Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Plea for the Preaching of Christ in Cities: A Sermon, Preached Before the Young Men's Christian Association of New York; At Their Twelfth Anniversary, May 8, 1864
Superstition, as well as sensualism, found its votaries at Antioch; and the steps of those who claimed to declare the Invisible to man, crossed everywhere in the streets the pathways of those who sought to make the present city a paradise of every earthly delight. There were Chaldean astrologers, with their astrolabes and horoscopes; there were Jewish impostors, and professors of sorcery; there were dancing-girls from Persia and Egypt, artists from Greece, athletes from Italy, comedians, pantomimes, singers, wrestlers, the servants of luxury, the priesthood of lust, from every land. And there, in the suburbs, amid the thickets of laurel and of cypress, was that grove of Daphne, 'full 'of harmonious sounds and aromatic odors, ' which Gibbon has described with pleased and lingering' luxuriance of phrase, where the most continuous and unlimited licentiousness was prompted and enjoined as an ordinance of piety; where genius and wealth and religion had conspired to make the most delightful scene ries of nature, embellished with the finest and costliest trophies of the later Greek art, a very shrine and temple of perpetual vice.
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