will war with uncleanness.  Not by prayer and holy living.  Not by pouring of your superfluity into the lap of the poor, and entering by the strait gate upon the narrow path in a garment without seam.  No.  By the dead and damning gold; by the purple and by the scarlet; by the brightness of the eyes that is born of new wine; by the mincing gait and the gloved fingers; and by the musk and civet instead of the myrrh and frankincense:  by these things are you fain to purge your uncleanness.  And will they suffice?  Can Satan cast out Satan?  Beware! ’For though thou wash thee with nitre and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord God.’  There shall come a day when your lace and feathers shall hang on you as heavy as your chains of gold, to drag you down to him in whose name you have thought to cast out devils.  Do not think that these things are harmless vanities.  Nothing can fill the human heart and be harmless.  If your thoughts be not of God, they will keep your minds distraught from His grace as effectually as the blackest broodings of crime. ’Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?  Yet my people have forgotten me days without number, saith the Lord God.’  Yes, your minds are too puny to entertain the full worship of God:  do you think they are spacious enough to harbor the worship of Baal side by side with it?  Much less dare you pretend that the Baal altar is erected for the honor of God, that you may come into His presence comely and clean.  It is but a few days since I stood in the presence of a woman who boasted to me that she bore upon her the value of two hundred pounds of our money.  I cared little for the value of money that was upon her.  But what shall be said of the weight of sin her attire represented?  For, those costly garments were the wages of sin—­of hardened, shameless, damnable sin.  Yet there is not before me a finer dress or a fairer face.  Will you, my sisters, trust to the comeliness of visage and splendor of raiment in which such a woman as this can outshine you?  Will you continue to cast out your devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils?  Be advised whilst there is yet time.  Ask yourself again and again, how can Satan cast out Satan?

“When sin is committed in a great city for wages, is there no fault on the side of those who pay the wages?  There is more than fault:  there is crime.  I trust there are few among you who have done such crime.  But I know full well that it may be said of London to-day ’Thou art full of stirs, a joyous city:  thy slain men are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle.’  No.  Our young men are slain by the poison of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.  Nor is the crafty old subterfuge lacking here.  There are lost ones in this town who say, ’It is by our means that virtue is preserved to the rich:  it is we who appease the wicked rage which would otherwise wreck society.’  There are men who boast that they have brought their sins only to the houses