The mere fact that fashionable society sanctions a custom does not, as a rule, recommend it; for society is jealous of restrictions which interfere with its pleasure, and becomes bored by any appeal to be very good. Even the heathen, who are quick to see the evidences of sensuality, would be shocked at many of our fashions and customs.
Dr. Butler, in "The Land of the Veda," says in reference to the Nautch girls:
"No man in India would allow his wife or daughter to dance; and as to dancing with another man, he would forsake her forever as a woman lost to virtue and modesty if she were to attempt it. In their observation of white women there is nothing that so much perplexes them as the fact that fathers and husbands will permit their wives and daughters to indulge in promiscuous dancing. No argument will convince them that the act is such as a virtuous female should practise, or that its tendency is not licentious.
The prevalence of the practice in 'Christian' nations makes our holy religion which they suppose must allow it to be abhorred by many of them, and often it is cast in the teeth of our missionaries when preaching to them.
But what would these heathens say could they enter our opera houses and theatres, and see the shocking exposure of their persons which our public women there present before mixed assemblies!
Yet they would be ten times more astonished that ladies of virtue and reputation should be found there, accompanied by their daughters, to witness the sight, and that, too, in the presence of the other sex!
But then, they are only heathens, and don't appreciate the high accomplishments of Christian civilization! Still Heaven grant that the future Church of India may ever retain at least this item of the prejudices of their forefathers!"
A thoughtful person cannot help observing that these times are characterized by the reckless abuse of stimulants, material and mental, to which we are fast becoming slavishly addicted. Besides alcoholic stimulants, we are presented at every turn with literary, dramatic, political, artistic and other excitants which the general public seems to demand for its mental, moral and physical nourishment.
The battle against impurity cannot prevail unless at least the decent members of the community shall have high standards which discountenance sensuality, and unless they demand equal legal rights for both sexes, and cease to heap up all the degradation on the weaker sex.
Virtue in a nation will decline unless its citizens exhibit a zeal for what is pure and good; and no nation can be truly great which does not represent in the aggregate those qualities which are great in the individual.
America, being related to every nation, has derived something good and something evil from all of them; and unless we court a national tragedy, such as those which have blotted out whole empires in the past, we must be awake and active, and demand a due reverence for the family life, while at the same time vigorously opposing every influence which in any way tends to degrade it. Otherwise we cannot be ascendant and predominant in history.
National decay will surely follow if we submit to the seductive influences of the times; and unless we effectively combat the enemies of purity and decency, there is danger that those at least who are city bred will become morally rotten.