fence about the house, and they will talk about what ailed the one that died, and one will say it was intermittent, and another will say it was congestion, and another will say it was premature old age; but it will be neither intermittent, nor congestion, nor old age. In the ponderous book of Almighty God it will be recorded for everlasting ages to read that you killed her. Our language is very fertile in describing different kinds of crime. Slaying a man is homicide. Slaying a brother is fratricide. Slaying a father is patricide. Slaying a mother is matricide. It takes two words to describe your crime-patricide and matricide.

I must leave to other Sabbath mornings the unrolling of the scroll which I have this morning only laid on your table. We have come only to the vestibule of the subject. I have been treating of generals. I shall come to specifics. I have not told you of all the styles of people I saw in the haunts of iniquity. Before I get through with these sermons and next Sabbath morning I will answer the question everywhere asked me, why does municipal authority allow these haunts of iniquity?

I will show all the obstacles in the way. Sirs, before I get through with this course of Sabbath morning sermons, by the help of the eternal God, I will save ten thousand men! And in the execution of this mission I defy all earth and hell.

But I was going to tell you of an incident. I said to the officer, "Well, let us go; I am tired of this scene;" and as we passed out of the haunts of iniquity into the fresh air, a soul passed in. What a face that was! Sorrow only half covered up with an assumed joy. It was a woman's face. I saw as plainly as on the page of a book the tragedy. You know that there is such a thing as somnambulism, or walking in one's sleep. Well, in

a fatal somnambulism, a soul started off from her father's house. It was very dark, and her feet were cut of the rocks; but on she went until she came to the verge of a chasm, and she began to descend from bowlder to bowlder down over the rattling shelving-for you know while walking in sleep people will go where they would not go when awake. Further on down, and further, where no owl of the night or hawk of the day would venture. On down until she touched the depth of the chasm. Then, in walking sleep, she began to ascend the other side of the chasm, rock above rock, as the roe boundeth. Without having her head to swim with the awful steep, she scaled the height. No eye but the sleepless eye of God watched her as she went down one side the chasm and came up the other side the chasm. It was an August night, and a storm was gathering, and a loud burst of thunder awoke her from her somnambulism, and she said, "Whither shall I fly?" and with an affrighted eye she looked back upon the chasm she had crossed, and she looked in front, and there was a deeper chasm before her. She said, "What shall I do? Must I die here?" And as she bent over the one chasm, she heard the sighing of the past; and as she bent over the other chasm, she heard the portents of the future. Then she sat down on the granite crag, and cried: "O! for my father's house! O! for the cottage, where I might die amid embowering honeysuckle! O! the past! O! the future! O! father! O! mother! O! God!" But the storm that had been gathering culminated, and wrote with finger of lightning on the sky just above the horizon, "The way of the transgressor is hard." And then thunder-peal after thunder-peal uttered it: "Which forsaketh the guide of her youth and forgetteth the covenant of her God. Destroyed without remedy!" And

the cavern behind echoed it, "Destroyed without remedy!" And the chasm before echoed it, "Destroyed without remedy!" There she perished, her cut and bleeding feet on the edge of one chasm, her long locks washed of the storm dripping over the other chasm.

But by this time our carriage had reached the curbstone of my dwelling, and I awoke, and behold it was a dream!

CHAPTER II.

THE LEPERS OF HIGH LIFE.

"Policeman, what of the night ?"-Isaiah xxi: 11.

The original of the text may be translated either "watchman" or or "policeman." I have chosen the latter word. The olden-time cities were all thus guarded. There were roughs, and thugs, and desperadoes in Jerusalem, as well as there are in New York and Brooklyn. The police headquarters of olden time was on top of the city wall. King Solomon, walking incognito through the streets, reports in one of his songs that he met these officials. King Solomon must have had a large posse of police to look after his royal grounds, for he had twelve thousand blooded horses in his stables, and he had millions of dollars in his palace, and he had six hundred wives, and, though the palace was large, no house was ever large enough to hold two women married to the same man; much less could six hundred keep the peace. Well, the night was divided into three watches, the first watch reaching from sundown to 10 o'clock; the second watch from 10 c'clock to two in the morning; the third watch from two in the morning to sunrise. An Idumean, anxious about the prosperity of the city, and in regard to any danger that might threaten it, accosts an officer just as you might any night upon our streets, saying, "Policeman, what of the night?" Policemen, more than any other people, understand a city. Upon them

are vast responsibilities for small pay. The police officer of your city gets $1,100 salary, but he may spend only one night of an entire month in his family. The detective of your city gets $1,500 salary, but from January to January there is not an hour that he may call his own. Amid cold and heat and tempest, and amid the perils of the bludgeon of the midnight assassin, he does his work. The moon looks down upon nine-tenths of the iniquity of our great cities. What wonder, then, that a few weeks ago, in the interest of morality and religion, I asked the question of the text, "Policeman, what of the night?" In addition to this powerful escortage, I asked two elders of the church to accompany me; not because they were any better than the other elders of the church, but because they were more muscular, and I was resolved that in any case where anything more than spiritual defense was necessary, to refer the whole matter to their hands! I believe in muscular Christianity. I wish that our theological seminaries, instead of sending out so many men with dyspepsia and liver complaint and all out of breath by the time they have climbed to the top of the pulpit stairs, would, through gymnasiums and other means, send into the pulpit physical giants as well as spiritual athletes. I do wish I could consecrate to the Lord two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois weight? But, borrowing the strength of others, I started out on the midnight exploration. I was preceded in this work by Thomas Chalmers, who opened every door of iniquity in Edinburgh before he established systematic amelioration, and preceded by Thomas Guthrie, who explored all the squalor of the city before he established the ragged schools, and by every man who has done anything to balk crime, and help the tempted and the destroyed. Above all, I followed in the footsteps of Him who was