INSANITY, SURGERY, BLINDNESS.
Some who are willing to harden themselves against the laws of God and man alike, lay to heart the evidence of a standard medical treatise on insanity when it is opened and read to them in the street. The description of the brain of a dead lunatic, who lost his mind and his life as the wages of the sin upon which they are bent, brings a pallor over the faces of crowds that seem nailed down to the pavement and unable to move away. Others heed the medical testimony concerning the fearful suffering likely to come upon their present or future wives in consequence of their iniquity. Modern surgeons attribute 25 per cent of surgical operations upon women—mostly innocent wives—to these sins against chastity. Statistics of the German Empire, Austria, Denmark, and Holland show that 40.25 per cent of the blind in the asylums of those countries owe their blindness, usually dating from earliest infancy, to one of the diseases associated with prostitution—not the disease commonly most dreaded.
We distribute leaflets specially prepared and attractively printed in two colors, telling plainly the criminality of vice and the ruin that it brings upon the body and brain and character of transgressors. We have printed more than 150,000 tracts and cards, which are eagerly taken by many thousands of young men, to the anger and loss of the keepers of the criminal resorts. The work of tract distribution is carried on in all weather, often when street meetings are impossible.
This educational work is carried on in friendly co-operation with The Chicago Society of Social Hygiene—organized by the Chicago Medical Society—which supplies us with circulars for this purpose. This feature of our work led to an invitation to our superintendent to address The Physicians' Club concerning the work of The Midnight Mission. Dr. Archibald Church, editor of The Chicago Medical Recorder, has asked for and accepted an article on this work for his paper.
IN RAIN AND SNOW.
"I respect you," said a divekeeper who with others has since abandoned his loathsome business, "because you work in the rain and you work in the cold." I find it equally blessed to be Christ's witness by the Martyrs' Memorial in classic Oxford, on the hot sand beneath the palm trees of Ceylon and India, and on a snowbank among Chicago's red lights. Everywhere large audiences stand eagerly listening to the messengers of God. Our midnight street meetings continue three, four, five, and even six hours at one place, in the summer.
CONVERSIONS—AND BETTER.
Several women have repented and have been cared for or restored to their relatives. But our effort has been chiefly directed toward the thousands of men and youths whose money supports the institutions that destroy manhood and womanhood alike. Hundreds of repentant men and boys have knelt in the dust of Custom House Place, Peoria Street, and Armour Avenue. In social and business position they range from a wholesale merchant and a fallen minister to gamblers and wrecks.
But what can be better than conversions—that make glad the heart of God? Nothing, except preventing the children of God from plunging into deadly sin. If the only good accomplished by our midnight cry were the prevention of the ruin of a dozen youths in a year, it would be gloriously worth while to keep on crying. But hundreds have turned back from the brink of perdition, including university students and Church members. With outstretched hands and glad gratitude, they say to us: "We thank you; you have kept us from sin tonight!" When we recall Dr. Prince A. Morrow's estimate, quoted by Dr. Howard A. Kelly in a paper read before the American Medical Association, that 450,000 American young men make the plunge into the moral sewer every year, we see what an enormous field there is for this preventive work.