Strange though it may seem to us, the best people of New York understood and appreciated what Dr. Parkhurst was after. But it was not till the 14th of February, 1892, that he put the trumpet to his lips and blew a blast the echoes of which are still sounding through the world. His sermon was an impeachment of the Government of New York, the like of which had seldom been heard before in a Christian pulpit. If any one questions the justice of the title of this volume, let him read what Dr. Parkhurst said in the sermon, of which the following sentence is a fair sample:-- There is not a form under which the Devil disguises himself that so perplexes us in our efforts, or so bewilders us in the devising of our schemes, as the polluted harpies that, under the pretext of governing this city, are feeding day and night on its quivering vitals. They are a lying, perjured, rum-soaked and libidinous lot. That was plain speaking in honest, ringing Saxon, for Dr. Parkhurst knew that there was no better way of spoiling the trump card of the Devil’s game than to refuse to let him keep things mixed. He maintained that the district attorney, or, as we should say, the public prosecutor, was guilty of complicity with vice and crime: that “every effort to make men respectable, honest, temperate, and sexually clean was a direct blow between the eyes of the mayor and his whole gang of drunken and lecherous subordinates, who shielded and patronised iniquity.” Criminals and officials, he declared, were hand-and-glove, and he summed up the whole matter in the following concise exposition of the _status quo_ in “Satan’s Invisible World” in New York, 1892:--“It is simply one solid gang of rascals, half of the gang in office and the other half out, and the two halves steadily catering to each other across the official line.” [Illustration: From _Frank Leslie’s Weekly_. REV. C. H. PARKHURST, D.D., DENOUNCING TAMMANY’S GOVERNMENT OF NEW YORK.]