f is contrary to fact; I assert that no man ever yet was in
the slightest degree or way the worse for continence or better for
incontinence. From incontinence during unmarried life all are worse
morally; a clear majority, are, in the end, worse physically; and
in no small number the result is, and ever will be, utter physical
shipwreck on one of the many rocks, sharp, jagged-edged, which
beset the way, or on one of the banks of festering slime which no
care can possibly avoid. They are rocks which tear and rend the
unhappy being who is driven against them when he has yielded to the
tide of passion, they are banks which exhale a poison for which, no
true antidote exists."

In face of such testimony as this, well might Mr. George Russell, in an
address to young men, speak of "this exploded lie which has hitherto led
so many astray."

Turning now from knowledge to fact, we have only to look at the French
clergy to see that even in the extreme case of life-long celibacy it is
not injurious to health. I know, in taking this case, I am grating
somewhat harshly against Protestant prejudice. But the testimony that
Renan bears on this point is irrefutable. Himself a renegade priest, he
certainly would not have hesitated to expose the Order to which he had
once belonged, and vindicate his broken vows by the revelation of any
moral rottenness known within the walls of its seminaries. Far from
this, he bears the most emphatic testimony in his autobiography that
there is enough virtue in St. Sulpice alone to convert the world; and
owns so strong was the impress made on his own soul by his training as a
priest that personally he had lived a pure life, "although," he adds,
with an easy shrug of his shoulders, "it is very possible that the
libertine has the best of it!" Another renegade priest, also eminent in
literature, bears exactly the same testimony. Indeed, when we remember
the argus-eyed hatred with which the French priesthood is watched by the
anti-clerical party, and the few scandals that appear in the public
prints only too anxious to give publicity to them, this unimpeachable
testimony is borne out by fact. I believe this testimony to be equally
true of the English and Irish Roman Catholic clergy. Yet few would
dispute the vigor of the physique of the Roman Catholic priests, or
their capacity for hard and often exhausting work.

Let me, however, guard myself from misapprehe