der smiling features and fair
garlands, he hides at first that hideousness which in due time is
revealed to his victims. From the lighted vestibules which open so
easily to the touch, and where all seems only a coronation of youthful
pleasure and natural joy, the feet of men slide downward into those
abysses which are hidden from the public gaze, and over whose depths the
blackness of darkness broods." And all this, again, is true. These are
the ways in which the Tempter works. But is there nothing but this to
explain the power which evil has upon men, in the midst of the great
city? These manifold allurements, these haunts of infamy and shambles of
destruction--I see them standing upon strange foundations. I see them
propped by these very influences to which I have alluded; influences of
social condition and individual example. They would not be so
formidable, they would not stand so long, were it not that
respectability in its daily walk and conversation; and social culture in
thousands of homes; and even justice in its lofty seat; lend them
support. "He that is not with me is against me," said Jesus; and, taking
this proverb as a rule, a good many people may be surprised to find
that, in one way and another, they are _Allies_ of the Tempter.

The allies of the Tempter, I propose to speak of now--not the forms of
Temptation, which I have already illustrated. Nor do I intend to dwell
upon those _direct_ conditions of moral evil, out of which vice and
crime grow as spontaneously as weeds out of a damp and neglected
soil--those wide seed fields of _ignorance_ and abject _poverty_ which
lie around us. But the more remote and indirect causes it may be
profitable for us to consider; and to these I now proceed.

I observe, then, in the first place, that the Tempter has one Ally in
_Public Sanction_. There are sources of vice and crime that are
permitted and encouraged by _Law_. I hardly need specify the prominent
instance to which I allude. But I am not aware of a more enormous public
inconsistency than what is termed "the License System"--the system of
permitting the sale of intoxicating drinks in a degree, and of
restricting them in a degree. For, by this method, either a moral wrong
is committed, or else a civil one. If these drinks are an individual and
public injury; if they distribute the seeds of disease, crime, death,
and every form of social misery; then what right have we in any respect
to set upon them the solemn