Public morals / [James Marchant, editor].

Date:
[between 1900 and 1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Public morals / [James Marchant, editor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/256 (page 27)
    But it can prevent, and for the common wel- fare it ought to prevent, the public exhibition of gross sensual evil, the presentation through it of excessive temptation to the weak, the carrying on of an unconcealed and unhappily lucrative trade in prostitution, and the pushing of that trade by the open solicitation to vice which disgraces our streets. This is no impossible task. To a great extent the law does this already in some of our great provincial towns ; and • the authorities in London, especially the new City and Borough Councils, are evidently desirous to do far more in this direction than has yet been done, in spite of acknowledged risks and difficulties, in the metropolis itself. The Church of Christ would be false to her true ideal, if she relied too much on law, and allowed such reliance to interfere for a moment with concentration of energy upon her true function of bringing to bear on evil the higher force of the spirit. But yet “ the law is good, if a man use it lawfully ”; it exercises not merely a preventive and coercive, but a didactic, influence over opinion and prac- tice, especially of the mass of men; under a Christian civilisation it ought to express, as far as law can express, something of Christian principle. And therefore the religious influence of the Church of Christ, which is still the greatest of all social influences, may rightly be used to demand that the law as it stands shall be thoroughly carried out, and that, where it proves to be insufficient, it shall be further amended. For there is no greater fallacy than the frequent assumption that because in such matters law can- not do everything, therefore it can do nothing.