The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1896-02-24
SATAN'S FORWARD STRIDES
Rev. DR.. Case Talks About the
Moral Corruption of San
Francisco.
Is VERY MUCH LIKE HADEs.
Mayor Sutro and the Native Sons Are
Strongly Criticized-"T Moral
Pesthouse of the Beach,"


A discourse on 1.-THE DEVILS Forward
Movement" was delivered at the Howard
street Methodist Church last evening by
Rev. DIR. w. w. Case. The preacher said {:
The religious forward movement of our time
has its best exponent in Hugh Price Hughes of
the west London Mission in England.
he has tried the experiment of going to the
people with the gospel and it has worked we'll.
The eyes OF the religious world have been
upon the movement to learn the best methods
OF aggressive work under the peculiar condi-
! tons OF modern civilization.
| Heroic efforts are being put forth in many
| lands and in many centers in our land, to
drive out the prince of darkness, but as yet the
devil holds the fort, and not only so, but he
| seems to push his way from Atlanta to the sea
| without much opposition.
| Looking out from my watchtower, il appears
| to me his satanic majesty has been working on
| the line of the forward movement in this City
for years, and that he is now leading the hosts
| with accelerated speed to perditon.
Every editor, reporter and newspaper man of
every class, every municipal officer. every
Judge now on or off the bench, and thousands
| of others are well aware that San Francisco
| behind the scenes is lazar-house, full OF putre
flying sores and pestilential diseases-he knows
that San Francisco by gaslight is a real Inferno,
! that underground San Francisco is full of rot
| tenness and too disgusting to be described.
| This is the City of my adoption, and l want
! her to prosper and to be saved, but when see
SO much wantonness and corruption. tremble
When look upon its votaries of pleasure,
sacrificing every principle OF virtue. OF Godll-
ness and prudence, shudder to think OF the
sure and certain consequences.
When l see the sacred Institution OF mar
riage treated as though it had been abolished
by the God of families and avoided as though it
were bondage into which none should dare
to enter, when l see the dancehouse and the
saloon and the variety theater filled with
maddened and debsuched human beings,
when see men whose business it is to corrupt
and destroy innocent girlhood and thought
less youths, when see these things l wonder
that the vengeance of heaven does not in
flaming fire consume US all with single flash.
AS 1 have walked these streets by day and
by night / have asked myself the question,
| MAY it not be possible as some ministers
have taught, the second coming of Christ took
place ct the destruction of Jerusalem, and, the
judgment having taken place, we are now in
1 ask the question, Is not this really hades?
But why am here If it is hell? I never meant
to make my bed in hell.
Then / look around and see some good
people here who never told lie, like Father
Yorke, for instance, am sure it is not hell.
But there Is so much that is devilish and In
fernal that it is hard TO believe the race
started in harmless paradise.
8 AS a whole the world is bad-very bad-bad
everywhere-and Satan s seat is high and in
almost every place conspicuous.
Business methods are wickedly corrupt-pol-
itics is corrupt-municipal governments are
corrupt. Corruption rises everywhere.
1t is q sorrow to many that our distinguished
citizen, the Mayor of this City, after all he has
done for the City, in the maintenance of beau
tiful gardens and the gathering together OF a
baths, should have rebuilt in elegance the
Cliff House, to be furnished with two immense
berrooms, in one of which hangs nude and
! partially nude pictures.
l hope the Mayor, for whom in some respects
I have great regard, and for whom in all re-
spects have the kindest feelings, will think
wisely OF the heritage he is leaving to the
present and future San Franciscans- Time is
| short.
| We shall soon go to meet our Judge.
If there is one place in San Francisco County
where the blood of wrecked humanity will
ooze out of the timbers more profusely than
another-one place where the wall of the lost
will come up with shrieking horror above the
roar of the angry waves of the sea-itwill be
the Cliff House-dedicated to Bacchus and to
death
The old Cliff House, as we'll as the old Ocean
iniquity, where sin of deepest dye perpetually
reigned unto the death OF souls.
We had hoped that those dark days had
passed away from San Francisco forever; that
our honorable Mayor, who is in sympathy with
| good government and moral progress, would
| never rebuild the Cliff House as the throne of
! Bacchus and the moral pesthouse OF the ocean
| beach.
Let us pray that the honorable Mayor shall
| be constrained to use the few remaining DAYS
which may be allotted to him on earth TO puri-
| flying the Cliff House and the City by putting
| away as far as possible everything that shall
| have tendency to. debase and ruin mankind
! The horrors of the liquor traffic are indie
! scribaple. Earth would be almost a paradise
| were it not for the curse of the drink habit.
| How long must this barbarism be retained
/ among us?
| Look at this train of weeping ones clad in
| weeds of widowhood stricken and bowed with
| the anguish of years. They were once the
| wives, they are now the widows, of drunkards.
! With swollen eyes and faded checks and bleed
ing hearts, they tread upon the brink of the
grave.
ones are there in tatters and in filth hatless,
bonnetless, shoeless, haggard with hunger and
pallid with disease. Their tiny feet patter
| dens with their trickllng blood!
| These are children of drunkards aud from
this wretched, endless procession comes up the
cry, CHOW long, Lord, how long?
The DEVILS forward movement is seen in the
added facilities which the prince of darkness
is inspiring men to employ for the dissertation
The Almighty Father could never govern
and manage or develop people without a
Sabbath day; but San Francisco presumes to
| do what the God of nations cannot 40.
1t is no justification for Sabbath dissertation
| to say that under the Christian dispensat1on
all days are sacred, for the fact is in San Fran
cisco no day is sacred, but all days are profane.
Many young men to my. certain knowledge
have been ruined by yielding to the entice-
ments to Sabbath dissertation.
The Sunday theater is blighting young life
every week in the year, right under our eyes
The managementof the organization of the
! Native Sons is not above criticism.
Please notice place emphasis upon the word
management.
| In my addresses in other years have had
! occasion to speak well of the organization of
! the Native Sons of the Golden West. In a pub
| lie address few years ago / said: "Since
became an adopted son of California l have
never been outside her BORDERS but I have
| longed to get back to the land of pure atmos-
phere, rich and abundant fruits with her pro-
fusion of flowers and to the society of her royal
people, for she contains many of the best''
The responsibility of native sons, and
adopted sons as well, is exceedingly great.
am sorry to be compelled to say that the
history of our grand commonwealth has not
always been distinguished for its superior
morality.
This may be accounted for, perhaps, on the
theory of Jean Paul Richter, that
'Too much fortune or too much misery drives
both men and nations to immorality--ss it is
only in extremes OF heat and cold that the
pond fishes hide themselves in the mud"
We are improving, however. The State is
better; this City is better in its morals than it
ever was before.
But we are far below what we ought to be in
the scale of social and political morality.
Sons of the Golden West, native or adopted,
adjure you to 'duit yourselves like men,
1t is yours to give to this great commonwealth
a civil Sabbath.
|. 1t is great sorrow to many native sons and
daughters and others as well that the dedica-
| ton of the new native Sons, hujldiDp WAS set