he least employed. A mind retaining the
perception of woman's worth, shrinks from the idea of linking her name
with impurity. We cherish the hope that she is virtuously inclined,
and cannot bear to think that she willingly forsakes the right and
casts herself down the steeps of ruin. Ah, woman, when this is not the
case society has a right to cast you off. It is because of this
faith that the good despise the woman who persists in folly, and who
secretly tries to seduce the unwary. God's judgments seem not too
severe, and the language is none too strong, though the denunciation
is terrible and the destruction certain. God makes no apologies for
sin. A fallen woman is an abomination. Her crimes are terrible. She is
the foe of the home, and the enemy of all that is pure. Hence she
is thrown out upon the rocks, and left there to die, unpitied and
unbefriended, without God and without hope in the world. By every
virtuous person she is despised. Hence, between a virtuous woman and
ruin there is a bridged chasm; whoever crosses that bridge leaves
hope, and honor, and happiness behind. Think of the thousands about us
going, unprayed for, down to perdition!

Society tolerates a man as it does not tolerate a woman. God did
business with Adam, but he does not mention Eve after her fall.
Society recognizes a fallen man as it cannot recognize a fallen woman.
Thus her crime is proclaimed to be the greater than man's, even by the
world. Let us be just. We do not heap the blame all on woman, even of
her fall. All we say is, she bears the burden of the woe. In this fact
she is warned. Society may pity her: it cannot palliate her guilt.
Thus is she advised against throwing herself away, and casting off her
allegiance to Christ, to herself, and to humanity. Let her fall, and
almost without exception she is hopelessly ruined. Society points the
finger of scorn at her, and, what is worse, the barriers to virtue
having been broken down, they seem to be destroyed. It is as difficult
to get back what a woman loses when she falls, as it would have been
to have forced an entrance back into Eden after the banishment.

2. The fact that she is a woman gives her influence. In her terrible
work beauty is an aid. God says, "Desire not her beauty in thy heart,
neither let her take thee with her eyelids." That is, look for
something besides a pretty face or a twinkling eye. "Pretty is that
pretty does," is a good motto, and utters a truth which is qui