to the life of debauchery to be found at Tia Juana.
The snatches of life to be seen in this border town
are pathetic as well as revolting. An American
mother, with baby in her arms, sits in the cabaret
drinking and smoking, while the baby coos and
gurgles over his bottle of milk. And then the mother
gives the baby to a friend while she goes to dance.
This is Tia Juana.
In the gambling center the roulette wheel spins,
the dice are thrown, the cards are flipped, while
thousands of dollars slip through the hand within
a few moments of time. Nicely dressed women,
gray-haired matrons, play their money and watch
the tiny ball as it rolls. They win. They lose.
This is Tia Juana.
The races are on. Two million dollars in purses,
prizes, and handicaps are at stake in the horse races.
Thousands of persons are lured to the track. This,
too, is ‘I'ia Juana.
There are remorses. There are men who hide
from friends at Tia Juana because they are gamblers,
or bartenders; but they cannot stop. There amid
the wickedness and vileness they exist as hermits
from all their friends. Ashamed? Yes. Will they
quit it? No. This, too, is Tia Juana.
As one realizes the depths to which men and
women will go in a life of sin, one feels that judg-
ment has truly ‘‘fled to brutish beasts and men
have lost their reason.” As one sees the emptiness
of faces, the re-
morse that lines the
sinner’'s counte-
nance, one can truly
sense that the
wages of sin are in-
evitably paid
forth in moral,
spiritual, and phys-
ical death.
ONLY ONE
UT Tia Juana
is only one of
the amusement
centers of a sin-
polluted world
where men and wo-
men sell their souls
for the devil's
pleasures. Scat-
tered the globe over
may be found dens
of vice that out-
Sodom the fiercest imaginations of those cities of
the plain. And so serious has their menace become
to civilization that the League of Nations in recent
conference sought ways and means to abolish the
diabolical white slavery to be found in these centers.
Lured on by the devices of the devil, men and
women sink deeper and deeper into the pit of sin for
the gain of an hour of pleasure or the reward of
JULY, 1929
“Eat, drink, and be merry,”
slogan of prosperous and pleasure-mad America
a few pieces of gold. In the cabarets, the dance
halls, the night clubs, and the roadhouses of the
land, human beings drink, dance, and destroy their
souls for the thrill of pleasure.
Past the border of Tia Juana returning on the
highway into the United States, one is startled by
the sign: “Why Leave Tia Juana? You'll Come
Back.” What an insidious meaning behind those
words! Although men and women may attempt to
rise above sin by their own will-power, the devil
lures them back. Like Lot's wife of old, they have
left their hearts in the place of evil, and they. turn
back. At first men may play with sin; but when sin
is grown, it forever holds the victim in its clutches.
REPEATING ITSELR
ICE and crime are no longer hidden beneath
a cloak of respectability. Men and women today
are not ashamed of sin. ‘‘The show of their counte-
nance doth witness against them; and they declare
their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto
their soul! For they have rewarded evil unto
themselves. . . . Woe unto the wicked! It shall
be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall
be given him.” Isaiah 3:9, 11.
As the antediluvian world became sin-crazed
and pleasure mad, so history is again repeating a
similar trend. In the days of Noah the degeneracy
of man was at flood tide. “Every imagination of
the thoughts of his
heart was only evil
continually.” Gen-
esis 6: 5.7; And the
twentieth century
cry for pleasure has
again brought
depths of vice.
Even as then,
Jehovah declares
that His spirit of
love and mercy
cannot always
strive with sinners.
Sodom went down
without heeding
the warning of God
to turn from evil.
“Behold, this was
“the iniquity of thy
sister Sodom, pride,
fullness of bread,
and abundance of
idleness was in her
and in her daughters. . . . And they were haughty,
and committed abomination before Me: therefore
I took them away.” Ezekiel 16: 49, 50.
The pride and glory of our educational system,
the wonder of our inventions, the marvel of scientific
development, the glory of literature will not out-
weigh the lack of spiritual and moral standards in
humanity. Babylon, the (Continued on page 3I)
PAGE THIRTEEN
is too often the