in Chicago there
are nightly enacted practically above board the same revolting scenes
which marked the lowest depths of human debasement in the day of
Rome's greatest depravity. To feed the rum-inflamed lusts of men, the
managers of these craters of bestiality and depravity have nightly
exhibitions which mark the nadir to which abandoned womanhood can
sink. No one can enter those dens of infamy without inhaling the
contagion of moral death. The records of the commissioners who
investigated the concert halls and low theatres sickens one much as
the frightful revelation of Mr. Stead sickened while it appalled the
civilized world. And let it be remembered that this unutterable social
depravity is flourishing in a city richly jewelled, with magnificent
temples dedicated to Deity; a city which contains the moral power to
quickly banish her monstrous evils, if the conspiracy of silence be
broken and the leaders of thought be brave and wise enough to boldly
move in concert against the great forces which every thoughtful man
and woman admit are, more than aught else, the source of social
demoralization, crime, and human degradation. If the Church has any
mission worthy of serious thought at this juncture of civilization,
that mission is to overcome these evils, to cleanse society of these
plague spots, and avert the spread of that moral degradation which,
unless checked, will as surely sap away the life of our Republic as it
has destroyed proud civilizations of older days.

THE POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.

When one turns from a view of the magnitude of these giant evils,
fostered by our social conditions, to a contemplation of the great
moral power resting in the hands of the Christian ministry, he may
well ask whether the nineteenth century clergy of the palatial, stone,
heaven-piercing, turreted temples are not _materialists_, on whose
souls the life and teachings of their reputed Master work no greater
spell than they did with the Sadducees of old, who regarded that great
life, burning at white heat with moral enthusiasm and holy love, as a
troublesome interloper, a disturber of religion and society worthy of
death. With a few noble exceptions,--who are bravely battling for
justice, for the poor, and for the light to be thrown into the dark
places, our city clergymen merit arraignment at the bar of
civilization for burying their talents, for trifling away the power
which has been given them as st