The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-04-13

beautiful faces. They are going tc
some interesting place of amusement.
/ tell you that Broadway between
and IL o'clock at night, between the
Battery and Central park, is an Auster-
litz, Gettysburg, Waterloo, where
kingdoms are lost or won, and three
worlds mingle in the strife.
meet another coming down off the
hotel steps, and say: "Where are you
going?" You say: II am going with a
merchant of New York, who has prom
ised to show me the underground life
of the city. l am his customer, and he
Stop! A business house that tries to
get or keep your custom through such
a process as that is not worthy of you.
There are business esta blishnsents in
our cities which have for years been
| sending to destruction hundreds and
thousands of merchants. They have
a secret drawer in the counter
where money is kept, and the clerk
goes and gets it when he wantssto take
these visitors to the city through the
low slums of the place Shall l men,
ton the names of some of these great
commercial establishments? i have
them on my lips? Shall /? Perhaps
had better leave it to the young men
who. in that process, have been de-
stroyed themselves while they have
| been destroying others. | care not
how high-sounding the name of COM
mercial establishment if it proposes to
| 70 lyAaY. than, ht-c rtnl,
process as that; drop their acquaint-
ance. They will cheat you before you
get through. They will send you a
style of goods different from that
which you bought by sample. They
will give you under weight There
will be in the package half a dozen
less pairs of suspenders than you paid
for. They will rob you. Oh, you feel
in your pockets and say: rs my money
gomez? They have robbed you of
something for which dollars and cents
can never give you compensation.
When one of these western merchants
has been dragged by one of those COM
mercial agents through the slums OF
the city he is not fit to go home. The
mere memory of what he has seen will
be moral pollution Stranger, if one
of the representatives of a commercial
establishment proposes to take you
and show you the sights of the town
and underground New York, say to
him: please, sir, what part do you
propose to show me?"
About sixteen years ago, as a min
lister of religion, felt l had divine
commission to explore the iniquities of
our cities. | did not ask counsel of my
session. or my presbytery, or of the
newspapers, but asking the companion
ship of three prominent police officials
and two of the elders of my church, l
unrolled my commission, and it said
Son of man. dig into the wall; and
when | had digged into the wall, be-
hold door; and he said, go in and see
the wicked denominations that are
done here; and [ went in, and
saw, and beholdr' Brought up in
the country. and surrounded by
much parental care, had not
until that time seen the haunts of in
iquity. BY the grace of God defended,
l had never sowed my wild oats"
have somehow been able to tell from
various sources something about the
iniquities of the great cities, and to
preach against them; but | saw, in the
destruction of a great multitude of the
people, that there must be an infatua-
ton and a temptation that had never
been spoken about, and said: Il will
explore" l saw thousands of men GO
al L
spiritual percussion answering to the
physical percussion, the whole air
would have been full of the rum bic, and
roar, and crack and thunder of the DEM
clifton, and this moment, if we would
pause in our service, we should hear
the crash, crash! Just as in the sickly
season you sometimes hear the bell at
the gate of the cemetery ringing al
most necessarily, so 1 found that the
bell at the gate of the cemetery where
ruined souls are buried was tolling by
day and tolling by night. l said: Il
will explore" l went as physician
goes into a fever lazaretto, to see what
practical and useful information l
might get. That would be foolish
doctor who would stand outside the
door of an invalid writing Latin pre-
scription- When the lecturer in a med
ical college is done with his lecture, he
takes the students into the dis
secting room, and he shows them
the reality. 1 went and saw,
and came forth to my pulpit to
report a plague, and to tell how
sin dissects the body, and dissects the |
mind, and dissects the soul ''Oh!' |
say you, ARE you not afraid that in |
consequence of such exploration of the |
iniquities of the city other persons |
might make exploration, and do them
selves damage?" l reply: IF in COM
pany with the commissioner of police, |
and the captain of police, and the in
spector of police, and the company of |
two Christian gentlemen, and not with |
the spirit of curiosity but that you may
see sin in order the better to combat it,
then, in the name of the eternal God, |
go? But, if not, then stay away"
Wellington. standing in the battle of |
Waterloo when the bullets were buzz
ing around his head, saw a civilian on
the field. He said to him: ''Sir, what
are you doing here? Be Off" why"
replied the civilian, there is no more
danger here for me than there
is for you" Then Wellington
flushed up and said: God and nv
country demand that l be here, but
you have no errand here" Now /, as
an officer in the army of Jesus Christ,
went on that exploration and on to
that battlefield If you bear a like
go; if not, stay away. But
you say: Don't You think that some
how the description of those places in
duces people to go and see. for them