THE BLACKENED CITY by Bryn Mawr

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 16.

THE BLACKENED CITY.

By Bryn Mawr

A Sign of the Times.

Lessons Suggested by the Shame of Minneapolis.

IN dealing with this subject of our city's degradation, it behooves us to look well to the causes thereof. They will not be found in the social sub-stratum known as the “under world.”

We must look higher(?). A government never attains a higher excellence than its source. In view of this axiom, a pertinent question would be, Who rules? A constitution or charter aims to throw around State or municipality certain safeguards; but a good ship often founders when manned by a bad ship's company.

Inspiration says: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil; which while some coveted after, they have been seduced, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Here we find a primary cause for the degeneracy of the human heart.

This subject is a deep and far-reaching one; and its inception will not be found in any local political gang, nor its solution in any grand jury room. Its birth and development antedates these adjuncts of a doubtful civilization. A hasty glance backward over the centuries may help us to a partial solution.

Beginning life with perfect characters, and all the environments most favorable to a beautiful consummation of God's purpose in us, the spirit of covetousness gave to our race in the world's first epoch, the crime of murder,—the result of envy and a desire for power and influence. Under stress of temptation there was a yielding and sin came in. There entered society at this time the exclusively criminal element. Sacred history tells us that during the first dozen generations, man's wickedness became so great that the Lord destroyed the whole race off the earth, saving eight persons. (Gen. 4:1-14; 6:4-14.) Again, farther down the roll-call of the centuries, the “Cities of the Plain” were destroyed because of their unequaled vileness. Farther down still, Jesus the Christ warns His generation that it will be more “tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah” in the day of judgment than for them.

And, then, looking on down to the end of this generation, and the time of His second advent, He said Noachic conditions would again involve the whole earth; implying universal destruction because of universal wickedness. (Matt. 24:37-39).

It is unnecessary for us to go into a detailed discussion of the rise and fall of governments and the causes leading thereto; but having seen the origin and development of the evils we purpose discussing, we must mention cursory the fact, that whatever the source of a government's existence, its destruction is the result of the very causes that have blackened the fame of our fair city. While the flagitious wickedness of past generations has been the inevitable teacher of this one in which we live, yet aside from these inherited tendencies, we face a far greater danger in the modern isms and demoralizing influence of false teachers. Inherited tendencies may be, and often are, overcome by true education and proper training; but false teaching and wrong training is seldom, if ever, overcome.

Thus we are continually menaced, aye, we are indeed in the thrall of all the evils of all the centuries. Handicapped by these accumulations, what say you for the possibilities of a higher morality for the rising generation, when college presidents and eminent public teachers stand before a body of young men, and unblushingly assert—with specious reasoning—that there are conditions in life when “the lie is justifiable”? Or when a representative woman, wielding a pen of great influence, and whose name is a household word of joy, enumerates a number of situations in life in which a lie is not only excusable or justifiable, but “positively imperative,” and also gives the opinion that there are circumstances in which the truth is “absolutely brutal”? This latter proposition may be a fact, but if a condition arises which makes it a fact, the same would imperatively demand “golden silence.”

Jesus died for the truth's sake; therefore we know that while exigency may sometimes demand silence, it never demands falsehood! (See John 18:37; Mark 15:3-5).

Rank materialism is taught in the pulpits, and spurious man-made salvation presented in lieu of the true; and the weaknesses of mankind are excused to condone the “lapsus moralis” of a degenerate clergy.

These are not isolated exceptions, but the ruling mode of instruction in the “upper world.” It gives color to the every-day life of the adult, and puts an indelible impress of insincerity upon the youth.

Life in the “under world” is a true reflex of these conditions. Those of the upper stratum have unlimited means to exploit their false doctrines and idolatrous isms, and to gratify their accumulations of depraved lusts. Those of the middle stratum have the unlimited desires, but not the means, so they compromise their honor, and barter their souls to attain the coveted gratification. So downward is their course as they inevitably flow into the muddier pools of life. Is it any wonder that the slums are continually growing larger?

Minneapolis is one of many. New York boasts a yearly harvest of 7,000 victims of manly(?) lusts! St. Louis had a ministerial convention some years ago which advocated the licensing of brothels, “as a protection to our wives and daughters.” Do you think these gentlemen gave the “wives and daughters” whom they sought to license, a single humane, pitying thought? But now St. Louis is facing a shameful scandal arising from the work of an organized gang of procurers who have instituted a system of harlot slavery; enticing young girls, with sundry pleasing and alluring inducements, to lives of shame, selling them at a hundred dollars a head to moneyed scoundrels.

But why specify this city and her woes, or that city and her scandals? The “Shame of Minneapolis” is the shame of every city in the world. And venal, corrupt, municipal governments are responsible for the daring perpetration of these shameful iniquities. The almost national crime of fatal assassination causes men of national prominence, and others who pause in the turmoil of life long enough to give a passing thought to the growing evils of this generation, to express a fear of “racial suicide”! One faithful watchman on the walls of Zion, proclaims fearlessly the irrefutable truth:—

“The type of depravity among persons in the higher circles is often worse than the slums. America is fast following in the steps of the old Roman Empire. The home is despised; children are an encumbrance. A poodle dog is of more value than a baby. Wealth and pride consume the life-blood of the nation, and aristocratic weaknesses sap our democratic vigor.”—Rev. Geo. Whitman, Lafayette Baptist Church, Buffalo.

Every word is true, and in regard to “America and Rome” the brother has re-uttered an ancient prophecy, perhaps unconsciously, which involves the downfall of the American empire after the similitude of the Roman; and she nurses the forces of her destruction within her own bosom. It is a horrible commentary on the boasted civilization of so-called Christian America, that many of the unmentionable vices of our cities were unknown in modern pagan cities until introduced by our people!

Now every metropolis and large city in the world practises daily every vice, every sin, and every crime

that the “Cities of the Plains” did, or that were disclosed by the mute testimonies uncovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum, or that are described in the third book of Moses, or for which the world was destroyed in the days of Noah. All the accumulated immoral and obscene literature, all the super-purulent, idolatrous filth of all the centuries is wallowed in by this generation until the earth groans with the insuperable weight of sin and iniquity.

Whatever hope we may indulge of our own purity, or however innocent of personal wrong-doing, the taint is there; neither mightiest king nor humblest slave can escape the unfailing result of sin. So shall we carry the unobliterated marks till these “evil bodies” are made “like unto His glorious body.” Then shall we be “satisfied” when we “awake with Thy likeness.” Ps. 17:15; Phil. 3:21.

These politicians who levy this tax of “blood money” upon unfortunate women whom they have helped to degrade, do so for no other purpose than to gratify their unbridled lusts, or indulge themselves in vicious pleasures which are but a continual round of lewd and wanton orgies.

BRYN MAWR.

(Concluded next week.)