The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1882-03-21
A SAD CASE.

a SAL OASG.
The revelations made at our police
court are frequently of such charac.
Ger As to be really startling in their
mature. The parties who are arrest.
I'D are generally of that class far be-
Gov the average social grade and seem
10 belong to a strata where nothing OF
good, latent or promising, can posi-
bly, be found. Time after time the
press Of the city has called attention
30 the fact that there are many young
girls who are just starting in a down
ward career and whose lives are fast
aeing polluted by all that makes a
woman an outcast and q complete
wreck.
What shall be, what can be, done
Cor these frail girls? The question is
one which appeals most strongly to
the christian sentiment Of the COM
lnunity. Surely something can be
efone for them, and that there ought
so be an organized effort to rescue
shem. needs no extended argument to
prove. Yesterday morning two young
girls. neither of them fifteen years of
age. we're arraigned in our police
court, charged with leading life of
shame. The spectacle was a sad
one and reflects upon female virtue
with a sickening shadow.
These girls betrayed degree of
dsepravity which would startle the
pure christian women of this city, if
they could only know of it as it is.
But that this depravity exists, that
its slime is to be found trailing through
the class to which these young girls
belong, and that its poison is daily
working its way into other lives, as
get pure, is not a secret. What shall
be done for these girls? What, rather,
Is being done to save them {? Nothing,
thus far land criminal Indifference to
this degradation is manifested by the
christians of Sedalia. Where is the
woman who dares 60 to these fallen
sisters and seek to lead them back to
4 life Of purity and honor? The heath
en- is not forgotten, but these worse
than ignorant idol worshippers
are .scoraed and despised by those who
deem its christian duty to lift the
fallen, and help back to renewed
life those whose feet have wandered
ieto hs& aud siaful ways.
There is Pharisaism in the
churches Of to-day which patterns
after that of eighteen centuries ago.
Devoted women toll and make self
sacrifices for the identifying of the
house of worship and think they are
doing Gods service in this work.
For this there can be no censure, if
the end sought is to make the church
a more potent factor, in evangelizing
the community. But, unfortunately,
eske reverse is the result. From thes
handsome rooms with their richly
dressed audiences, the poor shrink
refuse to make contrast by their
plain clothes, and the result is that
only to them word of Life spoken.
1t will be 50 to-day, it has been so in
the past.
Would it contaminate any true
christian woman to visit such girls as
we have for our text, and seek
sy gentle ministrations to save them
from ruin of body and soul ? Is not
the gospel panoply sufficient shield
against the corrupting miasma of the
houses where virtue is unknown an ID
seusuality reigns in hideous sway ?
we think it is, and we further think
that it is the duty of the christian
women of Sedalia to make some prac-
s.ical effort to save young girls from a
life Of shame, disgrace and ultimate
ruin, which will last through eternity.
Will these christian women do this ?
Will they not organize some sort of a
society whose sole purpose and work