Year: 1859




dares speak, even thousands the guilt and
anguish are as close as the fiery torment


burning within those hearts which the spec


trail crowd pressed with thar right hand.
as they moved through the halls of Eblis.
Even in speaking of thai sin now, as speak
by circumlocution-as something under
stood, but not to be expressed-and vel
there was no social evil touching more ur-
gently for earnest discussion and uncom.
promising effort. 1t was an evil as old as
the records Of the race, coeval with the hu'
man heart eursing alike savage life, and
the refined society. mingling its polluted
stream with the foremost tides of civilisa-
ton, march with armies, moving with COL
onies, waiting on literature, philosophy
and religion, and as sure to be found in
great cities as crime or death.


And as in the text, so everywhere and at
all times it has been oman who stands
in the foreground and upon whom the NAL
ediciion and condemnation falls. 1t is to
her the accusers point, not caring to ask
whether they themselves are clear of all
guilt. Woman is the victim always sin
ned and SHINING. He appealed in behalf
of these victims. Consider moment this
army of 5000 unfortunate women, SO many
of them mere children, and the majority
accomplishing their guilty career and dy-
ing on the very threshold of existence
Homes somewhere they have had, many
of them homes Of purity; hopes were born
with them, to be crushed in their perdition
hearts are broken by their shame. While
they have whirled throug life in guilty rev.
eIry, honored beads have grown gray and


gone down in sorrow 10 the grave.


We should pity fallen woman. Not


merely for herself personally should we be
lifted above all profigate scorn and fend-
ish contempt in the treatment of this sub
ject, but for the humanity that in her is
stained and perverted; for the type of pure
womanhood that lies disheveled and cast
down under the light of heaven and before
God. The life of every one of these vic
Tins, if truthfully unfolded, would be a
terrible romance of reality. Some were
born in vice, and their history is therefore
the more terribly appalling. They exhibit


OF only degraded womanhood, but
degraded childhood; they came pure into
the world, as the white snow fake falls in
to the mire and pollution of the streets /;
Graded in sarcophagus, swathed with
the cerements of moral death. But
many Others have fallen, and it has been a
fall as awful as if it were the fall of star
iu the sphere. In the earlier states, where
sin SINNERS in fashionable show and eti-
queite, where the DEATHS Lead wears a
gliltering crown, there may be an illusion
to cheat the sense of shame; but as the
victim decends with rapid steps to baser
converse aud rouger realities, the hand
writing comes out fearfully distinct; the
fallen soul makes known the reflected
shape and shadow of itself. And at the
close Of her ghastly career, as on bed of
straw in some damp, dark apartment,
ringing with curses, The diving wreck of
humanity and womanhood lies, to her ear
the Voice of memory comes, as to the
drowning comes the sound of far off Sab
bath bells. Before her glazing eye appears
a mothers look of hroken-hearted woe; she
hears fathers lament of ruined hope and
pride; but she has now only to lay aside
the garment of mortality, as she once did
the garment of innocence and truth. See
how the infamy they serve serves them!


The silence and apathy existing in rela-
tion to this evil are not justified by notions
Of delicacy. The social cancer is not to
be cured by re fusing to talk about it; it is
not to be ignored. We have no right to
shrink with sanclimoneous delicacy from
barest mention of guilt. There is prevail
ing Indifference, at least, that cries out
.Don't disturb it; don't talk about it; let
it rest, we have nothing to do with it,
Is it so! Are there TO be no more vic
tims9 Are respectable homes safe from
harm? Does the evil limit ITSELF and
trouble none that go not near ita lsthere
a swamp of moral perdition whose peslil-
entail miasma now spreads in the common
aira We must have quarantine for pes
thence, and if it come too near us, we
break down the walls and burn buildings
to drive it from US; and if the meanness Of
another State refuse US a sandbank, we
talk of building on the sea to keep it far
of. But here is moral pestilence that
sails in the purple of Tyre adowu Broad
way, that Its pitfalls and snares at our very
feet that oozes with its damnalion through
brick walls, from the Five Points to Fifth
this we must not even speak
about; we must let it all alone. Are you
safe, citizen, from taxation of poverty and
crinel These kennels and shambles
where robbers and incendiaries prowl;
these temples of devil-worship are all
around you; will you put your hands up
on your hearts and walk about the halls of
Eblis in mysterious silence? No! bring
forth the shame, like the guilty woman in
the text; let it be accused and marked, and
let the full light of Christ's truth and
Christs purity stream upon it.


In the passage connected with the text,
we are told that Christ said to the woman's
accusers: ale that is without sin among
you: let him cast the first stone;" but,
smilten by conscience. they went out one
by one. And who is not in some way al
lied to this great guilts The fact of CON-
mon weakness should at least make us
1t is not just that upon the wo-
man alone should fall the blot of shame.
The text is great lesson of charity and
mercy. and ii is a great lesson of justice al
SO. There is neither justice, honor, nor
dellcacy in modern custom, which scarcely
frowns upon the guilty man, while pouring
out all the vials of wrath upop the guilty