The
scenes and revelations that came to my eyes beggar all description.
My heart sickened as I beheld the millions wallowing in the mire of
fleshly lusts, apparently living for no higher purpose than to see the
latest novelties of expressing lewdness and sensuality.
"This is brute life, indeed," I soliloquized, "for it can be easily
seen that the hearts of these people are so seared and their ears so
dull that they have no desire for the music of celestial choirs, or
the ecstacies that rise from heart-communion with God."
I also saw that there were numberless underground connections between
the lower Theatres and the Schools of Suicide, and with the varied
haunts of Prostitution that infested the whole region.
This startling fact also forced its way to my attention:--_the money
flowing from the entire seven grades fell into one treasury_, so that
they who moved in the supposed moral atmosphere of the first and second
grades were, nevertheless, patrons of the whole iniquitous business.
At once I thought of the churches that were in sympathy, or league,
with this part of the work along the Broad Highway. And I inwardly
uttered these sad sentences:
"_It is no more a mystery why such churches have lost their holy
influence and their warmth of spiritual life, while worldliness
flourishes from the pew to the pulpit_.
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