No. 12.

THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER-A MERCHANT'S WIFE.

(An extract from my diary of October 11, 1830.)

"As we were approaching the usual field of our daily labors at the Five Points, two once beautiful women stood at the junction of Anthony, Orange, and Cross streets, the union of which forms five angles in the circumjacent blocks, and gives the name of Five Points to that portion of the city in its immediate vicinity. The women were quarreling, and reproaching each other in the most abusive and foul language. A group of persons soon assembled around them. The feelings of one became ungovernable. She dexterously drew her fist, smote the other on her cheek, and sent her reeling backwards forcibly to the side-walk, where her body struck a lamp-post, around which it bent, while her head repeated its dizzy blows on the pillar. Recovering, the creature returned to her antagonist, with a heart boiling with fiendish passions. The battle was renewed. I entered the throng and drove them off the ground. Each was eager to tell her grievance, but there was no time to hear their story; for before they were out of the street, a woman from a company of girls of the town, standing at the corner of the street, came in haste to me, and said, Sir, there is a dead man in that house,-pointing to it. He died last evening. They did not do to him the thing that was right. Will you go there and see to it ? She passed on before us, and we were led through a narrow, deep, dark alley, to a flight of steps which she ascended, conducting us to an upper apartment, where the corpse was. Strange sights. A small, low, foul, and ill-scented room, whose furniture consisted of one stool, one tub, one ragged tick, through which the straw was escaping, two blankets, one tea-pot, two tea-cups and saucers, two rusty knives and forks, one relic of a corn-broom, and one table. On that table lay the dead man. His wife, if his wife she was, with adulterous eyes bursting from their sockets, and scarred by ill usage, all agitation, and clamor, and wrath, made the heroine among the women by the dozen. Here we took our stand and preached to them Jesus Christ, and read to them the word of God. Some of them went out of the room as soon as we commenced. Others came in. Some of them were coming and going all the time we remained there. My brother was called away by Mr. C— to attend the prayer-meeting appointed yesterday in the adjacent house, in which it is commonly reported that there are sixteen or twenty strange women. My feelings were strange-indescribable. A good reason for it. A man hazards his good name by loitering in the vicinity of these places of moral defilement. What then do I hazard by having such a multitude of these creatures around me, in this polluted den of thieves? But my soul is grieved. I know that God, the just Judge, is omniscient, and that whatever profligates, to screen themselves, impute to me, will neither rob me of conscious innocence, or involve

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me in the displeasure of my Maker. So I stood firm in conscious innocence of evil, purpose, and was strengthened in the discharge of my duty.

Then I resolved to continue to visit the haunts of these guilty offcasts, if, perchance, God would grant repentance unto life to some of them. The example of Christ encouraged me, and I proceeded with my discourse. They were attentive. What a fine opportunity to impress on their minds the scenes of a future day-a day of retribution! I preached to them on death and the resurrection-sin and the atonement-heaven and hell. And added, You feel that vice and pain are united, and you know that you are unable to separate them. There is pure pleasure in heaven, and in the service of God there is peace and delight. Think of hell, in which there is pain, and of the service of Satan, in which there is distress. If you will serve the devil on earth, pain must mingle in your illicit pleasures; and the more vicious you are, the more miserable you are, and will be. Think of your midnight reveling 'midst cursing, bitterness, fighting, drunkenness, theft, and murder-of your terrific dreams, and the shrieks of the lost echoing in your ears, in the lone hours of night— of your own criminal conduct, and resolution to commit suicide and murder-of your parents who loved, educated, and trained you to virtue, now broken-hearted, and sorrowing, going down to the grave of sisters afflicted-of brothers mortified-of relatives grieved-of your bodies abused-of your souls injured-of your neighbor and country wronged-of God offended, and of heaven lost. You already anticipate, yea, taste the agonies of the pit. Look! Here on this table lies a man; it is his body; his soul is now rejoicing in heaven, or is tormented in hell. In him behold your own future situation. Even now you cannot sleep quietly, or look death unaffrighted in the face. Oh! the guilty conscience that pursues you how it turns your sports into pains. "It is true," said one, "there is great and continual pain in this life. Our mirth is often forced." Why then do you not seek pleasure in the discharge of your duties to God, to man, and to yourself? In righteous living there is no pain. It is sin that creates pain. Now there is pleasure in a sense of pardoned sin-in justification by faith in the Son of God. It is sweet to the soul, at night, to lie down to rest with a purified conscience and reconciled mind. Great peace and pleasure have they that love the laws of God, and meditate upon them in the night-watches. They shall see God's face in heaven. And why will you not seek for that purity and peace which flow from a union to Jesus Christ?

Hear what is written-" And the Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is athirst, come; and whosoever will, let him take of the waters of life freely. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red as crimson, they shall be as wool."

No. I. JAN. 1832.

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At the close of the meeting I walked towards the door through which I had entered, and was stopped by a female, who said, “Oh, sir," as she grasped my hand, and tears flowed from her eyes, “I am a minister's daughter. I am ruined. I have no home-no friend."

The history of this female is interesting. In her maiden days she learned the trade of an artificial flower and dress maker. A merchant wooed and wedded, and afterwards forsook her, for the society of another woman. Troubles increased, and she drove them off by intemperance. Her house was soon broken up, her carriages sold, and she thrust on the town. In a cellar kept by the black woman that once served in her kitchen, she found a shelter, and a master who drove her with a cowhide, that often left its marks for weeks after its application to her back.

In the winter of 1830 she was sent to the penitentiary, and placed in the hospital, where her softest bed was straw. I visited her one morning. Her food had frozen, and she desired a favor of the superintendent, which was promptly conferred. Since that time her imprisonment has been repeated several times. One Saturday evening, in the middle of October, she entered the office of a medical gentleman where I was, and bewailed in bitterness her sad condition. On the previous evening a stranger gave her two shillings, with which she bought some medicine, and paid for her lodgings. Being destitute of money, and having no home, I advised her to go to her relations in this city, and to cast herself on them. "Oh," said she, "I am ashamed! I am afraid. They don't look at me. I see them sometimes, but they don't see me. They don't know me, I am so changed."

Poor soul, how touching her story was! It went to my heart. She concluded to go and do as I advised her. Her relations are in good circumstances, and move in a highly reputable circle.

This woman is a clergyman's daughter, and it is not a solitary case. There are daughters of other clergymen now living on the town, in this city. It is also said that the widows of a few clergymen are living in the same manner. It is certain that one of them has been lately rescued. The daughters of some elders, and deacons, and church members, residing in various parts of the country, are on the town, in New York. And worse than all, even certain members of churches, of different denominations, but principally from the Methodist and Romish sects, have been taken from the lowest holes in the city, and led to the New York Magdalen asylum. No rank or profession in life has escaped the march of this monster of horrid mien. Intellectual power, and a refined education, adorn many of the inmates of infamous tenements.

The subject before me addresses itself to the church of Jesus Christ. The Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass, hath something against his church, because it suffers certain persons, unreproved, to teach and to seduce some of his servants to commit fornication. And this is not the worst; for the church, as a body, has ceased to teach men that licentiousness is sin. A fastidious taste excludes from the pulpit sermon even a strong remark on the sin of debauchery, while this same fasti

dious taste craves the "Pelham," "Devereaux," and "Faulkland” novels, and other works of a like kind, containing the history of seducers, and debauchees, and rakes, and assignations, and seductions, and illicit amours. Hence licentiousness can flourish. Neither literature or preaching condemn it. As most ministers carefully omit preaching against it, it is no matter of surprise that men should plead for the vice as a necessary evil, because their evil propensities tend to its existence and perpetuity. I heard a Christian minister remark, but a few days since, that he did not know that it was sinful, until after he had joined himself to the church. A medical gentleman, who has been connected for fifteen years with the public hospitals of this city, told me that he was seventeen years old before he was aware that lewdness was sinful. These men were in the habit of attending the house of public worship.

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The question forces itself upon us, why is it that these men were ignorant that adultery and fornication are sins? Because most ministers of the gospel pay little or no regard to the command of their divine Master- Preach the preaching I bid thee.” I never heard a sermon preached on the seventh commandment. Many thousands of persons reared in pious families, and regular in their attendance on the public worship of God, never heard their minister preach against the vice under consideration. Thousands have fallen from worshiping assemblies to the lowest places of vice, and thence down to hell, and in all their course no man preached to them on this subject. Thousands are treading in their steps, and the vice stalks abroad in the land; and where are the pulpits that utter the curses of the Lord against those who are addicted to licentiousness? Doubtless there are some churches in which each of the ten commandments receives a full and stated exposition. It is to be hoped that before the lapse of one year, there will not be a solitary church where the minister will neglect to do his duty on the interesting subject before us. What is their duty? What message does God bid his ministers to deliver to the people of their charge-the subjects of his earthly empire? Is not their duty and their message plainly stated in the Bible? Are they not specially charged to lift up their voice as a trumpet, to show the people their sins? Are not the lascivious criminals of royal, and of obscure standing too, condemned in the Bible, in plain, bold, and decisive terms? Is not the Bible style of preaching the style of preaching ministers are bound to adopt? Are they commissioned to represent the interests of their Lord's government, and furnished with the record of particulars to which their Lord charges them to attend, at the peril of their souls? Why then do they omit to preach on the seventh commandment? In extenuation of this criminal neglect of positive duty charged on them, what admissible plea can be presented at the bar of God, while rendering an account of the manner and faithfulness with which that trust has been attended to? Will it be said that it is difficult to preach on it? Then why do they bear an office for which they are incompetent? The priest's lips must keep knowledge-a novice is not to be put into the ministry. Will it be said that the refinement and delicacy of feeling in modern audiences render it improper? It is true that the utmost delicacy and chastity of language should be studied; but, on the principle as

sumed, the seventh commandment, and all that class of texts in the Bible exegetical of it, are indelicate, and ought to be expunged from that book before it can be fit for any person to read; and St. Paul, and the other apostles, and even the Lord Jesus Christ himself, mightily misapprehended the true secret of doing good, on many occasions, and were actually guilty of indecorous language. They preached to refined audiences. John the Baptist told a prince that it was not lawful for him to have his brother's wife. Paul reasoned on righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come, before refinement and royalty too. Jesus Christ said to the generation that crucified him, "This is an adulterous and sinful generation." The apostles imitated him. The prophets preceded him in the same strain of preaching. And do not the perfections of God and his truth require that his ministers in each succeeding generation, to the end of time, should imitate the example they set before the most refined and literary audiences of the Augustinian age?

Will it avail to say that certain members of the church and congregation would consider such preaching as a personal attack—that they will be offended-that they will leave the church and congregation-that the minister's support will be destroyed for doing it-that much unpleasant feeling will be excited among many persons in the community, and that it will do more evil than good? On what evidence do these assertions rest, or are they mere hypotheses? Has the trial been made? But will God, on this ground, allow his orders to be disobeyed with impunity? Suppose a minister at the court of St. James, in the execution of his official trust, should act on these principles, would not the sovereign that appointed him, denounce him as a traitor to the interests of his country? And if a minister of Jesus Christ adopts and acts on the same principles is he better than a traitor to the interests of his Master's spiritual kingdom?

Is it within the limits of possibility that gospel ministers, of any Christian denomination, can for a moment suppose, that they are excused from this duty, on the ground that the relics of the French Jacobites, and the libertines of the city and country, shall, in infuriated mobs, threaten to banish them from their country for discharging that duty? Shall they be intimidated by threats of infidel and licentious daily and weekly papers issued from this city? Do they shun the wrath of the guilty, and escape the Anti-Magdalen committee's vengeance by incurring the indignation of Jehovah? Whether it is better to obey man than God, let ministers who neglect to preach on the seventh commandment, judge. Let those who bear the ark of the covenant solve the problem, whether he that saveth his life shall not lose his soul. Let them reflect upon what it is to take up the cross. Let them diligently inquire whether they are able to drink of the cup of which Christ drank, and to be baptized with the baptism wherewith Christ was baptized. What if bonds await them for obeying the royal mandate of their august sovereign? The prison doors have already been opened in a land that boasts of religious liberty, and missionaries of the cross are incarcerated in Georgia. As energy marks