ified. The emphatic words of Scripture
are true in this respect also, "The people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge."

2. LIVING ILLUSTRATIONS.--Without fear of truthful contradiction we affirm
that the homes, public assemblies, and streets of all our large cities
abound to-day with living illustrations and proofs of the widespread
existence of this physical and moral scourge. An enervated and stunted
manhood, a badly developed physique, a marked absence of manly and womanly
strength and beauty, are painfully common everywhere. Boys and girls, young
men and women, exist by thousands, of whom it may be said, they were badly
born and ill-developed. Many of these are, to some extent, bearing the
penalty of the sins and excesses of their parents, especially their
fathers, whilst the great majority are reaping the fruits of their own
immorality in a dwarfed and ill-formed body, and effeminate appearance,
weak and enervated mind. {417}

3. EFFEMINATE AND SICKLY YOUNG MEN.--The purposeless and aimless life of
any number of effeminate and sickly young men, is to be distinctly
attributed to these sins. The large class of mentally impotent
"ne'er-do-wells" are being constantly recruited and added to by those who
practice what the celebrated Erichson calls "that hideous sin engendered by
vice, and practiced in solitude"--the sin, be it observed, which is the
common cause of physical and mental weakness, and of the fearfully
impoverishing night-emissions, or as they are commonly called,
"wet-dreams."

4. WEAKNESS, DISEASE, DEFORMITY, AND DEATH.--Through self-pollution and
fornication the land is being corrupted with weakness, disease, deformity,
and death. We regret to say that we cannot speak with confidence concerning
the moral character of the Jew; but we have people amongst us who have
deservedly a high character for the tone of their moral life--we refer to
the members of the Society of Friends. The average of life amongst these
reaches no less than fifty-six years; and, whilst some allowance must be
made for the fact that amongst the Friends the poor have not a large
representation, these figures show conclusively the soundness of this
position,

5. SOWING THEIR WILD OATS.--It is monstrous to suppose that healthy
children should die just as they are coming to manhood. The fact that
thousands of young people do reach the age of sixteen or eighteen, and then
decline and die, should arouse parents to ask the question: Why?