The indictment really is not against the ministers as men--it is against their religion and their profession. There is so close a relation between religious emotion and what is called desire, that scientific men have written treatises and books on the correlation of religion and lust. The more fervent the preacher is godward, the more ardent is he womanward--and piety works the same way with the sisters. Our preacher who has turned state's evidence blames among other things the pastoral visit and the emotional women who place temptation before the man of God. He is concerned only with the minister, but the minister is as often a tempter as a victim. He improves the opportunities the pastoral visit affords, and makes his share of the advances. It may be that only men without mental honesty--men who are willing to profess to believe and to teach what they feel is false--are entering the ministry. In that case the worst is to be expected, and their conduct is accounted for by their lack of principle. The "Standard's" contributor offers the novel excuse that the minister uses up so much of his virtue in phrasing and uttering moral precepts that he has no strength left for applying them. The proposition is worth the notice of the churches; for if true it means that the vocation of a preacher devitalizes a man of his moral stamina. The religious editor and his contributor disagree on an important point. The editor holds that the fuss made over one minister who goes wrong with his organist is a tribute to the high estimate in which the profession is held. On the other hand, the contributor represents that most ministers are moral skates, and that any high estimate the profession enjoys is due to the few decent exceptions. The distinction is vital. The orthodox religious standards to which a minister is supposed to measure up are admittedly responsible for much moral laxity. Besides the sincerely orthodox preacher (whose religious austerity never prevents him from erring sexually), there are thousands of ministers who live a mental or intellectual lie by remaining in the church and preaching the creeds they do not believe. And the church does not trouble itself about the minister's doubts so long as he keeps them to himself. What can the church expect, then, from the religious hypocrite in the pulpit except that he will be a moral hypocrite out of it? Is he going to be dishonest as a preacher and honest as a man? The Baptist paper's contributor puts the query: "Do ministers of the churches, that is, clergymen, priests and preachers, go wrong in any greater proportion than do doctors, lawyers or teachers?" He gives a negative answer, "mathematically," but the very asking of the question proves that an affirmative reply was not unexpected. Had he included editors in his list it could have been given. The literary and editorial professions are very poorly represented in our prisons, and even printers are exceedingly scarce.