p. 281 | Sinning for Profit

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 28, 1867

Sinning for Profit.

HENRY Ward Beecher thus speaks of the dens of evil with which our cities are more or less infested, and the secret source of their strength and existence. It is not very flattering to some church members.

“There are haunts of thieves throughout the cities without which robbery would almost be paralyzed. They are known; vigilant eyes have watched them; there is no doubt in respect to their character; and yet the robberies go on because these places are often all secretly maintained in the interest of capitalists.

“There are dens of orgies. Nothing this side of hell can equal multitudes of these places. We do not need to go to Vesuvius to see volcanoes. We have them all around us, in spite of the police, and the common sense of the community; and it is only because capitalists have an interest in them. They may not be known. You can not tell by the way a tree looks where its roots are sucking sap from. There is many a man that wears clean linen, and has good associations, and appears regularly at the house of God, and sits down at the communion table, and munches the bread, and drinks the wine, and seems to be a Christian man, who, if you follow down his roots, you will find to be sucking sap out of the common sewers. And these dens are kept open and are sustained in spite of law and public sentiment, because capital is interested in them and is at the bottom of them.”