fashion of the day, I reply, I would not advise any one to challenge further disclosures, else we can show that France, with all her atheism, that Paris, with all her license, is not so guilty in this respect as is staid New England at the present time. Facts," says the doctor, "can be adduced that will make the ears tingle. But we do not want to divulge them: but we do want the womanhood of our day to understand that the thing can be no longer concealed; that commonness or fashion cannot do away with its awful guilt.”

Dr. H. R. Storer observes: "It is not of course intended to imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages, or indeed permits the practice of inducing abortion; its tenets are uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is the popular ignorance regarding this offence, that an abstract morality is here comparatively powerless; our American women arrogate to themselves the settlement of what they consider, if doubtful, purely an ethical question, and there can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance has saved to the world many thousand infant lives. During the ten years since the preceding sentence was written," says Dr. Storer, we have had ample vidication of its truth. Several hundreds of Protestant women have personally acknowledged to us their guilt, against whom, only seven Catholics."

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We will not add other facts which we have at our command, but will close this testimony by observing, that not one of these witnesses is of those to whose exemption from the commission of criminal abortion they have so magnanimously given such positive testimony. In justice to others who are not now so exempt, I feel called upon here to say, that the day is not far distant when the same good testimony will be given in their behalf, and that they will stand as completely disenthralled from the vice, as are those for whom so large an exemption is now claimed.

This conclusion we base upon the fact, that the various Christian Churches of our land are awakening to the importance of taking very active and positive means to calling the attention of their folds to the extent, general practice, and enormity of the vice, and of imparting to them such physiological, moral, and religious instruction as the great necessities for the prevention of the commission of the crime demand. We feel no small degree of pleasure in here presenting to you, as an evidence of this awakening, the resolution presented at the Presbyterian Convention (Old School) held in New York in 1869. The resolution is broad, comprehensive, and fully speaks for itself.

"Resolved, That we regard the destruction by parents of their own offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against

God, and against nature, and that as there are many influences at work in public and in secret, to corrupt the minds of the people, until the frequency of such murders is no longer sought to be concealed, we hereby warn those that are guilty of this crime that they cannot inherit eternal life, and that it is vile hypocrisy for such persons to remain in connection with the visible Church of Christ, and we exhort those that have been called to preach the gospel, and all who love purity and truth, and who would avert the just judgments of Almighty God from the church and nation, that they be no longer silent or tolerant of these things, but that they take a bold stand, that the floods of corruption and cruelty may be stayed. Referred to the Committee on Bills and Overtures."

We would be doing injustice to this branch of the subject did we neglect to mention the positive and active part Dr. H. Cleaveland Cox, Episcopal Bishop of Western New York, and in charge of the Diocese of Central New York, has taken to call the attention of the ministers in his Bishopric, and through them their parishioners, to the crime, as he terms it, of "ante-natal infanticide." That those who have not had an opportunity of reading Bishop Cox's Pastoral Letter of January 30, 1869, may know how eloquently, earnestly, and positively he denounces the crime, and warns his people against its commission, that portion of his letter devoted to this subject is here presented: "I have," the Bishop writes, "heretofore warned my flock against the blood-guiltiness of ante-natal infanticide. If any doubts existed heretofore of the propriety of my warnings on this subject, they must now disappear before the fact, that the world itself is beginning to be horrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile our land. Again, I warn you, that they who do such things cannot inherit eternal life. If there be a special damnation for those who shed innocent blood,' what must be the portion of those who have no mercy upon their own flesh." This denunciation of Bishop Cox has the ring of the true metal, and while it does credit to his heart and head, is worthy of imitation of the most exalted as well as the most lowly of those who claim to be followers and servants, the teachers and exemplars of "Him who went about doing good."

What the Catholic Church and Jewish Church have done and continue to do for their people, in preventing them from being criminal abortionists, it is, we hold, in the power of every Christian Church to do-else will their mission not be a complete success. It matters not, for example, how the Catholic Church or the Israelitish Church attains the useful end, it is evident that it is attained. If other churches have not the same means by which to impart im

portant instruction, they have means, or are quite competent to institute adequate means, whereby they may be able to impart all the needful information in regard to the physiology of conception, the development of the new being, and the fact of its having life from the moment of its conception, and the murderous character of the offence of bringing about its death and premature dislodgment from the womb, whether by poisonous drugs or other direct or indirect instrumentalities.

All Christian ministers, of whatever sect or name, are quite as competent to give the required important information, relative to conception, pregnancy, the viability of the foetus and the nature of the crime, of its premature dislodgment from the uterus, as are priests and Jewish Rabbis, and it is their duty to do so if such imparted information will even limitedly, much more extendedly, control the commission of the crime. Whether the experiment will be tried by them-whether they will, individually or collectively, through the power of their conferences, synods, and congresses devise special means for the arrest of the march of the crime of wilful abortion, time only can determine, yet so hopeful are we that they will, that we do not hesitate to declare in their favor.

The facts which have been presented, in regard to the influence of proper instruction relative to conception and the destruction of the being "hidden in the darkness of the womb," on the part of Catholics and Israelites, are such as prove to a demonstration that, that which is mainly required to prevent the commission of criminal abortion is that intellectual, moral, and religious light shall be shed upon the subject in all its phases. Shall we have this light cast upon those who are now and have been too long living through a dreary night of moral and intellectual darkness, from which none more than they will be gladdened by their deliverance? Ministers of the Gospel should not suffer themselves to be liable to the charge of neglect, to meet the urgent necessities which present in this matter. They should rival each other, in this field, so suitable for their labors, as they do in other fields, where their works are so successful for erring man, both as regards time and eternity. Will they do it? The answer is with themselves. The best response will be in the results of their labors. The work is largely susceptible of being successfully carried on by them. If criminal abortion shall be prevented, if, indeed, it shall be largely controlled, and woman delivered from the commission of the horrible crime of destroying the fruit of her womb while it is hidden in the recess of its darkness, she must be instructed, she must be fully educated up to the highest standard of morality and intelligence in every

thing which relates to the nature of conception and pregnancy, and the sinful enormity of the offence of thwarting the will of Almighty God, in preventing, by any means, direct or indirect, positive or negative, the full development of the product of her conception. The educating of woman up to the moral and intellectual standard referred to, is a work which might claim the attention of the wisest and the best. Such work successfully carried on would add glory to the most famous of moral and religious teachers. It is worthy of the heads and hearts of the most zealous of the laborers in the vast vineyard of the Lord. It is because of its very nature and objects the special work of all Christian ministers. Let the Medical Society of Pennsylvania, then, in the name of religion, purity, and woman's elevation, beg, nay implore, all Christian ministers to organize and make systematic preparations for a well-concerted attack upon the front and flank of the abomination, and never, never to cease the employment of all their intellectual, moral, and religious instrumentalities until success shall have crowned their efforts, and woman shall stand in glorious grandeur disenthralled from the great vice of our day, the murder of unborn babes.

Touching the subject of criminal abortion, as it does in many of its important aspects, the reporter cannot withhold submitting to your thoughtful consideration part of the letter of the late Catholic Bishop of Boston, Bishop Fitzpatrick. This letter was addressed to Dr. Horatio R. Storer, and was written in reply to inquiries made by the learned Doctor in regard to the teachings of the Catholic Church relative to "the destruction of the human fœtus." "The doctrine of the Catholic Church," wrote Bishop Fitzpatrick, "her canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without exception, teach, and constantly have taught, that the destruction of the human foetus in the womb of the mother, at any period from the first instant of conception, is a heinous crime, equal at least in guilt to that of murder. We find it distinctly condemned as such even as far back as the time of Tertullian (at the end of the second century), who calls it festinatio homicidii, a hastening of murder. The Pope, Sextus the Fifth, in a bull published in 1588, subjects those guilty of the crime to all the penalties, civil and ecclesiastical, inflicted on murderers. It is denounced and reprobated in many of the canons of the Church.

"The reason of this doctrine (apart from the authority of the Church) must, it seems to me, appear evident upon a little reflec

1 Criminal Abortion: its Nature, its Evidence, and its Laws. Storer, M.D., LL.D., and Franklin Fiske Heard, p. 71.

By H. R.

tion. The very instant conception has taken place, there lies the vital germ of a man. True, it is hidden in the darkness of the womb, and in it is helpless, but it has sacred rights, founded in God's law, so much the more to be respected because it is helpless. It may be already a living man, for neither mother nor physician can tell when life is infused; they can only tell when its presenceis manifested, and there is a wide difference between these two things. At any rate, it is from the first moment potentially and in radice a man with a body and a soul destined most surely, by the will of the Creator and his law, to be developed into the fulness of human existence. No one can prevent that development without resisting and annulling one of the most sacred and important laws established by the Divine Author of the Universe; and he is a criminal, a murderer, who deals an exterminating blow to that incipient man and drives back into nothingness a being to whom God designed to give a living body and an immortal soul.

"From this it follows that the young woman whose virtue has proved an insufficient guardian to her honor, when she seeks by abortion to save in the eyes of man that honor she has forfeited, incurs the additional and deeper guilt of murder in the eyes of God, the Judge of the living and the dead. Who can express what follows with regard to those women who, finding themselves lawfully mothers, prefer to devastate with poison or with steel their wombs, rather than bear the discomforts attached to the privilege of maternity, rather than forego the gayeties of a winter's balls, parties, and plays, or the pleasures of a summer's trips and amusements?

"But abortion," the Bishop continued, "besides being a direct crime against a positive law of God, is also an indirect crime against society. Admit its practice, and you throw open a way for the most unbridled licentiousness; you make woman a mere instrument of beastly lust."

Should not other means than those dwelt upon to prevent criminal abortion be instituted and invoked? The legislature, the courts, and all legal instrumentalities should be enlisted in the good work of crushing out the accursed crime. We would make it the duty of the State Medical Society to institute a committee, whose duty it should be to wait upon a few legal gentlemen of the State, men of great wisdom as jurists, whose public spirit would not allow them to hesitate in giving all aid within their reach to crush out the crime; the committee should confer with such gentlemen and lay before them all the facts as regards the how, the where, and by whom abortions are practised, and what are the varied instrumentalities used in the commission of the horrible crime. How the