Worse and Worse by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 11, 1883

“Worse and Worse.”

By Editor

THE character of much of the matter now telegraphed throughout the country to the newspapers is such as to almost unfit many of the dailies, especially the more "enterprising," for circulation in families. Yet it is from this source that we learn the downward tendency of public morals, and the increasing dangers that beset the young on every hand. Much of the details of lax morality is entirely unsuitable for publication; and the prophecy of the apostle Paul in his second letter to Timothy, that in the last days "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse," is being so plainly fulfilled that any one at all observant cannot fail to recognize its application to our day. The peculiar danger to which young and especially indiscreet girls are exposed in our cities and larger towns is a subject for parents, guardians, teachers, and particularly the girls themselves, to ponder seriously.

The recent mysterious murder of a girl fifteen years old in Indiana, when left alone at her home, and the worse than murder of a young lady in Milwaukee, who was induced by a man of but limited acquaintance to take a glass of wine, which was the last she knew till she awoke to find herself in the hands of villains, furnish but two of many instances that might be cited in illustration of the evil tendency of this generation. This last case is not so much a lesson in total abstinence from wine as it is in common discretion regarding companionship. Daily we read accounts of women and girls who have paid dearly for a little lack of discretion, and it is time all had learned that there is danger on every side.