drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is
so little disguised, even from those who habitually practise them, that
there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the
right Biblical name. Why not say prostitution? For this reason:
prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice, and that
the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike. Prostitution
applies only to the woman.

When, however, we cease to regard this vice from the point of view of
morality and religion, and look at it solely as a factor in the social
problem, the word prostitution is less objectionable. For the social
burden of this vice is borne almost entirely by women. The male sinner
does not, by the mere fact of his sin, find himself in a worse position
in obtaining employment, in finding a home, or even in securing a wife.
His wrong-doing only hits him in his purse, or, perhaps, in his health.
His incontinence, excepting so far as it relates to the woman whose
degradation it necessitates, does not add to the number of those for
whom society has to provide. It is an immense addition to the infamy
of this vice in man that its consequences have to be borne almost
exclusively by woman. The difficulty of dealing with drunkards and
harlots is almost insurmountable. Were it not that I utterly repudiate
as a fundamental denial of the essential principle of the Christian
religion the popular pseudo-scientific doctrine that any man or woman
is past saving by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,
I would sometimes be disposed to despair when contemplating these
victims of the Devil. The doctrine of Heredity and the suggestion of
Irresponsibility come perilously near re-establishing, on scientific
bases, the awful dogma of Reprobation which has cast so terrible a
shadow over the Christian Church. For thousands upon thousands of
these poor wretches are, as Bishop South truly said, "not so much born