AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. A. 8. DYER, Sm,—I was among those who listened last night to your address on "Personal Purity." Discussion was invited, but most of the young men in Shanghai are denied that practice which is essential to effective public speaking, Perhaps, then, you will permit one of them to lay before you in writing the criticism which he was unable orally to express.
observed that your mesting was attended by a number of elderly men, on whose gray locks the assaults of the flesh must long have fallen harmless; by~ several men of middle age, whom marriage had" lifted above temptation, and by four or five only of the young men whom you sought to reach. You pride yourself on being the ''best-hated man in India." You can lay no such flattering unction to your soul here. Shanghai has shown that it neither loves you nor hates you; it only ignores you, It is well that you should know why.
It is because we believe that you, howe ever well meant your efforts may be, are doing actual harm to the cause you have come to advocate. Long before we heard your name the state of morality in Shang. hai had engaged the attention of the community. There wore and are Iie fluences at work of which you are entirely ignorant, We have seen and still see a gradual, but constant rise in the moral tone of our society of which you have never dreamed, but which many thankfully recognise as the work of men, and still more of women, who would shrink from a public platform and on whose quiet labour utterances like yours fall like a kind of blight.
on. are much addicted to citing isolated texts of Scripture in support of your views, It is perhaps consequent on this habit that you have overlooked the broad teaching of the Bible on the subject. We are told repeatedly that our life is a warfare and we the warriors; we are to be armed, vigilant, courageous. We are to resist the devil and he will flee from us. Against all classes of sins we are to fight to the death; with one exception only, and then—we are to run away. Resist the Devil," but "Flee youthful lusts."
Who can doubt the divine wisdom and common sense of such a command? You have nothing. new to tell us of the evil in our 1 We know it better than you. You have no reniedy to suggest. There is none. There is only flight. We will have no parleyings, no discussions, no appeals, no societies, no public mention even of the matters which form the material of your rhetoric, All these things only aggravate the evil we seek to cure.
The time of your youth is past, and with it the sympathies youth engenders. Remember, I pray you, if you must speak, that words which fall coldly from your lips may drop like oil on the passionate fires of the young. You boast of your knowledge of the waysofvice; beware, whennextyou address a meeting here, lest you be unwittingly imparting your knowledge to the innocent. These things we have a right to demand of you when you rise to speak, or bid you forever hold your peace.
Tam, ete., etc., A Youre Man, Shanghai, 2ist February.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.