The Conditions of Sodom Over Again.
A news item states that Deaconess Lucy A. Hall, of the Methodist Deaconess Home, Chicago, has been placed in charge of a squad of six policemen for the purpose of making a campaign against vice in that city. The report says that Deaconess Hall states that “The public would be horrified if it only knew the extent of the traffic in white girls who are sold, shipped, and bought like cattle. To-day I believe that there are more than twoscore of girls held prisoners in these resorts while their parents are hunting them high and low.” In an article in this journal recently it was pointed out that in San Francisco the city officials had confessed that they had been guilty of a regular business traffic in fallen women. Houses of prostitution were not only permitted, but they were encouraged and promoted the same as a regular business enterprise of any kind. To promote and foster this business these execrable and degraded dealers in vice have their agents who are constantly on the lookout for young girls that can be either stolen or in some other way lured into their establishments of shame. Girls are taken there and immediately lost to the world. Their parents or guardians may search for them in vain; they can not be found. The trafficker in vice has been able so to corrupt the police and other guardians of the law that the9search for these unfortunate daughters is practically hopeless. It will be noticed in the foregoing quotation from Deaconess Hall that she thinks there are forty of these stolen girls in the brothel resorts of Chicago. We may not know the number, but without doubt there are many. And what is going on in Chicago is being practised all over the civilized as well as the heathen world. It has been only a short time since the newspapers on this coast were exposing the work that was being practised of smuggling Chinese girls into our sea-port cities, ostensibly as the wives of some of the Chinese now living here, but in reality as recruits for the houses of ill-repute. The knowledge of such occurrences will make the blood of any decent person fairly boil out of his veins. And the question may be asked, How can such things exist in Christian lands? And especially, How can they exist in such a thoroughly Christian land as this? The fact that there are decent men and women who persistently fight the evil is all that keeps the whole social fabric from diving into a sink of corruption. But those who are familiar with the facts are aware that this social corruption is constantly on the increase. Men and women in vast armies have taken up vice as a business, and, like the purveyors of liquor, are doing all they can to extend it. The Lord has told us in His word that the world, as we near the end of time, would be in the condition of vice and corruption as were the cities of the plain when He overthrew them in the time of Lot. We see these evil conditions lifting their brazen features everywhere; and the student of the prophetic portion of the word of God knows definitely just what it means. He understands that it is one among the many sure evidences that the course of this world’s sin is about run to its end, and that the coming of the Son of Man in person is soon to fulfil the long-time cherished hope of the followers of the Master. And, as we see what the world is coming to, how can any one resist the earnest prayer that the day of the Master’s return may be hastened. T.