Despairs of Putting End to Vice
DR. BRAND WHITLOCK, as mayor of Toledo, has had splendid opportunities for observing the great vice problems that are confronting the world. He has recently written an article which appeared simultaneously in the Forum magazine of New York and the English Review of London. Mr. Whitlock thinks many of the efforts that are made to suppress vice are serving to extend and spread it rather than to diminish it. All the laws, both in the Old World and in this country, for the segregation and regulation of prostitution, in his opinion, have proved ineffective; and if we are not to be carried down beneath the corruptions of vice, very different and much better methods must be inaugurated than anything heretofore advanced. Reformers everywhere are quite united in affirming that the world is being inundated by vice, and that our civilization is thereby most seriously menaced. Each school of reformers has some particular theory or panacea that it is sure would be a cure for these evils. But all must admit that the trouble lies in the fact that the world is breaking away from the great foundations of morality. We have had a generation that has been taught to laugh at and ridicule the stern piety of the Pilgrims, and of all people who are similarly inclined to piety and devotion. We have had a generation that has been teaching that much of the Bible story is a myth. And as a consequence, the salvation, the morality, and the manliness offered in the gospel of Christ have been discounted. Men have tried to teach themselves that they could live a refined, moral, and genteel life without the saving power of the gospel; but every nation on the face of this earth that has ever gone down has sunk beneath the load of its own internal immorality and vices. Oftentimes these vices have been highly refined, and even embellished by an artistic touch, but they have been vices just the same. And the world to-day is perishing through lack of the plain teaching of the gospel of Christ. The flood of sensuality that has become a menace to all the civilized world is one among the many indications that we have reached the time when God will settle with the world for its iniquities. The Bible is filled with warnings like the following: "I said, My leanness, my leanness, wo unto me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again." Isa. 24: 16-20.
The treacherous dealers and the transgressor, in this, as in many other scriptures, are charged with the crime of bringing about conditions that call for visitations from God. We should open our eyes to these warnings from the divine Book, and have a realizing sense of what they mean.