opinion around them. Boys and young men are driven
into libertinage by the ridicule of their companions. Vice is
considered manly. They seek sensuality in an evil emulation, as they
learn to smoke, or gamble, or drink; and, later on, vanity has often
more to do with excess than the force of lust. Young men seduce girls
that they may boast of it. They keep mistresses because it is the
fashion. They exhaust themselves because they wish to give a high idea
of their manly powers. Even in marriage, women are injured and have
their health destroyed by yielding weakly, or from

A FALSE SENSE OF DUTY,

to a husband whose own motive is the desire to acquit himself manfully
in what he considers his marital duties. Men and women are, in
thousands of cases, wretched victims to what they imagine to be the
wants or expectations of each other. A man, ignorant of the nature of
women and the laws of the generative function, goes on in a process of
miserable exhaustion, to please his wife. She submits, sometimes in
pain, often in disgust, weariness, and weakness, to what she dare not,
from

LOVE OR FEAR,

refuse. Men have to know what is right and to will to be right. This
will is omnipotent. God helps those who have the will, who have even
the desire, to do right.

If the presence of those we fear or reverence, respect or love,
restrain us from sin and stimulate us to right action, faith in the
existence and presence of God and angels, and the spirits of the
departed, must have a more powerful and pervading influence. No one
who really believes in the existence of a Supreme Being, no one who is
strongly impressed with the reality of a spiritual life, can go on
doing what he knows to be wrong. A religious faith is therefore the
most powerful of all restraints from evil and incitement to good.

CHAPTER VII.

MARRIAGE.

WHAT IS MARRIAGE?

Marriage is in law the conjugal union of man with woman, and is the
only state in which cohabitation is considered proper and
irreprehensible. The marriage relation exists in all Christian
communities, and is considered the most solemn of contracts, and,
excepting in Protestant countries, it is regarded as a sacrament. In
some countries its celebration falls under the cognizance of
ecclesiastical courts only, but in the United States it is rega