EVERY MAN AND EVERY WOMAN

living simply, purely, and temperately—respecting the laws of health in regard to air, food, dress, exercise, and habits of life—not only can live in the continence of a pure virgin life when single, and in the chastity which should be observed by all married partners, but be stronger, happier, and in every way better by so living.

Chastity is the conservation of life, and the consecration of its forces to the highest use. Sensuality is the waste of life, and the degradation of its forces to pleasure divorced from use. Chastity is life; sensuality is death.

FROM THE AGE OF PUBERTY TO MARRIAGE

the law, is the same for both sexes—full employment of mind and body, temperance, purity, and perfect chastity in thought, word, and deed. The law is one of perfect equality. There is no license for the male which is not equally the right of the female. There is no physiological ground for any indulgence in one case more than in the other. No man has any more right to require or expect purity in the woman who is to be his wife than the woman has to require and expect purity in her husband. It is a simple matter of justice and right. No man can enter upon an amative relation with a woman, except in marriage, without manifest injustice to his future wife, unless he allow her the same liberty; and also without a great wrong to the woman, and to her possible husband.

It is contended that the sins of men against chastity are more venial than those of women, because of the liability of women to have children. But men are also liable to be the fathers of children, who are deeply wronged by the absence of paternal care. The child has its rights, and every child has the right to be born in honest, respectable wedlock, of parents able to give it a sound constitution and the nurture and education it requires. The child who lacks these conditions is grievously wronged by both father and mother.

THE LAW OF MARRIAGE

is, that a mature man and woman, with sound health, pure lives, and a reasonable prospect of comfortably educating a family, when drawn to each other by the attraction of mutual love, should chastely and temperately unite for offspring. The sexual relation has this chief and controlling purpose. The law of nature is intercourse for reproduction. Under the Christian law, marriage is the symbol of the union of Christ with the Church; husband and wife are one in the Lord; they are to live in marriage chastity, not in lust and uncleanness; and there cannot be a more hideous violation of Christian morals than for a husband to vent his sensuality upon a feeble wife; against her wishes and when she has no desire for offspring and no power to give them the healthy constitutions and maternal care which is their right.

The law of Christian morality is very clear. It is the sexual union first and chiefly for its principal object. It is for the husband to refrain from it whenever it is not desired; whenever it would be hurtful to either; whenever it would be a waste of life; whenever it would injure mother or child, as during pregnancy and lactation.