Lectures on magdalenism : its nature, extent, effects, guilt, causes, and remedy : delivered and published by special request of forty ministers of the Gospel, and eleven hundred fellow-Christians / by Ralph Wardlaw.

  • Wardlaw, Ralph, 1779-1853.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on magdalenism : its nature, extent, effects, guilt, causes, and remedy : delivered and published by special request of forty ministers of the Gospel, and eleven hundred fellow-Christians / by Ralph Wardlaw. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    gloat over it, in the prurience of his polluted ima- gination ;—while he paid no regard to the solemn and thrilling close—a close which reads to all, and reads to youth especially, the monitory moral of the whole : He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks ; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life. Hearken unto me now, therefore, 0 ye youth, and attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline to her ways ; go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded : yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Prov. vii. 22-27. But besides the difficulty that arises from the delicacy of the subject, there is one of another kind. The vice is, to a great extent, a secret one. It is to a certain degree only, that it is open and known. Though in a sad multitude of cases un- blushing and unconcealed, inviting notice, courting publicity, yet in an equal, if not a still greater number of instances, it is practised more covertly. The amount of the unknown, it is true, may exist chiefly among those who, happily for themselves, belong not to the number of the initiated in the mysteries of impurity ; and who therefore see and hear comparatively little of it: and they who know better may smile at their ignorance and simplicity. But still it is a matter of no small difficulty to ar- rive at anything like satisfactorily accurate statis- tics. In one department there is a hazard of over, and in another of under statement. In some cases, the statistical calculations are not only different,