both sides, and that what is done now is not much worse than were the practices of other times, while the present customs have at least the negative credit of freedom from hypocrisy and deceit.

We are not prepared now to say that there is not some truth in the above semblance of argument. We agree that bad practices are imputable to the past generation, but we are not prepared to say that the vices of the present day are more excusable because they prevail without attempt to conceal them, without that homage which it is said vice pays to virtue, by the very hypocrisy with which it attempts to hide its deformity. We are ready to bear testimony against the impurities that are discoverable in the society of other times, and to agree that they deserve the deep condemnation of the virtuous. But we wish to distinguish between the character of the vice of those times and the same offence of the present day.

We must distinguish between a bad act which the performer would hide, though he would repeat it, and a bad deed which the actor would legitimatize by public argument and labored defence.

He who persists in doing that which is contrary to the laws of the country, or of what is admitted as the law of sound morality, certainly commits a grave offence. He injures individuals in their rights, he disturbs public order, and he places himself in a dangerous position as regards the penalty. But, while it is admitted that his acts are bad examples, yet they are not greatly operative, because law and public sentiment are against them; and while they shock contemporaries, they exercise little influence on the coming race.

But he who promulges a doctrine that not only excuses crime, but declares crime to be consistent with individual peace-promotive of per

sonal comfort and ministrant to social happiness-is worse than a traitor to this generation, and a felon as it regards the coming age.

Crimes, bad deeds, are evils to be condemned and punished. A false doctrine, with regard to social or domestic relations, is a curse that is felt at once, and threatens extensive and increasing evil consequences.

We do not deny that some men, distinguished by their political, social, and even religious positions, have been found violating the commandment that enjoins purity of life. Such persons, while what they were and what they did of good may have been duly honored, suffered a diminution of respect so far as their error was known, and they felt the error and mourned it; at least, mourned the consequences to themselves.

But we are now called upon to contemplate actors who publicly practice what is condemned in preceding years, and have neither compunction for their act nor mortification at the exposure of their proceedings; and they have created a social criterion that has no condemnation for their proceedings; and they have spread abroad a doctrine that satisties one class that the passions must be gratified, and leads another class, if not to approve, at least not to condemn a creed that is so consistent with human wishes, and in which so many may find their way out of one great misfortune into several of larger dimensions.

The bad acts, the immoral habits of some to whom we have alluded, are less injurious than are the openly proclaimed theories, the widely promulgated doctrines, that have led to the great evil that now disturbs society. The vicious man condemns the very vice he practices, and his attempts at concealment is a testimony against the deed, which in part prevents injury

therefrom, while the fault that springs from a wrong conviction, and is sustained by early instruction, is certain to be augmented in the individual and to multiply in the community.

Bad doctrines are far more dangerous than bad deeds. In his acts Julian the Apostate was a better man than Constantine, but Julian's good deeds affected only his own circle and age. The bad deeds of Constantine were inoperative in their example beyond his own time, while the great Christian doctrines which he favored and assisted to promulgate permeated society and influenced for good all succeeding generations. It is not necessary to inquire what would have been the condition of the world had the apostasy of Julian served to subvert entirely the doctrine which Constantine embraced.*

We are contemplating, at present, a state of things that owes its existence far less to the evil practices which we condemn than to the promulgation of doctrines that excuse, authorize, promote, and perpetuate what, though it be now a scandal, may soon, from its extent, be tolerated and approved.

The promulgation of the moral heresy through the press and from the rostrum first seemed to be received with a sort of permission that implied the probability that its fallacious doctrines needed only the light to insure condemnation. But, unfortunately, there were so many whose practices were so inconsistent with Christian morality, that they gladly adopted a doctrine which, if it did not place them in the right, served marvellously to justify to themselves the wrong, *The illustration of the idea, perhaps the idea itself, is certainly expressed, and perhaps bitterly

expressed, by some other writer. Who, it is not recollected, but it certainly sounds like Bulwer,

who was fond of illustrations that showed exten sive reading, and none of the writers of the present generation have been able to enrich their pages and illustrate their views from ancient au

thors with the success that is manifested by Lord

Lytton.

and so to increase the number of open professors of the creed, that there should be less necessity for concealing the practice. Vice loves companionship, and the more there are to adopt a certain course, the less is the difficulty of pursuing it.

There is in every human being a disposition to err. Some, by favorable circumstances and religious education, escape important aberration from the line of rectitude, but all seem disposed to listen to suggestions that may lead to great evil, especially when those suggestions are apposite to their peculiar circumstances. But all do not embrace, though, by their endurance, they facilitate the progress of, the bad doctrine which they do not mean to adopt.

More than fifty years ago, men and women preached the doctrine touching the sanctity of the mar riage contract, which is now developed into the creed and practice of free love. Thousands before, of both sexes, had violated their marriage contract, and were condemned by nearly all, less, perhaps, by public outery than by that suppressed tone of recognition which is the quiet, efficient condemnation which virtue passes on vice. The evils continued and increased with the increased population, but it was only when there arose those who openly propounded, advocated, and justified the wrong, that it was found that the doctrine had fixed the practice, and had worked out in those who knew and ought to have done better, a development of what must destroy the peace of a family, that unit of society, and by the destruction of the peace of the unit, the whole sum of social happiness must be jeoparded.

At the present moment the polygamy of the Mormons is bringing the morals of Utah into tional interference. There is a law a bad repute, and calling for na

of Congress, indeed, which declares ineligible to the place of delegate to the national legislature any man who practices polygamy. It is often asked whether the two houses of Congress do not contain members who live irregular lives, and outrage the decency of domestic relations by entertaining some female besides the lawful wife. No doubt the question could be answered affirmatively, and all those who do the wrong deserve censure. But note the difference: the immoral man at Washington, while he has no idea of correcting his course, has no idea of defending it. The impurity of the Mormon habit is a public evil, augmented by the fact that it is sustained by the creed as well as the practice of the people of Utah. This is an instance to sustain our theory, that the bad acts of people are not so generally and permanently injurious as are bad doctrines.

We have asserted that the scandal which has disturbed society in New York, whatever may be the innocence of some of the parties implicated, owes its extent, if not its existence, to the tenderness with which a part of the press treated the doctrine of those who advocated free love. The failure to denounce, in clear and explicit terms, the theory that really was created to excuse or sanction the practice of impurity, was treason to morals and to good govern

ment.

Meetings were called under pretence of promoting female suffrage, and speeches were made advocating female licentiousness, and over these meetings presided, and at these meetings spake, men whose callings should have taught them prudence, at least in such matters. These and private meetings, soroses, and combinations of mixed genders, vitiated public taste, deadened public sensibility, and led to what we now see, and to what

every virtuous observer of the times must greatly fear.

in

Is there no remedy? Must this moral disease go ou and increase? There is a remedy, but will it be applied? Sterner voices must be raised; something more than ridicule, more than half condemnation is required. The demands of society should be listened to, and reformation be commenced earnest. No half way measures will answer, but the doctrine and the practice must be put down, whoever may be personally reached. Those it is likely are to suffer most who have scarcely gone beyond toleration, because the very feeling of virtue which kept them from open practice and approval, will make them more sensitive to the condemnation that is now to be pronounced against the frightful doctrines which have by practice disturbed society.

The work of reformation must be thorough. It must include the actors and it must involve their surroundings. Men and women must be taught to keep clear, not only of the doctrines which have proved so injurious, but they mustavoid all those foolish discussions, those delicate propositions, and those unusual affections and friendships, and that miserable toleration of error that allows it to grow into crime, that nurtures it into the means of public calamity.

When the fire desolated such a large portion of the business part of Boston, a few years ago, a resolution was adopted that, as ordinary fires would not crumble granite into dust, and melt hard bricks into solid masses, and, as they had such phenomena in the ruins of their warehouses, they would remove the means of such conflagrations. The business part of the city was rebuilt with none of the surroundings of combustible buildings that served to kindle and conduct the fire that took hold and

melted down their fireproof stores. And as they carried out their purposes of safety no conflagration has since marked the burnt district. Chicago had an even worse fire than that of Boston. It began in a frame building, and the flames fed upon the wooden tenements around till, gathering power, they licked up the finest and richest portions of that great city. But the energy that built could rebuild, and Chicago rose with new claim to the admiration of the world at the enterprise of the people, but with equal power to astonish at the thoughtless way which allowed of almost innumerable small frame buildings, shanties, and shops that seemed to insure another conflagration. That insurance proved safer than the policies against fire. Another conflagration came, and the former cause produced like effect.

Had the cause been removed, certainly the effect would not have been felt. Chicago owed the extent of the second conflagration to a toleration, an encouragement of that which made or greatly aggravated the first.

Will the people learn from the scandal that has disturbed society for some months past to avoid the persons, connections, and opinions that have caused all the disturbance? Probably not.

People seem to think that by changing the name of the cause they are to lessen the effect. But after all, perhaps, it is proper to say that it is not the same people that cause one esclandre who are accountable for another. Different temperaments and different views and intentions are variously affect ed. One day somebody wakes up to the danger of foreigners, and a certain class of people are terribly excited over the assertion that arbitrary governments are sending hither their population to undermine

republican institutions, and

forthwith the cry is, 66 Americans must rule America;" and to the excited clique that promulges that political apothegm immediately gathers fragmentary portions of citizens with various other curious ideas,and on the nucleus of Nativism is wound all manner of heresies, and to "the Natives" are gathered the foolishly ambitious, who hope to share in a triumph which they could not expect to achieve alone.

It would not be difficult to collect a goodly array of experiments like Nativism, and its grand result, Knownothingism; but that instance shows how heresies arise, and how the heretics strengthen their ranks.

Could any reasoning man have imagined that in "Christian United States" the doctrine of "free love" could have acquired a promulgation and defence that could have reached the interest, and persons, which it is now seen it has influenced? We believe that nakedly and primarily proposed it never would have gone beyond the "nasty" and ridiculous circle in which it appeared to originate. But there was a sentiment that had long been operating in various parts of the country, and which was operating in promoting those infamous laws in some of the Western States, that allowed of the divorce of man and wife upon the most trivial plea; so that a woman, at home in the Eastern city, awaiting the return of her husband from a collecting tour in the West, was startled almost into insanity by a notice that within a few weeks the man whom she had married, had lawfully slipped his neck out of the matrimonial yoke which rested in part upon her shoulders, and had shown his love of domestic happiness by getting married to another woman.

It has more than once happened that a wife has taken the lead in this mode of procedure, and in two months would assume her maiden

Now this is not "free love," but it is one mode of promoting it. They have lately, by some legislative enactments, made it a little more difficult to procure divorces in the West. Parties of either sex, to save time and money, have found a means of gratifying their feelings without divorce. They adopt the doctrine, or, at any rate, they adopt the practice of the doctrine of free love, and try to make society confess that the affections and passions, being the gift of God, they are right in using those gifts. With them to enjoy is to obey."

It is not our object to present the doctrine of the Catholic Church as it regards the indissoluble character of the marriage contract. We hold it, of course; but we place our objection to the doctrines which have led to the Brooklyn scandals upon the opinion and practice of most all Christendom. The glory and beauty of womanhood are found in its purity. The honors and dignity of the wife are in the chastity with which she makes her household the home of undivided affection. She who pauses to calculate the danger or the reward of infidelity is unfaithful; and the woman who sits in counsel upon the question of female purity exposes her cause, even if she advocates the right. The participation in such a contest, however it may result to the wrong, will not close without injury to the opponents of that wrong. There are certain animals so offensive that a victory over them is almost death to the victor.

Two or three women openly espoused the doctrine of "free love." Others, who had ideas of woman's wrongs and woman's rights, came to hear the argument; few ventured to avow themselves converts, but many were not unwilling to submit themselves to the influence of the

Will not somebody see, in what has been presented in the case to which we have referred, motives for avoiding associations which have for their end and means something that good sense must condemn; a sort of attempt to improve society by means that are proclaimed to be a little better than those allowed by God, or which are recommended by Christianity? Will not people hesitate to embrace liberty that is inconsistent with what the Church has taught and generations approved? Will people never see that the efforts to change sexual relations without a change of sexual circumstances is so contrary to nature that it can be productive only of evil, and that continually? Because a part of those who advocate a change in the relations of man or woman do not, from some cause, otherwise grossly violate the proprieties of social life, and have art to conceal their aberration, it does not follow that the heresy does not lead directly to the abomination, and it is painful evidence that the abominations, which are preached and practiced by some, and more than tolerated by all of them, are either the direct motives, or the natural consequence of their doctrine.

Some people, indeed, will say that they have listened to the public defence of the doctrines and works