UNCHASTITY 243 



tianity has raised the standard of morality. Christ's 

 commentary upon the seventh commandment requires 

 a more vigorous chastity than ancient standards de- 

 manded. Consequently, a slight breach of chastity 

 now requires as great a fall from virtue as a greater 

 lapse in ages past, and must be attended with as severe 

 a moral penalty. 



State of Modern Society.— But we are not quite 

 certain that the condition of modern society as regards 

 chastity is much superior to that of periods of the 

 world to which reference has been made. AVhile on 

 a tour through Europe, a few years ago, the author 

 took some pains to gather facts upon this point from 

 various authentic sources, and was amazed at the enor- 

 mous prevalence of sexual crimes in the great and 

 oldest centers of modern civilization. In Paris, the 

 places of amusement and public resort are thronged 

 with brazen courtesans, watching for victims. 



In Naples, lasciviousness stalks abroad at all hours 

 of the day and night. Women sell their souls for a 

 few farthings, and the debauched people vie with one 

 another in imitating the horrible obscenities and sex- 

 ual sins of the Eomari Sodom and Gomorrha— Pompeii 

 and Herculaneum— and that with the terrible judg- 

 ment which fell upon these dens of iniquity daily before 

 their eyes, while just above them still towers the stern 

 old Vesuvius, from whose fiery* bowels were in olden 

 times poured out the vials of Almighty wrath, and in 

 which are still heard the mutterings of a day of wrath 

 sure to come. 



In London, the boasted ''center of modern civili- 

 zation," the number of women who are leading lives 

 of shame and ignominy is sufficiently great to people 

 a large city or a small province. In no city are the 



15 



