There are many vices and seven deadly sins.But of late years many of the seven have contrived to pass themselves off as virtues.Avarice,for instance;and Pride,when re-baptised thrift and self-respect,have become the guardian angels of Christian civilisation;and as for Envy,it is the corner-stone upon which much of our competitive system is founded.There are still two vices which are fortunate,or unfortunate,enough to remain undisguised,not even concealing from themselves the fact that they are vices and not virtues.One is drunkenness;the other fornication.The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised,even from those who habitually practise them,that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Biblical name.Why not say prostitution?For this reason:
Prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice,and that the most pitiable.Fornication hits both sinners alike.Prostitution applies only to the woman.
When,however,we cease to regard this vice from the point of view of morality and religion,and look at it solely as a factor in the social problem,the word prostitution is less objectionable.For the social burden of this vice is borne almost entirely by women.The male sinner does not,by the mere fact of his sin,find himself in a worse position in obtaining employment,in finding a home,or even in securing a wife.
His wrong-doing only hits him in his purse,or,perhaps,in his health.
His incontinence,excepting so far as it relates to the woman whose degradation it necessitates,does not add to the number of those for whom society has to provide.It is an immense addition to the infamy of this vice in man that its consequences have to be borne almost exclusively by woman.The difficulty of dealing with drunkards and harlots is almost insurmountable.Were it not that I utterly repudiate as a fundamental denial of the essential principle of the Christian religion the popular pseudo-scientific doctrine that any man or woman is past saving by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,I would sometimes be disposed to despair when contemplating these victims of the Devil.The doctrine of Heredity and the suggestion of Irresponsibility come perilously near re-establishing,on scientific bases,the awful dogma of Reprobation which has cast so terrible a shadow over the Christian Church.For thousands upon thousands of these poor wretches are,as Bishop South truly said,"not so much born into this world as damned into it."The bastard of a harlot,born in a brothel,suckled on gin,and familiar from earliest infancy with all the bestialities of debauch,violated before she is twelve,and driven out into the streets by her mother a year or two later,what chance is there for such a girl in this world--I say nothing about the next?