n, old and young, saint and sinner,
at nearly every place, to give an expression of opinion from what they
had seen themselves, or what they had heard from those who had attended
balls, hops, and such like places, as to the correctness or
incorrectness of my charges against the dance, and out of I think not
less than fifty thousand men, I have never found but SEVEN who stood up,
thereby saying they did not believe that the sins and crimes I had
mentioned had ever flowed from the ball room, while nearly all the
balance stood up before their wives, daughters, sisters, and
sweethearts, saying that they do believe, from what they _know, and have
seen_ and have heard from those who attend balls and hops, that these
sins and crimes are the natural fruit of all kinds of dancing, where the
sexes dance together. A few, perhaps one in twenty, kept their seats,
not expressing their opinion either way. Of this class I think I may
safely say that _four-fifths_ failed to understand my proposition, or
thought it not necessary to rise; but if they had stood up, they would
have been with the affirmative. While I am not an apologist for saloon
keepers and gamblers, I want to record the fact right here that I have
had more or less of them in my congregations, at nearly every place
where I talked on this subject, and I have never known one, no, not one,
to keep his seat when an expression of opinion was called for, and not
one was found among the _immortal seven_.

There are many men worse at heart than gamblers and saloon keepers. If
they and their families were treated by the Christian people with more
kindness, and less like they were outcasts, hundreds and thousands of
them would become Christians. I do not claim that all who attend dancing
parties, balls, and hops are ruined, but I do claim that _all who attend
such places take part in the eternal disgrace and ruin of others._ There
is not a man or woman among the living, or the dead, who has made a
practice of attending such places, but that has the blood of one or more
_lost souls_ upon their garments, _and there it must remain throughout
the ceaseless ages of_ ETERNITY, _unless it be washed away_ BY THE BLOOD
OF JESUS CHRIST.

My sainted mother and my wife have attended and participated in the
dance, but, like hundreds and thousands of girls and women of to-day,
they never had the most distant idea that the dancing party or ball was
a cesspool of iniquity, for, had they known the