nce all endeavors to justify the Word of God by explaining it
in conformity with the imaginations of the men of science. How can Satan
cast out Satan? He cannot; but he can lead you into the sin of adding to
and of taking from the words of this book. He can add plagues unto you,
and take away your part out of the holy city.

"In this great London which we inhabit we are come upon evil day's. The
rage of the blasphemer, the laugh at the scoffer, the heartless
lip-service of the worldling, and the light dalliance of the daughters
of music, are offered every hour upon a thousand Baal-altars within this
very parish. I would ask some of you who spend your evenings in the
playhouses which multiply around us like weeds sown in the rank soil of
human frailty, what justification you make to yourselves when you are
alone in the watches of the night, and your conscience saith, '_What
went ye out for to see_?' You will then complain of the bitterness of
life, and prate of the refining influences of music; of the help to
spiritual-mindedness given by the exhibition on the public stage of
mockeries of God's world, wherein some pitiful temporal triumph of
simulated virtue in the last act is the apology for the vicious trifling
that has gone before. And in whom do you there see typified that virtue
which you should shield in your hearts from the contamination of the
theatre? Is it not in some woman whose private life is the scandalous
matter of your whispered conversations, and whose shameless face smirks
at you from the windows of those picture-shops which are a disgrace to
our national morality? Is it from such as she that you will learn to be
spiritual-minded? Does she appear before your carnal crowds repentant,
her forehead covered with ashes, her limbs covered with sackcloth? No!
Her brow is glowing with unquenchable fire to kindle the fuel that the
devil has hidden in your hearts. Her raiment is cloth of gold; and she
is not covered with it. Naked and unashamed, she smiles and weeps in
mockery of the virtue which you would persuade yourselves that she
represents to you. Will you learn spiritual-mindedness from the sight of
her eyes, from the sound of her mouth, from the measure of her steps, or
from the music and the dancing that cease not within the doors of her
temple? How can Satan cast out Satan? Whom think ye to deceive by
whitening the sepulchre? Is it yourselves? The devil has blinded you
already. Is it God? Who shall hide