxuriate in soft living, fancy food and frivo- 
 lous amusement, when the breast of the world is being 
 torn by the arrows of war, and when humanity's heart 
 is bowed in grief and stricken with horror as never be- 
 fore in all the tides of time? Is it not a disgrace to us 
 that our churches, which ought to be filled with praying 
 people, are empty, while the playhouses, night after night 
 and Sunday too, are packed to suffocation, vice flaunts its 
 hideous form upon our streets, the dance halls are over- 
 crowded, God's holy day is despised and violated, and 
 men and women pay heavy fees for the mere privilege of 
 
1 82 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 gaining entrance into dives and cabarets, where they can 
 eat and drink and dance the hours away ? 
 
 New York in a very true sense sets the pace for all 
 America, and the time has come when New York should 
 wash its garments and make them clean, and purge its 
 borders of folly and sin, or God's righteous judgment 
 will surely fall upon it. May the city heed God's 
 warnings and repent before it is too late! May it be- 
 ware of false optimism and self-deception! May it take 
 to heart the saying, "Pride goeth before destruction, and 
 a haughty spirit before a fall" (Prov. 16-18). May its 
 people not be numbered with those of whom Paul said : 
 "When they shall say peace and safety, sudden destruc- 
 tion Cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with 
 child, and they shall not escape" (i Thess. 5:3). May 
 it heed the terrible words of Jesus Christ when he said, 
 "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 
 13:3) ; and that other even sterner saying, "He that be- 
 ing often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be 
 destroyed, and that without remedy" (Prov. 29:1). 
 
 god's pleading with the city 
 
 God does not threaten either a city or an individual in 
 the sense of bullying, but he does in faithfulness warn, 
 and then in fidelity punish, when the warning is not 
 heeded, and his holy laws are disregarded. Europe had 
 an opportunity to walk in paths of true progress and 
 righteousness, but Europe chose the other path that led 
 away from God, and is suffering now the consequences 
 of its own folly and sin. 
 
 This is a day of judgment upon a wicked world; and 
 New York will have to pay for its lightness, its frivolity 
 
WILL NEW YORK BE DESTROYED? 183 
 
 and its sins. Gcxi is still in the stage of warning and 
 pleading with her. Jesus wept over sinful Jerusalem, 
 and exclaimed: ''Oh, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Thou that 
 killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto 
 thee, how often would I have gathered thy children to- 
 gether, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her 
 wings, and ye would not? Behold your house is left unto 
 you desolate!'* (Matt. 13:37-38.) He prophesied that 
 Jerusalem would be destroyed because of its sins, and his 
 prophecy was literally fulfilled. 
 
 NEW YORK LEADING IN EVERYTHING BUT MORALS 
 
 Oh, that we might see this great metropolis of ours 
 turning to God in sincerity ! Why is it that New York 
 leads America in everything except morals? It leads in 
 commerce. It leads in art and literature. It leads in fi- 
 nances. It leads in education. But its worldliness, vice and 
 intemperance are a fearfully bad example to all the Na- 
 tion. In the great moral movements of recent years it has 
 too often been a laggard and not a leader. More than a 
 dozen of our American states have ratified the federal 
 prohibition amendment. Why has New York been the 
 great shining exception by its refusal to ratify? Would 
 to God that our pulpits and our press might lead it into 
 paths of purity and spiritual power, so that its noble life 
 would not only safeguard the growing generation within 
 its own gates, but would become an example of right- 
 eousness and Godly power to all America and the world ! 
 
 GOD HAS A SON IN THE WAR 
 
 I Speak thus earnestly of these practical things be- 
 cause at last the practical things have a vital influence 
 
1 84 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 upon all our religious interests. A little boy was walking 
 out a while ago with his father. It was the beauti- 
 ful sunset hour. Against the soft red of the afterglow 
 in the sky, one star began to shine, increasing in luster 
 until it gleamed in golden glory. The little lad noticed 
 it and exclaimed : "Look, father ! God is hanging out his 
 service flag. He must have a son in the war." 
 
 Yes, God has a Son in the war! Christ is bleeding 
 again on every battlefield of Europe. The greatest stakes 
 at last in the war are the interests of His kingdom. Un- 
 less that is prospered and advanced by the war, all our 
 material and intellectual victories will be of little avail! 
 Let us help Christ gain the full fruitage from victory in 
 the war by cleaning up New York, that it may lead this 
 Nation into paths of purity and power! 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 JUDGMENT BECAUSE OF PAGAN NEW YEAR 
 AND PEACE CELEBRATIONS 
 
 Sometimes it is asked, "Will there really be a Judg- 
 ment Day, as the Bible pictures it?" Can we doubt it 
 for a moment? The fact of judgment runs through the 
 whole creation. Thomas Jefferson said : 
 
 "A man passes for what he is worth. Very idle is all 
 curiosity of other people's estimate of us, and idle is all 
 fear of remaining unknown. The world is full of judg- 
 ment days, and in every assembly that a man enters, in 
 every action that he attempts, he is gauged and stamped." 
 
 We find this truth everywhere. The farmer can idle 
 in the spring of the year. He can sit around spinning 
 yarns and smoking his pipe, and pass by in forgetfulness 
 and neglect the seed time; but there is coming for him 
 a judgment day in the fall, when there will be no har- 
 vest, no food for his family and no provender for his 
 stock. He reaps there only the results of his own folly. 
 The merchant can be careless about his accounts and 
 negligent of his business, but for him there comes a judg- 
 ment day, when the sheriff shall nail his notice to his 
 door and close up the business. The student in college 
 can idle along and neglect his studies, and spend his 
 father's money in high living, and for a while he can 
 get by with this. He can bluff out some sort of show- 
 
 185 
 
1 86 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 ing in the classroom, but there comes for him at last a 
 judgment day. The examination period arrives, and it 
 is disclosed then, to professors and students alike, that 
 he knows nothing, and judgment is passed upon him. 
 
 It is ever as Jefferson says, "The world is full of judg- 
 ment days." Must we not have, then, a final judgment? 
 Because this is a moral universe ruled by a righteous 
 God, and because we are free and responsible moral 
 agents, therefore, the thought of a final great assize, in 
 which personally and inciividually we will be judged and 
 our lives will be passed upon, for weal or woe, is inevita- 
 bly and eternally true! 
 
 THE BIBLE TEACHING 
 
 The Bible teaching upon this great theme is that the 
 judgment will not occur upon a single day, as some have 
 supposed. It extends over a long period of time. Yet, 
 in a very true sense, it is nevertheless one event because, 
 although stretching over years, it is that time in the his- 
 tory of the world during which all the children of earth 
 will finally stand before the judgment bar of God. There 
 are a number of expressions in the Bible designating that 
 great and awful time. It is called ''the day of judg- 
 ment" ; ''the day of the Lord" ; "the last day" ; "the great 
 day"; and sometimes simply "the day." It will be the 
 time of "the vindication of Jehovah." Because of God's 
 patience, and the fact that human destiny is being worked 
 out under forms of free will, things have occurred all 
 through history which seem to reflect either on the holi- 
 ness or the power of God. The question often arises, 
 in the face of terrible events, "If God is good and all- 
 powerful, why does He permit this?" But the time is 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 187 
 
 coming when God will no longer restrain Himself. The 
 day of mercy will end and the day of wrath in all its 
 fullness will come in, in which both God's righteousness 
 and power will be vindicated before the whole earth. 
 
 The object of this entire period of judgment is not 
 only to render justice but to finally purge the earth of all 
 unrighteousness and to restore purity and peace, as God 
 originally planned when He created man and put him 
 into the Garden of Eden. The judgment, therefore, is 
 not merely a day of wrath and of the vindication of 
 righteousness and justice, but its supreme aim is the 
 transformation of all things from a condition of sin, 
 disease, and death into a condition of universal holiness, 
 health and happiness. 
 
 When I was a child I used to wonder about the judg- 
 ment "books." In imagination, I saw a great ledger, 
 one page for the record of our sins and the opposite page 
 for the record of our virtues and good deeds; and I 
 thought that God at the judgment would simply balance 
 the books, and give us our award according to whether 
 the majority of our deeds was upon the credit or the 
 debit side. I no longer think of it in that childish way, 
 and yet there will be a judgment book. It will be the 
 human race, and each life will be a page. You, my 
 friend, are a leaf in the ledger of God ! And how very 
 easy it will be for the all-seeing eye of the Judge to 
 read the record! Either the page will be washed clean 
 by the blood of Christ, or else it will be black and foul 
 with the stains of unforgiven, unatoned-for sin! Well 
 did even such a man as Elbert Hubbard say before his 
 death : 
 
 "Man is a tablet upon which is written his every word 
 and thought and deed. He is the record of himself. The 
 
1 88 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 record is the man, and the man is the record. It will be 
 easy to reckon accounts at the Last Great Day. The Judge 
 will only have to unfold the heart and look : All is graven 
 there, — nothing was ever hidden, nor can it be. *God is 
 not mocked/ *' 
 
 IS NEW YORK RIPE FOR JUDGMENT? 
 
 Ours is an easy-going and optimistic age. We do not 
 like to be disturbed with unpleasant thoughts, and yet 
 if we are wise men and women, we will give due con- 
 sideration to these things, in the light of the tre- 
 mendous times in which we live. There has never been 
 such a day as this before in the world's history. This 
 is a time already of judgment upon a wicked world. The 
 whole world is now standing in the shadow of anarchy 
 and starvation. Unless we repent and turn to God, we 
 will have to pay the price of our folly and sins. And 
 New York, let us understand, is no exception to these 
 great truths of God. Though she exalt herself to the 
 very heavens, she shall be laid low, unless she repents 
 and turns from her wicked ways. We have become so 
 vain to-day over our scientific achievements and educa- 
 tion and all that, that we have tended to condescend even 
 to God. We tend to look down upon Him from our 
 lordly human heights. But what folly it is! "He who 
 sitteth in the heavens shall laugh!" May He not laugh 
 at us ! And let us well know that God's arm is not short- 
 ened and that He has the means, even of temporal judg- 
 ment, in His almighty hands. • Have you ever thought 
 of what a good husky tidal wave would do to "little Old 
 New York," as we call her? Have you ever imagined 
 the Woolworth "sky-scraper'* butting headlong into the 
 Equitable Building, through such an earthquake as 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 189 
 
 that which laid San Francisco's proud beauty in the 
 dust ? Have you ever imagined the MetropoHtan Tower 
 crashing over on Madison Square Garden some time, 
 when there were tens of thousands of people in there at 
 some worldly, godless celebration on the Lord's Day? 
 
 Ah yes, don't worry about God's not having the means 
 for judgment, even in this world! We did not take 
 very much to heart His warning given us through the 
 great war, and here came along a new, mysterious dis- 
 ease — the Influenza — ^that baffled all the doctors and then 
 swept away more of our people than were lost in the 
 war ! We got off too lightly from the war here in Amer- 
 ica, and if we don't mend our ways some other judgment 
 will fall upon us. 
 
 UNPOPULAR PREACHING NEEDED 
 
 One trouble with New York is that you are too much 
 pleased with your preachers. You have said to them, 
 like the people in the old Bible day, "Prophesy unto us 
 smooth things," and they have done it. Many of the 
 preachers themselves have lost their grip on God's truth 
 because of the materialistic and skeptical philosophy of 
 the age. They have compromised with the world. They 
 have cut the Bible up into fragments with their "crit- 
 icism," and they are giving to the people a cold hash of 
 question marks and doubts, instead of the gospel of Jesus 
 Christ. They are giving them fancy little sermonettes 
 on a hundred foolish fads, instead of the true and holy 
 Word of God! 
 
 You say that you do not believe in the appeal to fear, 
 and that you do not care for Puritanism; but we had 
 better fear God, my friends, than fall into hell through 
 
190 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 our folly and false optimism; and we had better have 
 some of the old time Puritanism that made our fathers 
 great and our mothers good, rather than the hell-bom 
 impuritanism that is wrecking our modern life! 
 
 I mean no unkindness and no uncharitableness when 
 I ask: Are the preachers of New York asleep? Why do 
 we not hear their voices thundering from their pulpits 
 against the wrongs of to-day, and warning the people 
 against judgment to come? In such times as these, with 
 the mighty world-wide issues at stake in the conditions 
 of to-day, the preacher who is content to drivel along 
 with his smug aloofness and his pious platitudes, and to 
 come to the presence of his Maker at last with only the 
 record of having pleased a few well-to-do people and built 
 up a good "golf" score will deserve the scorn of men 
 and the wrath of God ! 
 
 PAGAN PEACE CELEBRATIONS 
 
 No thoughtful man who has the courage to speak his 
 convictions can look at conditions here in New York 
 without feeling that judgment is laid up for thig city 
 unless she turns away from her wicked ways. 
 
 We have got to face the fact that such celebrations as 
 have been recently held in this city are pagan to the core. 
 They are from hell and not from heaven. What thought- 
 ful eye could look upon the scenes that we witnessed upon 
 the streets of New York during the peace celebration, for 
 example, without profound sorrow and grave apprehen- 
 sions for the future ? When thousands upon thousands of 
 the people in this city took the peace celebration simply as 
 an occasion for breaking all of the bounds of propriety, 
 it should have caused the custodians of the moral life of 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 191 
 
 this city to earnestly protest; and yet not one word did 
 we hear from pulpit or press in condemnation. All up 
 and down our streets we saw girls still in short dresses — 
 girls in their teens — trooping along with the arms of 
 men around their waists. We saw men and women, in- 
 cluding these very young girls, hugging and kissing each 
 other upon the streets of our city, often in postures that 
 were disgraceful. And this was not simply a few scat- 
 tered cases of girls kissing soldiers and sailors. The 
 night of the great peace celebration the highways were 
 full of such incidents from block to block, and it is said 
 that there was open shame upon our streets. Is New 
 York a Christian city, or a pagan city? From such 
 things as these we must conclude that she is the latter. 
 
 And now, on the past New Year's night, the climax in 
 our American celebration of victory and peace was 
 reached. And how was it reached ? Not as a Godly peo- 
 ple should have reached such a climax — with songs and 
 prayers of thanksgiving to God for deliverance — but the 
 climax was reached in a wild orgy of eating and drink- 
 ing and evil indulgence, in which millions of dollars, in 
 aggregate, were poured out in riotous living. 
 
 Would we not think that a truly Christian people 
 would have celebrated in a very different way from this ? 
 Time is one of God's greatest and most sacred gifts to 
 man. In it and by it we live and grow, and through It 
 we have our opportunity to serve, and to strive to leave 
 the world a better place in which to live before we pass 
 from the stage of action and make place for another gen- 
 eration. To welcome a New Year of time, therefore, we 
 ought to have not only the spirit of joyful gladness, but of 
 deep and earnest purpose and prayer, and especially should 
 this be true of the year following the great war. 
 
192 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 THE MAYOR^S NEW YEAR PROCLAMATION 
 
 There never was a moment in history so solemn as 
 the present moment, or one more pregnant with eternal 
 destiny. Ten millions of human beings have just been 
 destroyed in this war. They have been gassed and hacked 
 and blown to pieces, and their bodies are now rotting in 
 the depths of the earth or under the sea. Ten million 
 homes are in mourning. We are standing in the shadow 
 of ten million human graves, and the darker shadow of 
 universal hunger and anarchy hangs over the earth. But 
 in the face of all this, how did we celebrate God*s gift 
 of a new year of time — with its sacred opportunity for 
 life and service to the race? We celebrated it by gorg- 
 ing ourselves with food, getting drunk, and going on a 
 carouse! 
 
 That seemed to be what was officially expected of us, 
 because our Mayor not only extended the saloon licenses 
 so that liquor could be sold until 2 130 in the morning — 
 and that really meant all night in many places — ^but in 
 announcing this extension he practically invited the city 
 to go on a drunk. I do not wish to criticize our Mayor 
 unduly, because he has enough trouble just at this time 
 without the preachers jumping on him; and yet surely 
 something ought to be said about his announcement in 
 connection with the New Year celebration. In connec- 
 tion with his statement that the saloons could stay open 
 he said: 
 
 "This is an unusual j^^ear. There never has been such 
 a time for celebration as this year. The end of the war 
 and the fact that the country is in such shape, and condi- 
 tions are improving is sufficient reason for making an 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 193 
 
 exception this year. We can't bottle up the enthusiasm 
 of the people this year." 
 
 In other words, he practically gave the official O.K. 
 to the city's getting drunk. He opened the saloons and 
 then gave our youth carte blanche to "go the limit." And 
 they went the limit. Rome in her palmiest days of de- 
 generation did not see sights worse than could be seen 
 in New York and other large cities on that night. I 
 speak in the light not only of what I have seen personally, 
 but what has been told me by reliable friends at first- 
 hand. The scenes of eating, drinking and dancing, the 
 cases where girls got so drunk that they slipped down 
 under the tables, out of the chairs ; cases where army of- 
 ficers, in the wild delirium of dance and drink, threw girls 
 on their shoulders, and went careering around the room 
 with them, making an indecent display, — these things 
 constitute the danger signals of precisely the conditions 
 that destroyed all of the other great civilizations of the 
 past. While they are not universal, thank God, in our 
 country, our great cities nevertheless "set the pace," and 
 these things are symptomatic of tendencies throughout 
 our country. 
 
 When the news came to London that the war was over, 
 Lloyd George immediately had Parliament adjourn so 
 that they could go in a body to Westminster Abbey for 
 praise and prayer. What a contrast with this, when our 
 Mayor not only threw open the saloons but practically 
 said to the youth of our city, "Go to it!" 
 
 PAINTED WOMEN AND DRINK 
 
 These things mean judgment upon us. When we stop 
 to think of it seriously, ought God to pass by such things? 
 
194 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 If He is really God, then ought He not to pass judgment? 
 
 When he looked down upon New York on New Year's 
 night what did He see? The churches full of grateful 
 people, upon their knees thanking Him for peace and 
 blessings brought during the old year, and asking Him 
 for guidance and grace to live the New Year aright? 
 No, He did not see that ! He looked down and saw the 
 churches closed and dark, and in the few that were open, 
 little handfuls of people. He looked down and saw 
 the theaters packed to the doors by people, some of whom 
 had paid as high as ten dollars each to get in and have 
 the privilege of gazing at pink tights, and applauding 
 salacious jokes! God looked down and saw the hotels 
 and cabarets jammed with people, spending on an av- 
 erage of ten dollars each, to eat and drink and dance and 
 watch silly women kick up their heels. Instead of see- 
 ing the homes of New York with mothers and fathers 
 and children around the fireside praying, as in the olden 
 days, or gathered around the piano with friends, sing- 
 ing the pure, sweet old songs of the past, God looked 
 down and saw dogs in the cradles where babies ought to 
 be, the homes empty, and the places of resort filled with 
 thoughtless men and painted women and girls, many of 
 them only about half dressed, smoking cigarettes and 
 drinking cocktails! 
 
 My God, oh, men and women, how far we have gotten 
 on the road toward hell here in this great metropolis of 
 America! The very advertisements in the papers were 
 suggestive and shocking on New Year's Eve, to say noth- 
 ing of the performances which were given in hotels, 
 cabarets and theaters. And what God saw as He looked 
 down into the saloons and the resorts of vice, and the 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 195 
 
 homes where sensuality reigns, only He Himself could 
 tell! 
 
 We will have to answer to Him at the judgment for 
 all of these things. What are the mothers and fathers 
 of this city, who allow their young daughters to go to 
 the hotels and cabarets, and often to get drunk there, 
 going to say about it? Do these parents of New York 
 imagine for a moment that they will escape the judgment 
 of God for the awful neglect of their children? 
 
 RICH GOADING THE POOR TO REVOLT 
 
 And what shall we say of the folly of the rich and 
 well-to-do elements in New York's population, that in 
 such times as these would give to this city and country 
 such an exhibition as this celebration on New Year's 
 night? Some time ago facts were brought out before 
 our Board of Aldermen showing that in one month $7,- 
 500,000 were spent in the cabarets of New York. What, 
 then, must have been the sum spent on New Year's night 
 in this riot of drunkenness and gluttony, to celebrate 
 God's gift of a new year of time to the race? Unless 
 the rich and well-to-do elements in our country awake 
 from their vain dreaming and face facts as they are, 
 and unless they develop some sense of social responsi- 
 bility, nothing under heaven can keep back trouble from 
 America. Hell has broken loose in Russia, primarily 
 because the rich and aristocratic elements of that coun- 
 try for centuries ground down and exploited the igno- 
 rant, helpless masses, and set before them, not the ex- 
 ample of brotherhood and helpfulness, but the example 
 of heartless cruelty, and just such riotous living as we 
 are seeing here in our own beloved land. 
 
196 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 Some of the wisest minds of our country to-day are 
 warning our people against these dangers, and yet they 
 still rush heedlessly and thoughtlessly on. The great so- 
 cial chasm between the very rich and the very poor is 
 widening every day, and such idle feasting and such 
 waste of money as New York saw on New Year's Eve, 
 while there are multitudes of the poor in our city under- 
 fed and scantily clad, and miserably housed, does not 
 make for social peace and brotherhood; rather it makes 
 for the growth of enmity and strife. We must give 
 heed to these things and learn to do justly, love mercy 
 and walk humbly with our God if we expect to save the 
 world from industrial autocracy and plutocracy on the 
 one hand, or anarchy and Bolshevism on the other. Oh, 
 that we may heed the warning that God gives ! For if 
 we do not, judgment will surely fall to the line and right- 
 eousness to the plummet, and the price of injustice and 
 folly will have to be paid to the full. 
 
 THE CHURCHES SITTING AT EASE 
 
 In the midst of these conditions, so pregnant with dan- 
 ger and woe, what are the churches of the living God 
 doing? Is not the indifference within the ranks of the 
 Christian people appalling? The modem church has let 
 the millions of the laboring people drift almost complete- 
 ly away. Great numbers of our Protestant churches in 
 New York close their doors for three or four months of 
 the year; and even in the height of the winter season, 
 where do we see the churches sounding the call of God 
 clear and strong, and reaching out their loving hands to 
 all the people, really to help them and to lift them up? 
 The ringing words of the late Bishop Potter, at the dedi- 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 197 
 
 cation of Grace Chapel in this city, apply not only to his 
 own church, but to all God's people. He said : 
 
 "The growth of wealth and of luxury, wicked, waste- 
 ful and wanton, as before God I declare that luxury to 
 be, has been matched step by step by a deepening and 
 deadening poverty which has left whole neighborhoods 
 of people practically without hope and without aspiration. 
 At such a time, for the church of God to sit still and be 
 content with theories of its duty outlawed by time and 
 long ago demonstrated to be grotesquely inadequate to 
 the demands of a living situation, this is to deserve the 
 scorn of men and the curse of God. Take my word for 
 it, men and brethren, unless you and I, and all those who 
 have any gift of stewardship of talents, or means of 
 whatsoever sort, are willing to get up out of our sloth 
 and ease and selfish dilettantism of service, and get down 
 among the people who are battling amid their poverty and 
 ignorance — young girls for their chastity, young men 
 for their better ideal of righteousness, old and young 
 alike for one clear ray of the immortal courage and the 
 immortal hope, then verily the church, — in its stately 
 splendor, its apostolic orders, its venerable ritual, its 
 decorous and dignified conventions, — is revealed as sim- 
 ply a monstrous and insolent impertinence!" 
 
 Nor can we ease our conscience by "charity." A lit- 
 tle charity at Christmas, and in times of epidemic can- 
 not cover the multitude of our social sins. Philanthropy 
 cannot make amends for social injustice and economic 
 wrongs. More than anywhere else upon this continent 
 the churches in New York seem to be "sitting at ease in 
 Zion," while the very fires of hell are crackling just be- 
 neath the city. With evidences of appalling sin upon 
 every side, the church is playing with the great tasks of 
 the kingdom. 
 
198 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 history's vindication of judgment 
 
 All history proves the truth of Judgment. It applies 
 to the individual. When the late Emperor Francis Joseph 
 was a young man, it is said that he committed a dastardly 
 wrong that affected one of the families in his kingdom. 
 A woman belonging to that family cursed him for this 
 deed and predicted that God would follow him and his 
 faniily with vengeance. How well that curse and proph- 
 ecy were realized, history tells us in the strange and 
 tragic story of Joseph's family in all the after years. It 
 seemed, indeed, that the very curse of God rested upon 
 him and his house. 
 
 The house of Valois perpetrated the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew and then vengeance was visited upon them 
 and they were destroyed. The Bourbons drove out the 
 Huguenots, but were themselves destroyed in the useless 
 wars of Louis XIV and XV. Napoleon violated the 
 eternal principles of righteousness, but began to pay for 
 his crimes even in this world, on St. Helena's lonely isle ! 
 
 Modern history, and the things which are occurring 
 before our very eyes, are teaching us the same lessons. 
 Dr. Andrew D. White was ambassador to Russia when 
 the late Czar Nicholas was a young man. He saw the 
 brutal attack on Finland's liberty, the violation of the 
 pledge of autonomy given it, and the destruction of its 
 Constitution. Dr. White, in his autobiography, refers 
 to Russia's treatment of Finland as ''the saddest specta- 
 cle of our time," and puts on record this prediction: 
 
 "I put on record here the prophecy that his dynasty, 
 if not himself, will be punished for it. All history shows 
 that no such crime has gone unpunished. It is a far 
 greater crime that the partition of Poland; for Poland 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 199 
 
 had brought her fate on herself, while Finland had been 
 the most loyal part of the Empire. Not even Moscow 
 herself has been more thoroughly devoted to Russia and 
 the reigning dynasty. The young monarch whose weak- 
 ness has led to this fearful result will bring retribution 
 upon himself and those who follow him. The Romanoffs 
 will yet find that there is a power in the universe, not 
 ourselves, which makes for righteousness. The punish- 
 ment to be meted out to Nicholas and his house is sure.'* 
 
 Time has brought this forecast true to the letter. 
 
 A generation and a half ago, the rulers of Germany, 
 through stealth and deceit, crept up and then sprang at 
 the throat of unsuspecting France, overpowered her, and 
 robbed her of her fair provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. To 
 protect these ill-gotten gains, they then built up the most 
 powerful military machine ever organized on earth. They 
 filled the Empire from end to end with supplies and muni- 
 tions of war, and planned and schemed to overrun, when 
 their time was ripe, the other nations of the earth and 
 to dominate the whole world. Behold Germany now, 
 prostrate in the dust of defeat and tottering upon the 
 brink of eternal ruin! Behold her vain and pompous 
 war Lord — he who would have ruled the earth — literally 
 now a "man without a country !'* Instead of his vaunted 
 "place in the sun," he will be fortunate if he does not 
 find a place against a brick wall before a firing squad, 
 or a place at the end of a hangman's rope ! 
 
 We need to fear God to-day. This age is living too 
 fast, and we will have to answer to God for it all. "Dost 
 thou not fear God," O man, in your sins? There is no 
 more terrible picture in all Scripture than the picture of 
 the Great White Throne and Him that sat on it, "from 
 whose face the earth and the heavens fled away." There 
 
200 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 is here no faintest suggestion of mercy; for in that judg- 
 ment time, the day of mercy will be over. There is here 
 only the suggestion of the austerity of divine Justice 
 and eternal Holiness, in whose awful presence no evil 
 thing can stand but from whom, even earth and heaven 
 flee away in fear. • 
 
 In one of the western states several years ago a great 
 convention came to its close. There was a special train 
 rushing back toward the East crowded with the dele- 
 gates who had attended the convention. The conductor 
 of this train was a man of high temper and of selfish 
 nature. He reached a small station, and received orders 
 from the train dispatcher to wait until he was passed 
 by a freight train. Whether he had been drinking or 
 whether he was over-wrought in nerves, we do not 
 know; but it is said that when he received those orders, 
 it made him very angry. He cursed the train dispatcher 
 to himself for ordering him to hold his passenger train 
 in order that a freight might pass it; and then he deter- 
 mined that he would risk the run to the next station. 
 Without letting the engineer know his orders, he gave 
 the signal to go on. The engineer threw his hand upon 
 the throttle, and opened it up wider and wider, until the 
 great engine, with its long load of human freight behind 
 it, was leaping along the shining rails like a thing of 
 life. But suddenly, in swinging around a curve, the en- 
 gineer saw the heavy freight train thundering toward 
 him, and just a little distance away. He barely had time 
 to call to his firemen to leap from the cab for his life, 
 when the two great machines rushed together with a 
 noise that was deafening and a crash that jarred the 
 ground on every side. Instantly there ensued a scene 
 of awful wreck and ruin; the two great engines locked 
 
PAGAN NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS 201 
 
 together, one mass of twisted steel and mashed iron, 
 from which the steam was hissing and screeching; the 
 passenger coaches smashed into kindling wood and the 
 freight cars piled up on top of them; and in the midst 
 of it all the groans of the wounded and the stark faces 
 of the dead. And that guilty conductor sneaked away 
 through the woods, to be later captured in a distant city 
 to which he fled. But the conductor of the freight train 
 walked among the weeping people, and up and down 
 between the rows of mutilated corpses lying upon the 
 grass, going to every one who would stop to listen to 
 him, and showing them the little piece of yellow tissue 
 paper with his orders upon it, and saying through his 
 tears: "Thank God it is not my fault! I obeyed 
 orders! Thank God it is not my fault! I obeyed or- 
 ders r 
 
 Oh, that all of us can say that on that great and aw- 
 ful day of the searching of all human hearts, when we 
 stand before the judgment bar of God I 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 
 
 The fact of moral evil in a world created by a good 
 and all-powerful God is a mystery that the mind of 
 mortal man, perhaps, can never fully fathom. We see 
 that the mystery of evil is connected with the free agency 
 of man, because in order to make us men, instead of 
 mere automata, God of necessity had to make us free. 
 The very difficulty of the thought of evil in a world so 
 made drives us back, of necessity, in our thinking to the 
 idea of an outside evil influence. The Bible is very clear 
 in its teaching, not only concerning the fact of evil in 
 the world, but also concerning the fact of the personality 
 of the Author of evil. 
 
 The Devil, we are taught, has his henchmen — ^hosts of 
 demons who do his will and who serve as his instruments 
 among men. And we need to take seriously to heart the 
 fact that these are tremendous truths with which we 
 are dealing, and not merely idle speculations of theologi- 
 ans. The Bible teaches us that the Devil can "array him- 
 self like an angel of light." He comes in the most plausi- 
 ble, ingratiating, and seductive ways. And the grimmest 
 piece of humor in the history of the world is the fact 
 that, in this age when the devil is most active, there is 
 the least belief even about his reality and existence. The 
 Devil to-day has so transformed himself into an "angel 
 of light" and so deluded the children of men, that multi- 
 
 202 
 
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 203 
 
 tudes who pride themselves upon the fact that they are 
 highly enlightened, do not even believe that there is any 
 such being. There is to-day an easy-going philosophy 
 abroad in the world, which softens down all evil, which 
 minimizes sin, and which laughs to scorn the thought 
 that there is a personal Devil. We are taught that under 
 certain circumstances God laughs, and surely if we could 
 but see deeply enough behind the conditions of to-day, 
 we would behold the Devil laughing in fiendish glee at 
 the delusion with which he has misled and through 
 which he has destroyed the children of men. 
 
 THE DEVIL AND THE WAR 
 
 Surely the time has come when we need to arouse 
 ourselves from the delusions of this adversary of souls. 
 Recent events in connection with the Great War, and 
 the conditions in the world to-day, prove the truthfulness 
 of the Bible's teaching concerning the reality and dia- 
 bolical character of the Devil. It is impossible even to 
 imagine the horror and infamy into which humanity was 
 plunged by the war. We can scarcely believe the sicken- 
 ing stories of shame and outrage and lust and rapine and 
 murder. It is hard for us to realize, and yet it is liter- 
 ally true, that one million Armenians alone were rnassa- 
 cred in cold blood. Not soldiers, mind you; not people 
 who were directly connected with the great stakes in the 
 war, but poor, simple-minded peasants, for the most part ; 
 old men and little children and tender women were butch- 
 ered and hacked to pieces and put upon boats which 
 were then riddled with cannon and sunk. They were 
 driven out by the thousands to die in the deserts and 
 mountains. Little babies were born amidst these horrors 
 
204 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and died with their mothers, because the feeble steps 
 could not keep up with the procession that was being 
 urged on by Turkish bayonets ! We have authentic rec- 
 ords of cases where entire families were shut up in their 
 own homes, the houses were fired, and when some of 
 the children ran screaming out of the burning buildings, 
 they were caught by the Turkish soldiers and thrown 
 back through the windows into the inferno of flames. 
 
 The record has but recently come to us from one of 
 the most reliable of our newspaper correspondents who 
 is now in Serbia, of the aw^ful deeds of bloodiness in 
 that unhappy land. Near one village there w^as a deep 
 ravine, and into this ravine, he tells us, tens of thousands 
 of Serbia's best people were marched and murdered. In 
 order to kill off the Serbian race in its stronger elements, 
 the policy w^as deliberately adopted of selecting out of 
 the villages and towns the people who were best edu- 
 cated; the professional people; the teachers and the bet- 
 ter-to-do elements of a community. They were taken, 
 without knowing where they were going, and sent off in 
 groups of twenties and thirties and fifties and hundreds 
 down to this village, and then in the darkness of the night 
 they were taken out to that ravine of death, tied together 
 with ropes, and bayonetted and hacked to pieces and 
 dumped into a foul ditch for burial. Men lost their rea- 
 son, we are told, listening to the awful screams and cries 
 that came in the darkness out of that human hell. 
 
 It is an unpleasant and awful thing to even have to 
 listen to these tales of horror. But it is important tJmt 
 we should dwell upon them, that we may find out where 
 they came from, and who is really responsible for them. 
 Think of the thousands of Russians who were caught in 
 the Pripet marshes and surrounded by the Germans, who 
 
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 205 
 
 shot them to pieces in fiendish glee. The poor wretches 
 there, trying to surrender, waving white flags and hold- 
 ing up their hands as the fire was poured into them from 
 all sides, and they were not allowed to surrender. They 
 were done to death, while the Germans laughed at their 
 agony. Think of the cowardly schemes which the Huns 
 resorted to. Think of the loaf of bread that the Amer- 
 ican soldiers found with a knife sticking in the top of 
 it, but which had within it a bomb that was exploded 
 when the knife was drawn. Think of the case where 
 the English soldiers, when they came rushing into a 
 village which the Germans had just retreated from, found 
 a little kitten nailed up alive to a door, with the nails 
 driven through its paws and so arranged that when the 
 kind-hearted English soldier who found the pitiful crea- 
 ture mewing and whining, drew out the nails, it exploded 
 a bomb that killed him. Is that human? The craft and 
 cruelty that could play upon the natural qualities of hu- 
 man sympathy for the suffering of a dumb animal, in 
 order that a man's life might be destroyed, certainly must 
 be diabolical. Think of raped and plundered Belgium. 
 Think of prostrate Northern France, blasted and with- 
 ered, with 350,000 of its homes destroyed; its men driven 
 off into slavery and its women and little girls held for 
 purposes of shame in the dug-outs of the German officers. 
 Think of the systematic outrages of women and children. 
 Not through personal passion of irresponsible soldiers, 
 but as a result of military orders, in order that terror 
 might be struck into the hearts of the people in invaded 
 lands. Think of all this unspeakable nightmare of shame, 
 sin, and hellish horror, and then ask yourself, did man 
 do this? Are such deeds native to the human race? Is 
 this the climax of our much lauded evolution? If these 
 
2o6 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 things came thus from man, then I am ready to despair 
 of the human race and of all life upon this planet. If 
 here in the twentieth century, after all these ages of 
 education, and despite our science and our art, our phi- 
 losophy and our religion, our culture and our supposed 
 character; if, despite all of these things, these infamies 
 have thus come upon the world as a natural result of 
 human forces, then, I say, there is no hope for the future. 
 
 BELIEF IN THE DEVIL THE ONLY GROUND FOR OPTIMISM 
 
 But they have not so come. The forces of infamy 
 and wrong let loose in the war were not human forces, 
 but diabolical and hellish forces. "An enemy hath done 
 this." These horrors were from hell. A personal Devil, 
 through his black hosts of demons, put into the minds 
 and hearts of men these thoughts of cruelty, lust, and 
 infamy. The only reasonable ground for optimism is to 
 believe this. If these awful wrongs and horrors are na- 
 tive to man, then there is no hope for the future of the 
 human race. The only solid ground for hope is to be- 
 lieve that the Devil, the great enemy of man, has pro- 
 moted and inspired and directed it all. 
 
 Do you think, my friends, that mere human selfishness 
 at its worst could deliberately formulate and launch a 
 catastrophe so unimaginable in extent, and horror, and 
 infamy as this? Ah! no. *'An enemy hath done this." A 
 personal Devil, seeking to humiliate God by wrecking 
 God's world, has been behind it all. 
 
 OUGHT THE PREACHERS GO ON A STRIKE? 
 
 And what shall we say in regard to the present forces 
 of strife, anarchy, and disorder which we see at work 
 
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 207 
 
 in the world? Are these things of man? or must we 
 not believe that a great malignant spirit of evil is behind 
 them all ? On one side we see even in America, with all 
 of her enlightenment and boasted progress, the spirit 
 of bestial selfishness, even in the higher ranks of our 
 society. The performances of the profiteers in laying 
 a personal tax upon the bread and the meat and the 
 drink and the clothing of the American people, thereby 
 causing suffering to millions, and the actual death of 
 multitudes of little children, cannot be accounted for 
 upon any ground other than that of a malignant spirit 
 of evil prompting these things. There are good grounds 
 for believing that these men would ''corner" the air, if 
 they could do so! They would pipe it out to us at so 
 much a foot, and if we refused to pay the price, we could 
 suffer the alternative of strangling to death for breath! 
 
 And what shall we say of the spirit on the other side 
 within the ranks of labor, which prompts strikes and 
 bloodshed in order to attain its ends? May I say here, 
 that I have always been an outspoken friend and cham- 
 pion of the laboring people of America? I am fully sym- 
 pathetic with the struggles of the masses to come up to 
 fuller rights and a higher standard of living, but frank- 
 ness and loyalty to truth compel me to say that there 
 are increasing evidences of the growth of a wrong spirit 
 within the ranks of labor to-day. 
 
 There are evidences of an increasing attitude of in- 
 tolerance and unwillingness to arbitrate differences, and 
 a disregard for the rights of the public, who constitute 
 the third party in every disturbance between labor and 
 capital. And certainly it is true that if the wages of 
 one class of our people ought to be raised, then the scale 
 
2o8 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 ought to go up all along the line, or there will be in- 
 evitably increased suffering in the ranks of some. 
 
 President Lowell of Harvard University, in a recent 
 address, set forth the fact that the average motorman 
 is now paid eighty cents an hour for his labor, whereas 
 the average college professor is paid only eighteen cents 
 an hour for his labor. He then coined his famous pun 
 in which he asked, *'Is it more important to mind the 
 train or to train the mind?" 
 
 Everybody in the world now has gone on a strike ex- 
 cept the preachers and the undertakers, and I suppose 
 that we will be the next to fall in line. Bishop Touret 
 of Western Colorado has already made a plea for the 
 "eight-hour day" for clergymen, and certainly preachers 
 have grievances enough, on the score of underpay and 
 other abuses, to justify most earnest protests. I do 
 not speak now of the fat-salaried city preacher. To be 
 perfectly frank with you, I question very much whether 
 some of us really earn our salaries. But I mean the 
 great mass of American preachers whose average income 
 is so pitifully small, that frequently it is impossible to 
 properly feed and clothe a growing family upon it. 
 
 So if we are to move in line with the spirit which is 
 now prevailing in the world on this subject, I suppose we 
 will have to get together soon in a great "National Con- 
 vention." The call would go out from some of the more 
 aggressive and ambitious brethren, calling us together, 
 and we will say that perhaps the convention would be 
 held here in New York City, as the metropolis of the 
 Nation and the hub of the world. Let me give play, 
 my friends, to my imagination for a few moments and 
 picture for you about how it would line up. That is, of 
 course, I mean if we followed the prevailing way of 
 
Il]ustration of Dr. Straton's description of the "Preachers' Strike." which appeared in 
 the New York "Tribune" of Sept. 14, 1919. 
 
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 209 
 
 doing these things. Well, there would be, to begin witE, 
 highly colored stories in all of the papers about the gath- 
 ering of these forces. Headquarters would be estab- 
 lished at the highest-priced hotel in town, and a group 
 picture of the leading agitators would be accidentally 
 furnished to all of the papers. 
 
 Then there would be a grand parade down Fifth Ave- 
 nue. There would be one or more brass bands, with a 
 leaning to jazz music. Some brother with a martial 
 figure and air would be selected to head the parade on a 
 prancing steed. Then would come the long line of black- 
 robed figures, with Prince Albert coat tails flapping in 
 the breeze, beaver hats shining in the sun, and a look of 
 grim and awful determination upon every face. In addi- 
 tion to Old Glory, which would be prominently displayed, 
 to show that we are a patriotic fraternity, there would be 
 other banners and placards, with rallying calls printed 
 in bold letters upon them, running something like this : 
 "Even the Worm Finally Turns !" Another would read, 
 "We Will No Longer Starve While We Save Your Souls 
 from Hell !" Another would carry the legend, "No Pay, 
 No Preach !'* Another, "A New Dress for the Wife!" 
 Another, "Remember Our Kiddies!" and "We Demand 
 the Full Dinner-Pail !" and so on down the line. 
 
 In due season the procession would reach Madison 
 Square Garden, and we would march in with flags fly- 
 ing, and bands on either side of the entrance tooting at 
 their highest concert pitch. A cordon of policemen would 
 be on hand to keep order, and to see that we did not 
 exceed the bounds of propriety. The old Garden would 
 be gayly decorated in bunting, and after the usual prelimi- 
 naries to such an occasion, we would then be stirred up 
 to the fighting pitch by a series of red-hot addresses, 
 
2IO THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 in which our grievances would be fully aired. Then a 
 permanent organization would be effected. The question 
 of name would demand earnest consideration as it would 
 be necessary to have the name suggest in part our claims 
 and purposes, and, of course, it would be vitally impor- 
 tant to have the name consist of about two lines of sono- 
 rous, juicy alliteration. Something like this would do: 
 "The Amalgamated Association for the Protection and 
 Promotion of Progressive Preachers." 
 
 The grand climax would then be reached in a series of 
 resolutions, setting forth our grievances under about a 
 half dozen ''Whereases." These "Whereases" would 
 recite the fact that we are expected to welcome the ba- 
 bies, marry the young couples, comfort the sorrowing, 
 inspire the young, harmonize domestic differences, lead 
 in all patriotic enterprises and all movements for civic 
 betterments, keep the home life of the people sweet, save 
 the souls of sinners, edify the saints, and bury the dead. 
 Then the "Whereases" would set forth the fact that a 
 due appreciation has not been shown for these vital and 
 important services, and the conclusion would be reached 
 about as follows : "Therefore be it resolved that we, the 
 preachers of America, do hereby announce to our church- 
 es and to the general public, that we will not longer 
 submit to the harsh and heartless treatment which we 
 have been subjected to from time immemorial; that we 
 will not grant even a three-days' postponement to dis- 
 cuss our claims, with a view to possible arbitration; but 
 that here and now we declare to our churches and to the 
 general public, that unless we are given immediately an 
 'eight-hour day' and a fifty per cent, boost in salary, we 
 will go on strike and let them all go to Hell !" 
 
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 211 
 
 THE NEED OF A RIGHT SPIRIT 
 
 Now, my friends, if we followed the prevailing fashion 
 within the ranks of discontent, isn't that just about the 
 way the thing would shape up? And what would you 
 think of us if we did such a thing? The reason why 
 the preachers do not go to these extremes, perhaps, is 
 that there still lingers in their hearts, at least some 
 glimpse of the ideals of altruism and service. They un- 
 derstand that the true object of life is, not to get as much 
 as possible, but to give as much as possible; that we are 
 here to serve, and not to strive for self; that we are to 
 put manhood before money and God higher than gold. 
 
 The only thing which will bring true peace to the 
 world, and which will recreate the spirit of brother- 
 hood, and which will bring us safely by our dangers in 
 America, is for capitalists and laborers alike to realize 
 that they are not the masters but the servants of their 
 fellow men. We all need to hear again the words of 
 Jesus, ''He that would be greatest among you, let him 
 become the servant of all." The true object of all life 
 and of all labor is, not to get as much as possible for 
 ourselves; but to give as large a contribution to the 
 common weal as is humanly possible. And when the 
 great captains of industry in our country get away from 
 their selfish viewpoints, they will no longer be willing to 
 exploit the mass of the people for their personal gain, 
 but will strive to help their fellow men; and when the 
 millions of laborers in the country catch the same ideal, 
 they will stop striking and get together with the capital- 
 ists, and all of them then will solve these vexed problems 
 like sensible men and patriotic Americans. 
 
 All of this spirit of strife and contention and selfish- 
 
212 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 ness and bitterness in the world to-day, on both sides, is 
 from the Devil. It is un-American, un-Christian, and 
 diabolical; and when we all realize thaf and unite our 
 forces against the Devil, and reenthrone Jesus Christ in 
 our hearts, and thus get back once more the spirit of 
 fellowship and brotherhood and love and service, all will 
 be well; but until then, nothing will be well, either in 
 America or in the poor, old, sin-scarred, war-wasted, 
 weary world. 
 
 THE DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 
 
 Thank God for the comforting assurance that this 
 enemy of God and man is to be finally defeated and 
 driven out of the world. I will not take the time to 
 trace out in any detail a description of the final defeat 
 and destruction of the Devil, as pictured in the Bible. 
 
 But there is a final chapter in the tragic and terrible 
 career of this high intelligence, who was privileged to 
 walk with God and to serve God as one of his great 
 messengers, until, through over-vaulting pride and van- 
 ity, he fell and rebelled against his Creator. Oh, the 
 suffering and sorrow he has produced among the teem- 
 ing millions of the children of men through all the long 
 sad years of earthly history ! Well has one devout heart 
 said of him : 
 
 "With what murderous malignity did he attack the 
 innocence of our first parents, and the heavenly purity 
 of Jesus ! With what carnage and misery has he over- 
 flooded the earth! There has never been a sanguinary 
 war, but he instituted it. There has never been a death- 
 scene, but it is traceable to him. Every blight of human 
 happiness, every failure of human peace, every sorrow 
 of human life, has come from him. All the fiery passions 
 
FINAL DEFEAT OF THE DEVIL 213 
 
 that rankle in men, and break forth in deeds of violence 
 and blood, are his inspirations. Never a being has been 
 perverted from the beneficent object of its existence, never 
 a soul has lost its Creator's image or gone down to perdi- 
 tion, never a life has been disabled or extinguished, never 
 a heart has been broken or a wretchedness enacted, of 
 which he is not the primal cause. All graves, all tears, all 
 mutilations and dismemberments of earth's famiHes, na- 
 tions, or the race, are results of his doings and malig- 
 nity. And when we think of the blood that has been shed, 
 and the murders committed, since Cain raised his hand 
 against his brother's life; how rapine, and plunder, and 
 violence have disgraced and tormented the world in 
 every age; what hellish devastations war alone has 
 wrought; how human society has been continually spoli- 
 ated and cursed with intemperance, ignorance, unclean- 
 ness, and vice ; and remember that all these, w^ith all the 
 calamities, misfortunes, and sufferings of time and eter- 
 nity, have their source in Satan, and are but outbursts, 
 enactments or results of his spirit; how could a truer 
 characterization be given of him, than that of a monster, 
 indyed with flames and blood!" 
 
 But thank God, the day is coming when this enemy of 
 God and man will be defeated and destroyed and cast 
 out from the presenceof God and from before the face 
 of man forever ! God made this world for righteousness 
 and peace and truth, and in the fullness of the times He 
 will get unto Himself a glorious victory, and in the ^*new 
 heavens and the new earth" righteousness alone shall 
 reign forever and ever! 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 A REAL HELL FOR REAL SINNERS 
 
 Christ's story of Dives and Lazarus, Luke 16:19-31, 
 "There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and 
 fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day : And there was a cer- 
 tain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of 
 sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the 
 rich man's table : moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 
 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the 
 angels into Abraham's bosom : the rich man also died, and was 
 buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and 
 seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried 
 and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, 
 that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; 
 for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, re- 
 rnember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and 
 likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou 
 art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is 
 a great gulf fixed : so that they which would pass from hence to 
 you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that zvould come from 
 thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, Father, that thou 
 wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; 
 that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place 
 of torment. Abraham saith unto him. They have Moses and the 
 prophets ; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, Father Abraham : 
 but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And 
 he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
 will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." 
 
 Jesus Christ is the only one who can give us any 
 rehable information about the future world. He has 
 been there, and so He knows. 
 
 There is a story told of the first visit of Christian 
 missionaries to England. It is said that these messengers 
 of Christ knocked for admission at the door of a great 
 banqueting hall where the Thanes and Nobles of the 
 Northumberland country w^ere sitting at table. The ruler 
 
 214 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 215 
 
 at first refused to allow them to enter, but Coifi coun- 
 seled the ruler to admit these bringers of a new religion. 
 As he spoke to the ruler, it is said that a sparrow flew 
 in out of the darkness through one of the windows, 
 crossed over the banqueting table and then passed out 
 through an opposite window into the darkness of the 
 night beyond. Seizing upon this incident, Coifi exclaimed 
 to the ruler, "Oh, Master, our lives are like that ! Even as 
 this bird came out of the darkness, we know not whence, 
 and flitted for a moment in the light of this room, and 
 then passed out again into the darkness, going we know 
 not whither, so are our souls. We come we know not 
 whence, we pass for a brief season in the light of this 
 world, and then we go hence into the darkness, we know 
 not where. If these Christians then can give us any truth 
 about the great question of our destiny, we should re- 
 ceive them, because, perchance, they may tell us the 
 secrets of the world beyond." 
 
 And so Christ does. We are living to-day in a materi-» 
 alistic and rationalistic age. The questioning habit of 
 mind, which the so-called ''scientific spirit" has devel- 
 oped in us, has made us skeptical about things which 
 have to do with the unseen spirit world. And yet, be- 
 cause we are destined to immortality, the most important 
 things that we need to learn are not the laws which func- 
 tion through matter, or any other merely scientific truths, 
 but the things which have to do with the other world. 
 Now Jesus Christ knew more about these matters than 
 either our rationalistic and materialistic scientists or 
 some of our self-made modern prophets, who are mis- 
 leading the people upon these vital things, can possibly 
 know, because he was the incarnation of God. He came 
 from the unseen world into this world of time and sense, 
 
2i6 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and knew, therefore, all of its conditions, and he said to 
 us explicitly, in speaking of immortality and of the fu- 
 ture, "If it were not so I would have told you." He 
 told us the truth about other important things, even 
 though it meant His death because of loyalty to truth, 
 and surely He would not deceive us concerning these 
 vitally important truths of the future destiny of human 
 souls. Jesus pictures for us, in his teaching concerning 
 the unseen world, the happy future of the redeemed; 
 and then he pictures its antipodes of woe and darkness, 
 — a penal realm of fearful shadow, suffering and re- 
 morse that he called ''Hell." 
 
 THE COMPASSION OF JESUS, AS WE THINK OF HELL 
 
 The teaching concerning hell, therefore, is not our 
 teaching, but it is the teaching of Jesus Christ, the com- 
 passionate Redeemer, the loving Savior of men; and 
 we should approach this doctrine in the same spirit in 
 which He approached it. He wept over Jerusalem, ex- 
 claiming: ''Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest 
 the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, 
 how often would I have gathered thy children together, 
 even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, 
 and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto you 
 desolate." That inexorable "ye would not" is the key 
 to the entire doctrine of the punishment of the lost. 
 God is not an arbitrary tyrant casting souls into hell. 
 He is a loving and compassionate Father, who has done 
 His utmost to save the children of men from spiritual 
 destruction, even up to the point of giving his only be- 
 gotten Son to die for us; but because we will not obey 
 God, therefore we are left "desolate." 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 217 
 
 A DRAMATIC CONTRAST IN TWO LIVES 
 
 The clearest teaching which we have from our Savior, 
 and the fullest statement of the conditions surrounding 
 lost souls, is given in Christ's story of Lazarus and Dives, 
 which is not a ''parable," as many have supposed. 
 
 This story consists of a series of startling pictures, in 
 vivid and dramatic contrast one with the other. First, 
 there is the contrast on earth in two lives. We have, to 
 begin with, the rich man in his "purple and fine linen," 
 the Tyrian purple and the Egyptian byssus, which only 
 the rich could wear. We may see the imposing gateway 
 of this rich man's palatial home looking down upon the 
 vulgar crowd. We may see him "faring sumptuously 
 every day." A literal rendering of the Greek here is 
 "living in mirth and splendor every day." His was evi- 
 dently a spoiled and pampered human life. This man's 
 days consisted of a round of luxurious self-indulgences ; 
 his table piled high with costly viands — every dehcacy 
 to tempt the palate and to please the appetite. Then 
 would come the women, with their voluptuous dancing 
 and their seductive glances — slaves and concubines, fair 
 and comely, that his wealth had purchased for the satis- 
 faction of his lust. Then followed the wine and the 
 loud laughter and the ribald mirth. And so in oriental 
 voluptuousness, stately splendor, and self-indulgent ease 
 his life went forward day by day. 
 
 The other character here pictured is a poor man. The 
 contrast is startling, for this man is so poor that he is 
 entirely without friends. The Greek verb "laid" con- 
 tains the suggestion that the hands which brought him 
 to the rich man's gate were not those of gentle affection, 
 but the hasty rough hands of perfunctory duty, or the 
 
2i8 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 indifferent hands of cold charity. It is as though he 
 were hastily thrown down at the gate. We may almost 
 hear his groans, as they drop him, and his cry, "Oh, 
 gently, gently, please !" He was a man so poor that he 
 desired the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table, 
 and so impotent that the very dogs of the street licked 
 his sores. 
 
 A CONTRAST IN TWO DEATHS 
 
 The next picture in this story is that of two deaths. 
 First, the beggar dies. We do not know why, but we 
 know it is true that the good are sometimes taken while 
 the evil are allowed to flourish longer. But the startling 
 statement comes that immediately after death the angels 
 took this beggar ''to Abraham's bosom." This was the 
 highest conception of honor and happiness possible to the 
 Jewish mind. He who the minute before death suffered 
 the humiliation of grinding poverty and the pain of loath- 
 some sores, the minute after death wings his way to ce- 
 lestial joy and glory, buoyed up by the snowy pinions of 
 the angels of God ! How wonderful is the contrast ! and 
 what a revelation it contains of God's estimate of human 
 life! 
 
 Let us discriminate here. This man's salvation did 
 not come because he was poor. There was no especial 
 merit in that, but he was saved because, even in his pover- 
 ty, like Job in his reverses, his heart was right with 
 God. 
 
 Then we are told that "the rich man also died" and 
 "was buried." Jesus seems to emphasize that. He did 
 not even mention that the beggar was buried. His fune- 
 ral was so insignificant as not to require a comment. 
 His body was doubtless dumped in the "Potter's Field." 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 219 
 
 But the funeral of the rich man was an event in the 
 community. It passed off in stately dignity and splendor. 
 Doubtless a magnificent mausoleum of gleaming marble 
 had been prepared — a monument of human vanity. High 
 stepping steeds of Arabia drew the heavy funeral car. 
 There were tossing plumes and stately music, and long 
 lines of hired mourners accompanied the body to its place 
 in the tomb. We can even imagine the eulogy pronounced 
 by the preacher. The lile was reviewed. Its charity was 
 pointed out, for doubtless this man gave money, when 
 there was something spectacular on hand, *'to be seen of 
 men." The strong part that the man had played in the 
 larger affairs of the community was referred to, and the 
 minister probably preached him straight into heaven! 
 
 But not so Jesus! Listen! Jesus said bluntly: *Tn 
 hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment." His wealth 
 made no difference in that new world. He was graded 
 according to what was in him and not by the things 
 which he had piled up around him. 
 
 Notice clearly, too, that his self-conscious personality 
 had survived. There had been no annihilation of his 
 soul, as some false prophets of to-day are preaching. 
 We cannot even annihilate an atom of matter, much 
 less the immortal spirit of man, which is the crown of 
 the material universe. So Jesus said, the man lifted up 
 his eyes and "Seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in 
 his bosom ; and he cried and said. Father Abraham, have 
 mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip 
 of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in 
 anguish in this flame." 
 
220 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 A CONTRAST IN ETERNAL DESTINY 
 
 So, my friends, Jesus Christ taught that this lost soul 
 was punished. We need to take that in. He suffered 
 anguish, because of his unrighteous life and his alienation 
 from God. And notice now what the grounds of this 
 punishment, as stated by Jesus, were: 
 
 First, it is clear that this man failed in the discharge 
 of his duties to his needy fellowmen. He had no social 
 vision. The impulses of true democracy and brother- 
 hood were alien to him. Lazarus was the rich man's 
 opportunity, and he failed to improve that opportunity. 
 It is evident that he knew about the beggar, because he 
 calls his name and asks Abraham to send Lazarus to 
 cool his anguish, and yet he had allowed the man to 
 lay day after day at his gate, having to ask even for 
 the crumbs which fell from his table. He had allowed a 
 fellowman so to suffer, that the very dogs had to come 
 and lick his sores. Jesus makes perfectly clear here, and 
 in all of his teachings concerning the judgment and the 
 future life, that the sin of omission is the greatest sin 
 at last. He teaches that we have a solemn obligation to 
 our fellow men, and if we fail in this high duty we will 
 suffer for that failure in the future world. 
 
 Again, Jesus clearly teaches here the fundamental 
 truth, that eternal justice demands that sin must pay the 
 penalty of suffering. In verse 25 we read, ''But Abraham 
 said, 'Son* " — and this shows that this man was a mem- 
 ber of the church. He was a "son" under the formal 
 covenant. Not every one who joins the church is saved, 
 and no one is saved simply because he joins the church. 
 So Abraham said, "Son, remember that thou in thy 
 lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 221 
 
 evil things, but now he is comforted and thou art in 
 anguish." This means just one thing and that is that 
 full and exact justice will finally be done, because this 
 is a moral universe and God's reign is a moral govern- 
 ment, ''Thy good things." Not things that were in 
 themselves good, but things that were good according to 
 his selfish conception. The mirth and the splendor, the 
 women and the wine, the extortion and the greed, the 
 selfish indulgence and sinful ease upon earth were not 
 only violations of God's holy laws, but they worked 
 inevitable injuries and wrong to others. Therefore, 
 eternal justice demanded that they should be paid for, if 
 not on earth, then in eternity. So the scales must finally 
 exactly balance. 
 
 The thought that a good God would allow any soul 
 to go to Hell is staggering to some superficial minds, but 
 we need to remember that the results of sin are infinite 
 and eternal, and therefore, eternal suffering for sin is 
 not only just and right, but it is inevitable. Yonder in 
 the city of Memphis, Tennessee, some years ago, a young 
 girl stood at midnight on the bridge spanning the Missis- 
 sippi River. The pitying moon looked down in tender- 
 ness upon her and seemed to realize her disgrace. The 
 cool waves whispered invitingly to her, as she gazed into 
 them and wondered if amid their silent depths there was 
 not some rest for a betrayed and broken heart. At last 
 the thought of her shame made death seem better 
 to her than life, and to hide her sorrow she plunged 
 down to a watery grave. Now listen! At that same 
 hour, as the newspaper accounts later showed, in a 
 saloon of that city, a sap-headed dude, in half -drunken 
 vanity, stood and boasted (though not knowing of her 
 suicide) that his fortieth girl had been seduced and 
 
222 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 robbed of her virtue! Oh, tell me not that there is not 
 a time and place where that awful wrong will be righted! 
 Some say that they cannot believe in a God who has a 
 hell, but I can no longer believe 'in God if He has not 
 the purpose and the power to right that wrong; for that 
 villain, so far as the laws of earth are concerned, es- 
 ^caped. When the news of the suicide and of his connec- 
 tion with it was published in the papers, he sneaked out 
 of the city, doubtless to continue his career of infamy 
 amid other scenes. The results of his crimes are eternal 
 in the wrecked lives and blighted souls of his victims, 
 and to the last atom of his guilt Justice will weigh out 
 his due reward, self-imposed and fully deserved ! 
 
 Can any sane man remember the horrors and infamies 
 of the great World War, and then say that God ought 
 not to punish the men who did these wrongs? When we 
 remember the cold-blooded, calculating infamy in which 
 the war was planned and prepared for c^nd then launched 
 upon a smiling and peaceful earth ; when we think of the 
 10,000,000 men whose bodies are now rotting in the 
 ground or under the sea ; when we recall raped Belgium 
 and murdered Armenia, when we see the agony of the 
 mothers in the Lusitania, as they hugged their little 
 babies to their breasts while the remorseless waves en- 
 gulfed them; as we see poor little girls torn limb from 
 limb ; as we hear the cry of despairing women, raped and 
 ruined by human fiends, when there was no hand to 
 help them; when we think of these things, thank God 
 for the realization that there was an eye that did see and 
 there is a hand that will avenge! God still reigns in 
 righteousness, and though human power can never make 
 right these wrongs, Divine power will make them right 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 223 
 
 and eternal justice will meet out punishment to all those 
 guilty of these hideous sins ! 
 
 THE REALITY OF HELL 
 
 But you ask, "Is Hell a place or is it just a condition?'* 
 The teaching of Jesus makes it clear that hell is a place 
 as well as a condition. As self-conscious personality 
 survives in the future life, it must survive somewhere. 
 And the fact of natural moral gravitation, which leads 
 evil people to flock together in this world, will doubtless 
 also be in the world to come. But beyond all this is the 
 clear teaching of the Bible that Hell is a place and that 
 God's omnipotent power will see to it that the un- 
 righteous and rebellious are put there. I have not the 
 time to go into detail upon this aspect of the question, 
 further than to say that there are terms employed in the 
 Bible which seem to teach that there are several divi- 
 sions in the tmderworld. Just as we have in human 
 economy, city and county jails, where offenders are 
 temporarily incarcerated, and then state and national 
 penitentiaries where they are assigned for final punish- 
 ment, the Bible teaches that there are several stages or 
 departments in the abode of the lost. Just as paradise 
 seems to be a place in which saved souls abide in happi- 
 ness and peace before they come into the full joys of 
 the final heaven, so it would seem that a like economy 
 applies to Hell. The place, for example, into which 
 Satan will be cast during the millennium is not the final 
 Hell into which he is to be cast at the close of his career. 
 During the millennium he is cast into what is called the 
 "abyss," where he is held in chains and restrained from 
 going about the earth. After the millennium, when he 
 
224 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 is loosed for a season, we are taught he is thrown into 
 the "lake of fire, which burneth with brimstone''; and 
 this is the final Hell, into which the **beast," the "false 
 prophet" and other enemies of God are cast. 
 
 HELL ETERNAL 
 
 Jesus taught, beyond any question, that the condition 
 of a lost soul is unchangeable. In verse 26 of this story 
 Jesus said, ''And beside all this, between us and you there 
 is a great gulf fixed : so that they which would pass from 
 thence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us that 
 would come from thence." There is, then, no such thing 
 as probation after death, or a "purgatory," offering op- 
 portunity for another chance. As the tree falls, so must 
 it lie, and so we read in Revelations, *'Let him that is 
 filthy be filthy still." Jesus said (Matt. 13:41, 49-50), 
 ''The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall 
 gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and 
 them which do iniquity. So shall it be at the end of the 
 world : the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked 
 from among the just. And shall cast them into the 
 furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of 
 teeth." In Matthew 25 4 1 he said, in picturing the 
 judgment, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 
 fire, prepared for the devil and his angels : these shall go 
 away into everlasting punishment but the righteous into 
 everlasting life," and the same Greek word is used in 
 this passage to measure the duration of punishment as 
 is used to measure the duration of the life of the saved. 
 Again Jesus says (Mark 9:43), "It is better for thee to 
 enter into life maimed than having two hands to go to 
 hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched ; where the 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 225, 
 
 worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." And in 
 Luke 3 :i7 we read of Christ as Judge, ''Whose fan is in 
 his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and 
 will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he 
 will bum with fire unquenchable." And again he says, 
 through John in Revelation 14:10, in speaking of the 
 rebellious and sinful : 'The same shall drink of the wine 
 of the wrath of God, which is poured out without meas- 
 ure into the cup of his indignation ; and he shall be tor- 
 mented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the 
 holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : the smoke 
 of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever; and 
 they have no rest day nor night." In Revelation 19:20 
 we read, "And the beast was taken, and with him the 
 false prophet. These both were cast alive into a lake 
 of fire burning with brimstone." And in Rev. 20:10, 
 "The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of 
 fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet 
 are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and 
 ever. Whosoever was not found written in the book of 
 life was cast into the lake of fire." And in Rev. 21 :8, 
 "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, 
 and murderers, and whore mongers, and sorcerers, and 
 idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake 
 which burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the 
 second death." 
 
 What does it mean by this "second death" ? It means 
 spiritual death, not that they are annihilated, for in Rev. 
 19 :20, in speaking of these very ones who were cast into 
 the lake of fire, he said : "These both were cast alive into 
 a lake of fire, burning with brimstone." "The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die," not in the sense of annihilation, 
 
226 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 but in the sense of death to the highest. So in Proverbs 
 9:18, where one is pictured foohsh enough to go in unto 
 the woman of shame, it is said, "But he knoweth not that 
 the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths 
 of hell"; that is the spiritually dead are there, though 
 they are still alive so far as consciousness is concerned, 
 and they are already, even in the midst of their wicked 
 self-indulgence, in the depths of hell through the burn- 
 ing of conscience. God is the life of the spirit and when 
 he is lost, the spirit dies to the highest. We are born a 
 second time, when we are "regenerated" and thus united 
 by faith to the living God. We die a second time when 
 we finally lose God forever. It is "death," and it is tor- 
 ment; and there is every reason to believe that it is 
 eternal. It is "to the ages of the ages." Confirmed de- 
 pravity cannot be cured where no means of grace are; 
 neither can those cease to sin whose whole nature has 
 been turned to sin. And if there can be no end of the 
 sinning, how can there be an end of the suffering? Re- 
 morse cannot die out of a spirit ever conscious of its 
 self-imposed damnation! Therefore, "their worm dieth 
 not, and the fire is not quenched." (Mark 9:48.) 
 
 SOWING AND REAPING 
 
 Christ closes this stern and searching teaching with a 
 solemn warning to the living. When the rich man asked 
 him to send Lazarus back to his father's house to warn 
 his five living brethren (Verse 29), Abraham said unto 
 him : "They have Moses and the prophets ; let them hear 
 them. And he said, nay. Father Abraham; but if one 
 went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he 
 said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the prophets 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 227 
 
 neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the 
 dead." Here, then, is the clear teaching that all who are 
 lost are lost because they will not believe the prophets 
 and obey God. There will be some who will go to Hell, 
 despite all that God and his prophets can do. Yes, as 
 Jesus said, ''neither will they be persuaded, though one 
 rose from the dead." Therefore, they send themselves 
 to Hell — they only reap what they have sowed. 
 
 I stood a few days ago with a friend in front of the 
 Herald office, in this city, and while we were standing 
 there suddenly the great bell began to sound. We turned 
 and watched those mighty mechanical bronze figures 
 which strike the hours. One of them lifted the sledge 
 hammer and smote the rim of the bell, and then the other 
 lifted his hammer and smote, and so alternating they 
 struck out the hour. The scene recalled to my mind the 
 story of the Clock Tower, which was erected in a great 
 Kingdom of the long ago. This tower was the crowning 
 achievement of a world-famous architect of that age, 
 and the very climax of his genius was reached in the 
 massive and beautiful bronze bell. He designed a won- 
 derful mechanism for the striking of the hours on the 
 giant bell. The bell was to be pivoted in the center, and 
 the artist planned a great bronze figure which, through 
 the operation of the mechanism, was to glide up noise- 
 lessly and strike the bell ; one stroke for one o'clock, two 
 strokes for two, and so on through the twelve hours. 
 The mold for the great bell had been prepared with 
 anxious care and finest skill by the artist, but while they 
 were pouring the molten metal into the mold one of the 
 workmen made a slight mistake, which endangered the 
 success of the bell for a second; and in a flash of passion 
 
228 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 and anger the artist seized a hammer and struck the 
 workman dead. A piece of the murdered man's skull 
 flew into the molten metal and that left a flaw in the 
 bell, which the artist did not discover until the entire 
 structure and mechanism were all complete. 
 
 Then the story pictures the great day when the Clock 
 Tower and the bell were to be dedicated and used for 
 the first time. The king and his court were there, and 
 all the people of the country had assembled in the plain 
 around the Tower. It had been announced that the bell 
 would strike for the first time at one o'clock on that 
 day, and it was known that the artist, who had planned 
 it all, was within the tower alone putting the final touches 
 upon the mechanism. As the hour of one o'clock ap- 
 proached, the noises of the crowd died down. The peo- 
 ple began to count the minutes ; and then, amidst a death- 
 like stillness, they counted the seconds up to one o'clock, 
 and waited for the sounding of the bell. But it did not 
 sound the hour. Nothing was heard save a slight, dull 
 thud, and then there was silence. The people waited 
 anxiously, until at last the curiosity and excitement be- 
 came so great that the King ordered that the tower should 
 be broken into. The people burst open the door and 
 rushed up the stairs. There they found the artist, dead 
 beside the bell. In his anxiety for perfect success and the 
 eternal glory that would accompany his achievement, he 
 was working during the last few moments, in an effort 
 to mend the flaw, which the piece of skull from the 
 murdered workman had left in the bell. Absorbed in his 
 work, he labored on, not noticing that the moments were 
 swiftly passing, until one o'clock came and the great 
 bronze figure, which was to strike the bell, glided noise- 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 229 
 
 lessly forward upon its runners and lifted the heavy 
 sledge hammer and smote. But instead of striking the 
 bell, the hammer struck full square the head of the artist, 
 and they found him, with his skull smashed like an egg 
 shell, lying before his masterpiece. He had been de- 
 stroyed by the thing which he himself had made! 
 
 And that will be the final record of every lost soul! 
 
 The prophet exclaims, in speaking of the wicked, "woe 
 unto their soul ! for they have rewarded evil unto them- 
 selves." (Isaiah 3 :g. ) And again it is written that "the 
 strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, 
 and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench 
 them." (Isaiah 1:31.) And once more we are warned : 
 "Be not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for whatsoever a 
 man soweth, that shall he also reap." (Gal. 6 17.) Every 
 soul, therefore, who is finally lost will go like Judas to 
 "his own place" — ^not a place prepared originally for 
 men, but "prepared for the devil and his angels." 
 
 What shall we do about these tremendous truths? 
 Well, you say, "I don't believe in any literal hell of fire. 
 I believe that Jesus was using figures of speech in these 
 references to hell fire." Very well, then, but do you not 
 know that a figure of speech is always weaker than the 
 thing symbolized by it ? Could any material torments be 
 worse than the moral torture of an acutely sharpened 
 conscience, in which, like that of the rich man, memory 
 becomes remorse as it dwells upon misspent time and mis- 
 used talents, upon omitted duties and committed sins, 
 upon opportunities lost both of doing and of getting 
 good, upon privileges neglected and warnings rejected? 
 The poet, Starkey, stimulates our imagination in the 
 awful lines : 
 
230 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 "All that hath been that ought not to have been, 
 That might have been so different ; that now 
 Cannot but be irrevocably past. Thy gangrened heart, 
 Stripped of its self-worn mask, and spread at last 
 Bare, in its horrible anatomy, 
 Before thine own excruciated gaze." 
 
 While Cecil puts this part of the matter in a nutshell 
 when he writes : 
 
 "Hell is the truth seen too late.'* 
 
 The really important fact, however, is not the precise 
 nature of Hell. It is the Devil who sidetracks us from 
 the main thing by getting our minds to raise questions 
 and differences about these speculative points. The great 
 and important truth is that there is a Hell, and that it is 
 terribly real, whether we can fully understand its condi- 
 tions now with our finite earthly minds or not. And we 
 need to understand, too, that this Hell is for New York- 
 ers as much as for any one else. God is no respecter 
 of places or persons. Whether you live in the back 
 woods or in the world's metropolis, whether you dwell in 
 a palace on Fifth Avenue or a hovel in the slums, unless 
 you repent and turn from your sins, oh, men and women, 
 you are lost! 
 
 HELL A REASONABLE BELIEF 
 
 A moment's clear thinking will convince any reason- 
 able mind that it is a rational and necessary truth which 
 Jesus Christ proclaimed in his teaching about hell. You 
 believe that crime ought to be punished and that there 
 ought to be jails and penitentiaries in this world. Will 
 you be so foolish, then, as to think that God Almighty 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 231 
 
 ought to be less firm, less wise and less just than earthly 
 rulers? You would tremble for your safety if you had 
 violated some law here in New York. You would dodge 
 a policeman as though he had the smallpox, and the sight 
 of a jail house would almost throw you into fits! And 
 yet you will go on day after day violating God's laws, 
 as though you believe that you could easily "get away 
 with it." How do you figure that out? Do you think 
 that God is a fool and that you can "put it over on Him" ? 
 or do you think that He really doesn't care? or do you 
 believe He is so weak that He can not vindicate His 
 law^s? One of these three things must be true of your 
 thinking. Either God is a fool, or He is immoral, or 
 He is weak, if he has provided no Hell for violators of 
 righteous law ! But he is neither of these things. Hear 
 me to-night, you are the "fool," as Jesus said, and not 
 God ! "Be not deceived ; God is not mocked." And he 
 has both the means and the power to attend to your 
 case! He must and will provide some place where the 
 ungodly go. Violators of His holy laws must pay the 
 penalty for their folly and sin. Certainly Jesus Christ 
 is trying to say to us in all of this teaching, that Hell 
 is an awful reality, whatever its exact condition may be, 
 and that for a human soul to be finally alienated from 
 God and turned into Hell is the supreme tragedy of the 
 whole universe! 
 
 It is in this spirit, then, that my appeal is made to- 
 night. Sin should be rebuked, but as God sees my heart, 
 there is only the earnest desire to help, even as my blessed 
 Master desired to help, in his rebuke of sin and his warn- 
 ing concerning hell. I do not set myself up above any 
 one. I only rejoice in Christ my Savior! And plead 
 with all who need Him to turn in penitence to God ! 
 
232 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 THE RANKS OF THE REBELS 
 
 What will you do about all of this, oh, men and 
 women of New York? You blatant infidels, who sneer 
 at the church and laugh at the preachers and scoff at all 
 righteous things! You profane men, taking even the 
 holy name of God into your places of vice and shame. 
 You lewd men and women, slaves to lust and appetite, 
 prostituting the sacred powers that God has given you 
 for propagating the race, to base, selfish and unholy ends. 
 You destroyers of unborn infants. You vain and God- 
 less society women, with your cigarettes, your cocktails 
 and your indecent dresses; you who decline the duties 
 and privileges of motherhood that you may pursue your 
 selfish ''careers," and who nurse contemptible little dogs 
 rather than babies. You mal-practitioners, who help 
 them do these things. You whoremongers. You drunk- 
 ards and drunkard makers. You thieves. You murder- 
 ers. You bribe givers and bribe takers. You corrupt 
 politicians. You stirrers up of strife and bloodshed. 
 You setters of citizen against citizen and class against 
 class. You makers and sellers of impure literature. You 
 false prophets, ''blind leaders of the blind," who cry, 
 "peace, peace," when there is no peace. You religious 
 Pharisees, who profess with your lips on Sunday a creed 
 to which your lives give the lie all the other days of the 
 week. You fosterers and promoters of the rotten 
 heresies that are taught on every hand in this city. You 
 men who are seducing and misleading the young for 
 gain; — that bunch of moving picture promoters, who 
 went to Albany during the last legislature and stood on 
 the other side of the table, as some of us raised our 
 voices in behalf of the sanctity of the Lord's Day, — you 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 233 
 
 who scorned us and laughed at us and who got through 
 your laws, for the breaking down of the Sabbath, in 
 order that you might open your lecherous shows even 
 on the day of worship, and thereby make more dirty 
 dollars for yourselves. You theater men of New York, 
 who take advantage of the need and desire of the people 
 for recreation to debase their ideals — you conscienceless 
 theater men, who prostitute art before the altars of com- 
 mercialism, who capitalize the sacrifice of womanly 
 modesty and degrade girlhood by making a display of 
 those very feminine graces and charms, that God 
 Almighty has designed for pure and noble purposes. 
 Yes, and you church people who applaud, and, by your 
 presence and your money, support these men, who are 
 violating God's Holy day, and who are running in op- 
 position to the church and doing the Devil's work in this 
 city. You gamblers, high and low, who defy the laws 
 of God and man and make your living not by honest anj 
 self-reliant efforts, but who live as parasites upon so- 
 ciety, and between whom and a thief there is only the 
 difference of the thickness of a card. And you covetous 
 men, you worshipers of Mammon instead of God, you 
 operators of sweat shops, you tenement house landlords, 
 you grinders of the faces of the poor, you employers of 
 child labor, you who scheme and plot and cheat and 
 wreck railroad systems and plunder insurance companies. 
 You profiteers, who are starving the people and murder- 
 ing millions of babies, as you enrich yourselves by rais- 
 ing the price of bread and meat and milk and coal and 
 clothing. All of you, without concern for your immortal 
 good or regard for the welfare of your fellowmen, still 
 drifting in selfish and luxurious living when the world 
 is sick and full of woe, and eternity is just before you, I 
 
234 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 ask you, in the very words of Jesus Christ Himself, **how 
 can ye escape the damnation of hell?" Oh, yes, you are 
 real sinners, and in your deeper hearts you know it ; and 
 you also know that you are headed toward a real hell. 
 You have already begun to taste it in this world. Isaiah 
 the prophet has well said of all such — "Hell hath enlarged 
 itself, and opened her mouth without measure, and your 
 glory, and your multitude and your pomp, and your re- 
 joicing shall descend into it." (Isaiah 5:14.) 
 
 And you almost-Christians, still postponing, lingering 
 these many years on the border of the Kingdom, and yet 
 never entering to do your share, and still refusing to 
 even with the tremendous responsibilities of human life 
 in this day of storm and stress when the world is upside 
 down, I ask you also, "How shall ye escape, if ye neglect 
 so great salvation?" 
 
 CHRIST OR THE DEVIL 
 
 Call me an extremist, if you please, laugh at me as 
 "out of date," sneer at me as a "fanatic," because I dare 
 sound the warning, but I stand here to-night as a mes- 
 senger of Jesus Christ and I do warn you, as he did, 
 that justice will be finally vindicated, and that "except 
 ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." Justice must be 
 done, or this universe will come to its end in moral chaos. 
 And justice will be done, to the last resource of infinite 
 power ! 
 
 Now, hear me in closing. Jesus is our only Guide and 
 the only way out! Knowing the terrible destruction 
 wrought by sin, he lovingly and faithfully warns us all 
 before it is eternally too late. A farmer standing one 
 morning on the mountainside in a western state suddenly 
 
A REAL HELL FOR SINNERS 235 
 
 felt the ground trembling beneath him in a strange way. 
 He leaped to a bush near him on the side of a bank and 
 clung on. He leaped just in time, for the next moment 
 the avalanche slipped from beneath his feet and went 
 roaring with the jar of an earthquake to the valley below. 
 Jesus not only warns us that while following sin we are 
 in deadly danger, but he gave himself to save our souls 
 from hell. See Him yonder upon the cross, see His 
 agony of body and the travail of His soul, and read there 
 a loving God's estimate of the ugliness of human sin, 
 the awfulness of Hell, and the value of man's eternal 
 spirit. If God, in Christ Jesus, was willing to endure all 
 of that to save us, then surely Hell is indeed a terrible 
 reality, and we should not longer "neglect so great sal- 
 vation.'* 
 
 Will you beheve Christ or will you believe the Devil? 
 That at last is the real issue in this entire matter. Even 
 a man as cultured and gentle as Ruskin declared that the 
 denial of hell is "the most dangerous, because the most 
 attractive, form of modern infidelity." But at last, my 
 friends, is it so very modem? No! It is the devil's same 
 old lie. He came to Eve and insinuated a doubt about 
 God's truth. He asked her, "Yea, hath God said?" And 
 then he followed this adroit question, which carried with 
 it a doubt of the truthfulness of God's word, by his own 
 lie, his insistent denial, "Ye shall not surely die." This 
 is what led to the fall of man. And it is the Devil's lies 
 that have deluded and misled the children of men down 
 all the ages, and produced all the sin and sorrow and suf- 
 fering and despair in the whole long, dark, tragic history 
 of the human race. Oh, let us believe God's truth rather 
 than the Devil's lie! Let us accept divine revelation 
 rather than human speculation. Let us heed what Christ 
 
236 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 so plainly taught, and we shall be forever saved ! Every 
 consideration of enlightened self-interest, every prompt- 
 ing of gratitude, and every impulse of service to our fel- 
 lowmen, should lead us to bow^ our wills to God's will 
 and to accept Jesus Christ as our eternal Savior and our 
 divine Lord! 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE HEAVENLY HOME AND ITS HAPPY 
 INHABITANTS 
 
 Text : "Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, be- 
 lieve also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it 
 were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
 you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again^" 
 and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be 
 also." (John 14:1-3.) 
 
 "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither 
 shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which 
 is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them 
 unto living fountains of waters : and God shall wipe away all 
 tears from their eyes." (Rev. 7:16, 17.) 
 
 "And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the 
 tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and 
 they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and 
 be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; 
 and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
 neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are 
 passed away." (Rev. 21:3,4,) 
 
 Heaven! Where is it? What is it? Who will be in 
 it? How can we get there? 
 
 God does not fully answer these questions in the 
 Bible. Perhaps there are two reasons why he did not. 
 First, because our finite minds could not fully compre- 
 hend, even if He had given a complete revelation of the 
 exact conditions in the other world and the precise na- 
 ture of the heavenly home. It is useless for me to speak 
 to my baby boy concerning the problems of the higher 
 mathematics. I might demonstrate accurately and per- 
 fectly some beautiful mathematical truth, but his little 
 
 237 
 
238 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 mind could' not grasp it. He would not know at all 
 what I was talking about. Our understanding is 
 grounded only on the nature of the things which we 
 have experienced or learned. We are now in a human, 
 finite stage of our existence, with the limitations of the 
 flesh and the conditions of time and sense to circumscribe 
 us. We cannot possibly fathom or understand, there- 
 fore, the conditions in the other, eternal, spirit world. 
 If you should come to a grub- worm — the chrysalis of 
 the butterfly — and tell that grub-worm, as he crawled 
 in the mud and muck of earth, that the time was com- 
 ing when he would be changed into a higher and far 
 more wonderful being; that instead of his heavy, gross 
 body, crawHng laboriously upon the earth, he would 
 have wings aglow with the radiance of the rainbow, and 
 that he would fly through the golden sunlight, and have 
 fellowship with the flowers, and sip the sweet nectar of 
 their blooms; if you should tell him that, in some 
 language that he knew, it would all be impossible to his 
 comprehension, because he had only known the slow 
 crawling and the mud and the narrow vision of his 
 lower estate. 
 
 So of us in connection with the glories and wonders 
 of heaven. '*It doth not yet appear what we shall be." 
 *'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into 
 the heart of man to understand the things that God is 
 preparing for them that love him." 
 
 Again, God has not told us of the full beauty and 
 blessedness of heaven, because, doubtless. He knew that 
 that would not be wisest or best for us, since we have 
 to linger in the flesh and amid the scenes of earth. If 
 the sailor, laboring in mid-ocean to bring his ship safely 
 through the storms, could lift up his eyes and see his 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 239 
 
 home, with vivid reality and nearness — if he could see 
 the sunlight pouring across the rippling grasses and the 
 many colored flowers smiling to the sky, and his little 
 children running with out-stretched arms to meet him at 
 the gate, and the wife waiting to fold him in her warm 
 embrace — if he could see these things it would not be 
 well, because forgotten then would be the duty at his 
 hand. His grasp would loosen on the rope, the tempest 
 would snatch away the sails, and the gallant ship, over- 
 whelmed with disaster, would go down to her doom. 
 
 If we could see all the glory and sweetness of the 
 heavenly home it would spoil us for the tasks of earth. 
 And yet, thank God! in His mercy and love, He does 
 give us enough of the truth about heaven to feed our 
 faith and to inspire our hopes and to fix our hearts* 
 affections on heavenly things. 
 
 There is more, too, about heaven in the Bible than 
 a great many people imagine, and there is one very inter- 
 esting thing about it all. The teaching concerning the 
 heavenly home is consistent in setting forth the fact 
 that heaven will not be a place so radically different from 
 anything that we have known upon earth, that we will 
 feel strange and untutored there. Conditions in heaven 
 will be rather the advancement, the perfection of earthly 
 conditions. That is one reason why the Bible sets forth 
 the fact that there will be a closeness of relationship be- 
 tween heaven and earth under the conditions of the 
 Millennium time and the eternity that follows. There 
 will be commerce between heaven and earth, just as there 
 was in the beginning, when in the Garden man walked 
 and talked with God. Indeed, we have some foretaste 
 of this already even in this world. We have some of the 
 
240 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 sweetness of heaven, even in this life, in the fellowship 
 with God and his people. The old hymn is true : 
 
 *The hill of Zion yields 
 
 A thousand sacred sweets. 
 Before we climb the heavenly heights 
 
 Or walk the golden streets." 
 
 A GLORIOUS CITY 
 
 The first fact about heaven, which will make it familiar 
 to us, is that it will be a city — a city having no need of 
 the sun to lighten it; for ''the Lamb is the Hght thereof." 
 What does this expression, "the Lamb," mean all through 
 the Scripture? It means Christ in His sacrificial char- 
 acter as the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of 
 the world. ''The Lamb," means Redemptive Love, and 
 this Love, through the beauty of uncreated light, will 
 illuminate our heavenly home forever. 
 
 A glorious city, then, is the center of the paradise 
 of God. "We have here no continuing city, but we seek 
 one to come." For at last man is a social being, and 
 while even in the heavenly state we will have access to 
 the fair fields and the sweet beauties of the transformed 
 earth; this fact that man is a social being and that his 
 greatest satisfactions and his noblest constructive achieve- 
 ments come about only through contact with his fellows, 
 show^s the logical necessity of the Bible teaching, that 
 heaven is a city. 
 
 Yet not a city such as those that we know in this 
 world. We have even here some beautiful cities. I 
 well remember strolling along the boulevards of Paris 
 one summer day, when the world was fresh from the 
 washing of a passing shower, with my heart lifted up at 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 241 
 
 the beauty of that gallant city. I stood another time on 
 the top of the Capitol building in Washington. With 
 patriotic pride I saw the long lines of the avenues 
 stretching out like spokes from the hub of a wheel, and 
 the marble buildings, gleaming through the whispering 
 leaves, and the stately Potomac flowing by the graceful 
 monument erected by a nation's love to the Father of his 
 country. I rode another day along Fifth Avenue, here 
 in our own great city, toward the close of the war time, 
 when a tide of patriotism was sweeping our citizenship. 
 The Avenue was aflame with color and aflutter with 
 flags; and I thought, "How beautiful is this metropolis 
 of America, and how fair is this stately Avenue!" 
 
 But think, my friends, what heaven will be! In this 
 wonderful twenty-first chapter of the Revelation we are 
 given one dazzling glimpse of its supernal glories. Stand 
 yonder with me below the Arch of Triumph on Fifth 
 Avenue and let us give play to our imaginations. In- 
 stead of that graceful Arch being composed of man's 
 poor plaster, which is already cracking and falling in 
 decay, think of it as carved from one perfect opal, or 
 one giant diamond, fairly stabbing the eyes with the 
 dazzling beauty of a million flashing rays of light. And 
 beyond it, reaching far and away, see the Avenue, not 
 with the cold drab stones that we know, but paved with 
 pure gold, so rare and fine that it shines like transparent 
 glass. And there beside that matchless highway, see 
 trees with many colored flowers, each bearing the fruits 
 of life, and the leaves that are for the healing of the 
 nations; and to right and left of these, as far as our 
 wondering eyes can see, behold mansions of glory, built 
 of opals and sapphires, and rubies and pearls, planned 
 by the skill of Omnipotent Wisdom and executed by the 
 
242 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 power of a divine Architect ! Add to that httle gHmpse, 
 which the imagination gives, a thousandfold increase in 
 beauty and sweetness, and let the city stretch out and out, 
 with its jeweled walls fifteen hundred miles in each 
 direction, and its exquisite beauties piled plain on plain 
 and street above street, soaring up fifteen hundred miles 
 toward the eternal blue — try with your poor finite minds 
 to think of that and to dream of it, and you will begin 
 to catch some faint, far-off suggestion of the Place that 
 God Almighty is preparing for them who love him! 
 
 Yes, it is a place. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a 
 place for you"; and we can see how this must be true, 
 for if self-conscious personality is to survive, it must 
 survive somewhere. "But," you say, **do you really ask 
 us to believe that when John speaks here in the Revela- 
 tion of this wonderful city and these flashing jewels 
 and these magnificent distances, we are to take it in any 
 sense literally?" And I answer by asking you. Why 
 not? ''Ah," but you say, "that is materialism in the 
 eternal state." Well, why should there not be material- 
 ism in the eternal state? Is there any law or reason 
 against that? Now, my friend, see here! We are 
 literally steeped in materialism in this age as never be- 
 fore. In science, in business and economics, and every- 
 where else this modern age is overwhelmingly ma- 
 terialistic. We are very familiar with materialism. 
 Why, then, should we be so sensitive of the suggestion 
 of a heavenly materialism — transfigured and glorified — 
 in the hereafter? Not a heavy, gross materialism such 
 as we know, but something infinitely rarer and finer! 
 Since the teaching of the Scripture is always that the 
 things which are coming to us in the beyond are in line 
 with the things that we have known here, why should 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 243 
 
 we not accept the teaching that heaven is a glorious 
 city? And if God has beautified this earth by little 
 touches of gold and flashes of jewels, why may we not 
 accept the teaching that what we have seen upon earth 
 is only a fore-gleam of the superlative beauty of heaven? 
 If pearls and diamonds and other jewels charm us with 
 their loveliness here, then why may we not believe that 
 God, from his infinite treasure house, has builded our 
 eternal home of jewels, more glorious and beautiful than 
 our poor eyes have ever seen, or our fond hearts have 
 ever dreamed ? 
 
 NO MORE SIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 Another thing. In that perfect city there will be only 
 perfect beings, as the favored inhabitants forever. It 
 is written here that they shall "hunger no more, neither 
 thirst any more." Again and again the cities of earth 
 are blighted with terrible famines. At this very hour, 
 as I speak to you here in this sanctuary, yonder in the 
 cities of Russia and of middle Europe and of the East 
 the people starve for bread. The gaunt, haggard forms 
 of little children stagger along the highways looking for 
 even a crust, and find it not. But there is a better time 
 coming. In heaven never again will the pangs of hun- 
 ger and the agony of famine waste and destroy! 
 
 Nor shall there be any more iniquity in that beautiful 
 home of the soul. "Nothing that defileth or maketh a 
 lie, shall enter in.*' The supreme tragedy of human life 
 is that, despite all that the good God has done, men still 
 rebel and sin, and will not repent. I had the privilege, 
 sometime since at Auburn, N. Y., of going through the 
 State Penitentiary. I went into the narrow cells where 
 
244 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 human beings have to hve, some of them for the re- 
 mainder of their days. I went into the workshops. I 
 mingled with the prisoners and talked with them on the 
 play ground, during the recreation hour. And then I 
 went into the death chamber, that grim and terrible place 
 — that throne room of the dark Reaper — and there I saw 
 the electric chair. It is the first one ever used to exe- 
 cute a human being. As we stood there in the solemn 
 quiet of that terrible room, I said to the kind-hearted 
 officer, who was showing me through : **Now, tell me, 
 you have seen these men and women die here, have you?" 
 *'Yes, Doctor, every one." "You saw Czolgosz, who 
 murdered President McKinley, executed here, did you?'* 
 *'Yes, Doctor." "Well now, tell me, in that solemn 
 moment when he faced death and eternity, was there any 
 sign of repentance? As a result of his opportunity for 
 thought and meditation upon his crime, did he soften 
 at all? Did there seem to be any element of sorrow 
 for the great wrong he had done and the bright life he 
 had blasted and the loving hearts he had wrecked? 
 Was there any change in him?" "No," he said, "Doctor, 
 there was not. He died cool and defiant. Even in the 
 moment when he took his seat in the chair he expressed 
 himself as glad that he had done his terrible deed. 
 Doctor, he was glad that he had shot down the Chris- 
 tian President of the land of freedom — in the very act 
 of extending his hand in an impulse of good fellowship 
 to shake his own!" 
 
 Here, in the very midst of this chapter describing the 
 glories of heaven, is the statement that those who will 
 not accept God — all the fearful, and unbelieving, and 
 abominable, and whoremongers, and murderers, and 
 sorcerers, and idolaters, and liars — shall be cast out. 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 245 
 
 Thank God for the blessed hope that we are coming, 
 by and by, to a place where there will be no more death 
 chairs and jails and hard, unrepentant human hearts, 
 but that we are to live in a city where only the good 
 and the true abide ; a city into whose hospitable gate- 
 ways all of the great and noble shall come, and into 
 which the Kings of the earth shall bring their glory and 
 their honor! 
 
 GOVERNMENT IN HEAVEN 
 
 The Bible makes plain, again, that another institution 
 of earth which we will know and recognize in heaven 
 will be government. Our text speaks of the "Lamb in 
 the midst of the throne." God's perfect government, 
 then, will be centered in Redemptive Love. God is a 
 Sovereign, and the good order of the universe is insured, 
 not along lines that are strange and utterly different 
 from ever>'thing that we have ever known, but along 
 lines with which we are more or less familiar. And 
 since men are to share with God the rulership of the 
 universe, since we are "to reign with Christ," it is en- 
 cumbent on us to strive, as far as possible, that govern- 
 ment on earth shall be centered in redemptive love, that 
 we may be thus trained, as far as possible here and now, 
 for the tasks and the blessed duties that await us over 
 there. For heaven, mind you, is not a condition of 
 static idleness, but of glorious activity. Jesus said, "My 
 Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The whole vast 
 work of this infinite universe must go constantly for- 
 ward. And each of us in that blessed Kingdom shall 
 have our appointed place and our delightful duty to dis- 
 charge. There shall be no agonizing, grinding toil, such 
 as the earth knows, for the promise is "neither shall the 
 
246 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 sun light on them, nor any heat," but there will be con- 
 structive service. Think what blessed and wonderful 
 tasks are awaiting us there; upon what far errands we 
 are to go, perhaps to the uttermost bounds of this great 
 universe, and what experiences shall be ours, as in the 
 rapture of perfect love we do the will of God, under 
 conditions in which, as Bickersteth says: 
 
 "Service there is rest, rest service; 
 
 For the paradise of Saints, 
 
 Like Eden, with its toilless husbandry. 
 
 Has many plants to tend and flowers to twine, 
 
 And fruit trees in the garden of the soul, 
 
 That ask the culture of celestial skill." 
 
 FAMILY LIFE IN HEAVEN 
 
 The Scripture makes plain, again, that another institu- 
 tion of earth, which we will find in a glorified and nobler 
 form in heaven, will be the family. Jesus said, "In my 
 Father's house are many mansions." "My Father," thus 
 distinguishing Him from all other fathers, and showing 
 even in the Godhead a family relationship. Again we 
 read here, in the seventh verse of the twenty-first chap- 
 ter of the Revelation, "He that overcometh shall inherit 
 all things, and I will be his God and he shall be my 
 Son." "Inherit," another familiar earthly term, and 
 "my Son," an expression of relationship. Here, then, 
 are clear intimations of the bond of fellowship and love 
 through the family idea. It will be no longer the re- 
 lationship and interests arising from the flesh, for Jesus 
 rebuked the skeptics of his age by telling them that 
 there would be no giving or taking in marriage in heaven, 
 but that we should be "like the angels of God." That 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 247 
 
 can only mean that we shall live in the perfection of a 
 pure and holy love. The flesh element in connection with 
 love is entirely incidental. The reality is in the spirit. 
 We are living now in the shadow life. Our true life is 
 beyond; and in that heavenly home we shall know and 
 love each other even better than upon the earth. 
 
 May I confess to you, my friends, that this thought 
 is inexpressibly sweet to my heart. Ah, these precious 
 loves of earth and these dear ties of home. These tender 
 endearments of wifehood and motherhood; this rippling, 
 childish laughter, and these rosy, baby arms about our 
 necks! Are we to lose these things forever and know 
 them no more? Hear me! Not if there is a God who 
 is both great and good, for the bonds of love are the 
 most precious and beautiful things that this world knows, 
 and surely our Heavenly Father will save them, to bless 
 and rejoice our hearts forever. 
 
 I was privileged, as a lad, to have a beautiful and 
 happy home life. I can recall to this hour the smallest 
 detail of the houses where we lived, of the yards and 
 the trees and the wide lying fields. In the quiet of 
 the summer twilight or as the soft glow of the winter 
 fireside sends out its cheery warmth, suddenly the past 
 comes rushing back again. Many fair and cherished 
 forms linger along the shores of memory. There I see 
 mother, with her beauty and her unselfishness, her joy 
 in the out of doors, her gracious charity and her love 
 of flowers and music and all dumb things. And there 
 is father, with his cheery smile and his joyful good fel- 
 lowship, and yet with his stern, splendid strength. And 
 when I realize that they are gone and I shall never see 
 them more, so far as the walks of earth are concerned, 
 the thought of heaven is precious beyond the power of 
 
248 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 words to express. Mother was the first to tell us the 
 
 long good-by; and then, within a year, father followed, 
 
 and then my oldest brother. Only two of us are left 
 
 from that broken home, and yet wonderful blessings 
 
 came from those griefs. Before that, I had merely a 
 
 philosophical conception of heaven. In College and 
 
 , University, through the study of science and philosophy, 
 
 ' I lost the clear vision of these great old truths; but 
 
 after father and mother and brother went away, these 
 
 ] great messages in the Bible about heaven became to me 
 
 \ almost like personal letters from God, assuring me that 
 
 I the dear ones were there as His guests, and that by 
 
 j and by I would see them all again, and that the ties 
 
 I of love that here were broken would be reunited to vi- 
 
 I brate in eternal harmony. 
 
 i 
 
 WORSHIP IN HEAVEN 
 
 Another institution that we have known upon earth 
 which will be found in heaven, is worship. For earthly 
 life reaches its highest and best in the noble impulses 
 of worship. And yet somewhat different it will be from 
 the worship of earth. There will be no church in heaven 
 save the church of the first born, "the bride of the 
 Lamb," for John writes here, "I saw no temple there, 
 for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the 
 temple of it." There will be then, in its full flower, the 
 perfection of spiritual worship. "The Lamb" — ^the 
 blessedness of redemptive love^ — shall be the very atmos- 
 phere and content of the adoration of heaven. 
 
 We will miss, perchance, some of the things with 
 which we are familiar in our worship here. There will 
 be no more prayer in heaven, for in the face of Jesus 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 249 
 
 Christ we shall see God and ascribe unto Him honor, 
 praise and glory forever. There will be no reading of 
 the Scripture in heaven, for there we will have full fel- 
 lowship with the Living Word. There will be no more 
 preaching in heaven, for every soul will be saved. Some 
 of you dear friends, who have suffered here under long 
 sermons, will have a blessed relief in the heavenly home. 
 But there is one thing that we know in our earthly 
 worship, which we will have in heaven, and that is music. 
 Our hearts thrill under the great oratorios of earth. 
 We are enchanted by the harmonies of the masters, 
 quivering upon vibrating strings or rolling from golden 
 throated trumpets, or leaping like winged angels from 
 the lips of those who are gifted with the talent of song. 
 But think what the music of heaven will be! Rank be- 
 yond rank, choir beyond choir, and cloud above cloud 
 of the saved, striking their golden harps and singing the 
 songs of Moses and the Lamb — harmonies rarer than 
 our earth has known, melodies sweeter than have ever 
 ravished our ears here below — "every creature which 
 is in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth sing- 
 ing, 'Holy, Holy, Holy.' Blessings be unto Him that 
 sitteth on the throne and unto the Lamb forever! Alle- 
 luia! Salvation and glory and honor and power unto 
 the Lord our God !" 
 
 PERFECT COMFORT 
 
 In the perfection of this worship and the intimacy 
 of fellowship with God, we are taught that we will 
 find the fullness of comfort and peace. The promise is 
 "God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes." In the 
 world we have tribulation. There is an old Spanish 
 
250 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 proverb which says, "There is no home without a hush." 
 The hush of sorrow is in every human home. 
 
 *'There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
 But one dead Lamb is there ! 
 There is no fireside howsoever defended, 
 But hath one vacant chair.'' 
 
 But in the heavenly home there will be no more sad 
 farewells, no more funeral cars and open graves and 
 broken hearts, no more shrunken limbs and twisted 
 spines; no more pain or suffering or death. *'For the 
 former things are passed away," **and God shall wipe 
 away all tears from our eyes." 
 
 Summing it all up, the worship of heaven and the fel- 
 lowship with God will bring us into the fullness of life. 
 *'The Lamb shall lead us to the fountains of waters of 
 life." We shall learn eternal truth from Redemptive 
 Love. Our lives in this world are but pitiful makeshifts 
 at best. Fame is fleeting, and friendship often is false, 
 and sorrows fall thick and fast upon us. Our best in- 
 spirations beat their wings against the limitations of the 
 flesh, like the bird of the mountain against the bars of 
 its cage; but, beloved, the time of the fullness of life 
 is coming, "in that sweet by and by," when Jesus him- 
 self shall lead us into the fullest treasures of knowledge 
 and wisdom and understanding and love, which con- 
 stitute our true and destined life. 
 
 THE ETERNAL CHOICE 
 
 Ah, my friends, which of these twain will you 
 choose? God has set life and death before us — ^heaven 
 and hell for our taking. What shall your choice be? 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 251 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll, the great agnostic of the last gen- 
 eration, once said, in speaking of death : 
 
 "And, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest 
 sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are 
 kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and 
 in an instant hear the billows roar above the sunken ship. 
 For whether in midsea or among the breakers of the 
 farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each 
 and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is 
 rich with love, and every moment jeweled with a joy, 
 will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and 
 dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery 
 and death." 
 
 Contrast with that doctrine of pessimism and despair 
 these words from the last sermon which I ever heard 
 Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, that prince of southern pulpit 
 orators, preach : 
 
 "When we stand up there at the right hand of Majesty, 
 robed in white, crowned and sceptered, enraptured by 
 the music of victory and the hallelujahs and hosannas 
 of the redeemed, we shall see, far more perfectly than 
 we now see, that the miracles which kept us from death, 
 were immeasurably less merciful than the miracle which 
 led us through the gates of death and carried us up to our 
 eternal home and heritage in the heavens. These fail- 
 ing eyes will soon close to the attractions of earth's hills 
 and dales and fields and floods, and all the resplendent 
 beauty of the starry heavens. But beyond all these, I 
 see a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness. I see a land where the flowers never with- 
 er and the rainbow never fades. A land upon whose 
 blissful shore there falls no shadow, and rests no stain." 
 
 Here is the contrast between unbelief and faith, one 
 seeing death as a night of oblivion, unlighted by the 
 
252 THE MENACE OF IMMORALITY 
 
 radiance of a single star; the other seeing death as the 
 sunrise of heavenly blessedness and eternal joy. 
 
 THE HOME OF THE SOUL 
 
 What does it all mean, my friends? All this that 
 Jesus is saying, that he has ''gone to prepare a place" 
 for us, and that "in the Father's house there are many 
 mansions"? What does it mean, this matchless and 
 blessed city that John is picturing here, that his en- 
 raptured eyes looked upon through the inspiration of 
 God? To sum it up and put it into one sweet word, it 
 means Home, the home of the soul. 
 
 In many ways that is the sweetest of all our earthly 
 words. The holiest ties of earth center in home. 
 Home means rest. Home means shelter from the 
 storms. Home means the protection of brooding love. 
 Home means joyful reunions. Home means light and 
 laughter and song and fellowship with those who under- 
 stand us and whom we love; and that is what heaven 
 is — our eternal Home. 
 
 In one of our Northern cities, some time ago, a mass 
 meeting of railroad men was held, and a well-known 
 and popular engineer was speaking. In the course of 
 his address he said : 
 
 "Ah, brothers, I cannot tell you how dear to my heart 
 is the thought of heaven!" And then he told them 
 that when he started out as a young man upon his first 
 run, each evening as he would bring his train into the 
 city where he lived, in passing the little cottage home 
 in the suburbs, he would blow the whistle; and always 
 the door would promptly open, and a sweet faced old 
 lady would come out and wave her greetings to him, arid 
 
THE HEAVENLY HOME 253 
 
 then would turn into the house and say, "Thank God, 
 father, Benny is safely home again." Then he said the 
 years passed away, and by and by they laid that 
 sweet mother back into the arms of the earth; but each 
 day when his train swept around the curve and into the 
 city, he still blew his whistle; and, as before, the door 
 would open and a gray haired old gentleman would step 
 out and wave to him and murmur, as he stepped back, 
 "Thank God, Benny is safely home again!" And then 
 the time came when he had to say good-by to father 
 too. The shadow of a tender grief was upon his heart 
 as he passed the little cottage on the hillside. "But, 
 men," he said, "hear me to-day; that is not the end of 
 the story. When I open my last throttle in this world 
 and come into the heavenly station at last, as I pass 
 through the gates into the city, I expect to see a sweet- 
 faced old lady and a dear gracious old gentleman wait- 
 ing to greet me there, and I expect to hear her turn and 
 say, *Thank God, father, Benny is safely Home.' " 
 
 Oh, my friends, what difference will it make at last — 
 all our success and our pleasure, our fame and our 
 vanity, our glory and our honor, — yes, and our gold, piled 
 up and up and up! — what is the use of it all, unless we 
 win heaven? "What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
 whole world and yet lose his own soul ?" * 
 
 * Dr. Straton's little book on "The Heavenly Home" contains the 
 above sermon and two others. One on "The New Heavens and 
 the New Earth, Wherein Dwelleth Righteousness," and the other 
 on "Will We Know Our Loved Ones in Heaven?" Price fifty cents. 
 Published by George H. Doran Company. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
 1 1012 01206 2958 
 

 
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