Searchlights on Health/Our Secret Sins
OUR SECRET SINS.
1. PASSIONS.—Every healthful man has sexual desires and he might as well refuse to satisfy his hunger as to deny their existence. The Creator has given us various appetites intended they should be indulged, and has provided the means.
2. REASON.—While it is true that a healthy man has strongly developed sexual passions, yet, God has crowned man with reason, and with a proper exercise of this wonderful faculty of the human mind no lascivious thoughts need to control the passions. A pure heart will develop pure thoughts and bring out a good life.
3. RIOTING IN VISIONS.—Dr. Lewis says: "Rioting in visions of nude women may exhaust one as much as an excess in actual intercourse. There are multitudes who would never spend the night with an abandoned female, but who rarely meet a young girl that their imaginations are not busy with her person. This species of indulgence is well-nigh universal; and it is the source of all other forms the fountain from which the external vices spring, and the nursery of masturbation."
4. COMMITTING ADULTERY IN THE HEART.—A young man who allows his mind to dwell upon the vision of nude women will soon become a victim of ruinous passion, and either fall under the influence of lewd women or resort to self-abuse. The man who has no control over his mind and allows impure thoughts to be associated with the name of every female that may be suggested to his mind, is but committing adultery in his heart, just as guilty at heart as though he had committed the deed.
5. UNCHASTITY.—So far as the record is preserved, unchastity has contributed above all other causes, more to the ruin and exhaustion and demoralization of the race than all other wickedness. And we shall not be likely to vanquish the monster, even in ourselves, unless we make the thoughts our point of attack. So long as they are sensual we are indulging in sexual abuse, and are almost sure, when temptation is presented, to commit the overt acts of sin. If we cannot succeed within, we may pray in vain for help to resist the tempter outwardly. A young man who will indulge in obscene language will be guilty of a worse deed if opportunity is offered.
6. BAD DRESSING.—If women knew how much mischief they do men they would change some of their habits of dress. The dress of their busts, the padding in different parts, are so contrived as to call away attention from the soul and fix it on the bosom and hips. And then, many, even educated women, are careful to avoid serious subjects in our presence one minute before a gentleman enters the room they may be engaged in thoughtful discussion, but the moment he appears their whole style changes; they assume light fascinating ways, laugh sweet little bits of laughs, and turn their heads this way and that, all which forbids serious thinking and gives men over to imagination.
7. THE LUSTFUL EYE.—How many men there are who lecherously stare at every woman in whose presence they happen to be. These monsters stare at women as though they were naked in a cage on exhibition. A man whose whole manner is full of animal passion is not worthy of the respect of refined women. They have no thoughts, no ideas, no sentiments, nothing to interest them but the bodies of women whom they behold. The moral character of young women has no significance or weight in their eyes. This kind of men are a curse to society and a danger to the community. No young lady is safe in their company.
8. REBUKING SENSUALISM.—If the young women would exercise an honorable independence and heap contempt upon the young men that allow their imagination to take such liberties, a different state of things would soon follow. Men of that type of character should have no recognition in the presence of ladies.
9. EARLY MARRIAGES.—There can be no doubt that early marriages are bad for both parties. For children of such a marriage always lack vitality. The ancient Germans did not marry until the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year, previous to which they observed the most rigid chastity, and in consequence they acquired a size and strength that excited the astonishment of Europe. The present incomparable vigor of that race, both physically and mentally, is due in a great measure to their long established aversion to marrying young. The results of too early marriages are in brief, stunted growth and impaired strength on the part of the male; delicate if not utterly bad health in the female; the premature old age or death of one or both, and a puny, sickly offspring.
10. SIGNS OF EXCESSES.—Dr. Dio Lewis says: "Some of the most common effects of sexual excess are backache, lassitude, giddiness, dimness of sight, noises in the ears, numbness of the fingers, and paralysis. The drain is universal, but the more sensitive organs and tissues suffer most. So the nervous system gives way and continues the principal sufferer throughout. A large part of the premature loss of sight and hearing, dizziness, numbness and pricking in the hands and feet, and other kindred developments, are justly chargeable to unbridled venery. Not unfrequently you see men whose head or back or nerve testifies of such reckless expenditure."
11. NON-COMPLETED INTERCOURSE.—Withdrawal before the emission occurs is injurious to both parties. The soiling of the conjugal bed by the shameful manoeuvres is to be deplored.
12. THE EXTENT OF THE PRACTICE.—One cannot tell to what extent this vice is practiced, except by observing its consequences, even among people who fear to commit the slightest sin, to such a degree is the public conscience perverted upon this point. Still, many husbands know that nature often renders nugatory the most subtle calculations, and reconquers the rights which they have striven to frustrate. No matter; they persevere none the less, and by the force of habit they poison the most blissful moments of life, with no surety of averting the result that they fear. So who knows if the too often feeble and weakened infants are not the fruit of these in themselves incomplete procreations, and disturbed by preoccupations foreign to the natural act.
13. HEALTH OF WOMEN.—Furthermore, the moral relations existing between the married couple undergo unfortunate changes; this affection, founded upon reciprocal esteem, is little by little effaced by the repetition of an act which pollutes the marriage bed. If the good harmony of families and the reciprocal relations are seriously menaced by the invasion of these detestable practices, the health of women, as we have already intimated, is fearfully injured.
14. CROWNING SIN OF THE AGE.—Then there is the crime of abortion which is so prevalent in these days. It is the crowning sin of the age, though in a broader sense it includes all those sins that are committed to limit the size of the family. "It lies at the root of our spiritual life," says Rev. B.D. Sinclair, "and though secret in its nature, paralyzes Christian life and neutralizes every effort for righteousness which the church puts forth."
15. SEXUAL EXHAUSTION.—Every sexual excitement is exhaustive in proportion to its intensity and continuance. If a man sits by the side of a woman, fondles and kisses her three or four hours, and allows his imagination to run riot with sexual visions, he will be five times as much exhausted as he would by the act culminating in emission. It is the sexual excitement more than the emission which exhausts. As shown in another part of this work, thoughts of sexual intimacies, long continued, lead to the worst effects. To a man, whose imagination is filled with erotic fancies the emission comes as a merciful interruption to the burning, harassing and wearing excitement which so constantly goads him.
16. THE DESIRE OF GOOD.—The desire of good for its own sake—this is Love. The desire of good for bodily pleasure—this is Lust. Man is a moral being, and as such should always act in the animal sphere according to the spiritual law. Hence, to break the law of the highest creative action for the mere gratification of animal instinct is to perform the act of sin and to produce the corruption of nature.
17. CAUSE OF PROSTITUTION.—Dr. Dio Lewis says: "Occasionally we meet a diseased female with excessive animal passion, but such a case is very rare. The average woman has so little sexual desire that if licentiousness depended upon her, uninfluenced by her desire to please man or secure his support, there would be very little sexual excess. Man is strong he has all the money and all the facilities for business and pleasure; and woman is not long in learning the road to his favor. Many prostitutes who take no pleasure in their unclean intimacies not only endure a disgusting life for the favor and means thus gained, but affect intense passion in their sexual contacts because they have learned that such exhibitions gratify men."
18. HUSBAND'S BRUTALITY.—Husbands! It is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness and disgusting selfishness of your conduct when you impose on them a maternity so detested as to drive them to the desperation of killing their unborn children and often themselves.
19. WHAT DRUNKARDS BEQUEATH TO THEIR OFFSPRING.—Organic imperfections unfit the brain for sane action, and habit confirms the insane condition; the man's brain has become unsound. Then comes in the law of hereditary descent, by which the brain of a man's children is fashioned after his own not as it was originally, but as it has become, in consequence of frequent functional disturbance. Hence, of all appetites, the inherited appetite for drunkenness is the most direful. Natural laws contemplate no exceptions, and sins against them are never pardoned.
20. THE REPORTS OF HOSPITALS.—The reports of hospitals for lunatics almost universally assign intemperance as one of the causes which predispose a man's offspring to insanity. This is even more strikingly manifested in the case of congenital idiocy. They come generally from a class of families which seem to have degenerated physically to a low degree. They are puny and sickly.
21. SECRET DISEASES.—See the weakly, sickly and diseased children who are born only to suffer and die, all because of the private disease of the father before his marriage. Oh, let the truth be told that the young men of our land may learn the lessons of purity of life. Let them learn that in morality there is perfect protection and happiness.