started the
train of circumstances that pulled down the temple of Dagon about
Samson's ears. And tens of thousands of giants have gone down to death
and hell through the same impure fascinations. It seems to me that it
is high time that pulpit and platform and printing-press speak out
against the impurities of modern society. Fastidiousness and Prudery
say: "Better not speak--you will rouse up adverse criticism; you will
make worse what you want to make better; better deal in glittering
generalities; the subject is too delicate for polite ears." But there
comes a voice from heaven overpowering the mincing sentimentalities of
the day, saying: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a
trumpet, and show my people their transgressions and the house of
Jacob their sins."

The trouble is that when people write or speak upon this theme they
are apt to cover it up with the graces of belles-lettres, so that the
crime is made attractive instead of repulsive. Lord Byron in "Don
Juan" adorns this crime until it smiles like a May queen. Michelet,
the great French writer, covers it up with bewitching rhetoric until
it glows like the rising sun, when it ought to be made loathsome as a
small-pox hospital. There are to-day influences abroad which, if
unresisted by the pulpit and the printing-press, will turn New York
and Brooklyn into Sodom and Gomorrah, fit only for the storm of fire
and brimstone that whelmed the cities of the plain.

You who are seated in your Christian homes, compassed by moral and
religious restraints, do not realize the gulf of iniquity that bounds
you on the north and the south and the east and the west. While I
speak there are tens of thousands of men and women going over the
awful plunge of an impure life; and while I cry to God for mercy upon
their souls, I call upon you to marshal in the defense of your homes,
your Church and your nation. There is a banqueting hall that you have
never heard described. You know all about the feast of Ahasuerus,
where a thousand lords sat. You know all about Belshazzar's carousal,
where the blood of the murdered king spurted into the faces of the
banqueters. You may know of the scene of riot and wassail, when there
was set before Esopus one dish of food that cost $400,000. But I speak
now of a different banqueting hall. Its roof is fretted with fire. Its
floor is tesselated with fire. Its chalices are chased with fire. Its
song is a song of fire. Its walls are buttress