ss of this sort. For similar vices the wicked inhabitants of
Palestine were destroyed, and their lands given to the Hebrews. For
a single violation of the seventh commandment, one of the most notable
Bible characters, David, suffered to the day of his death. Those who
imagine that this sin is not a transgression of the seventh commandment
may be assured that this most heinous, revolting, and unnatural vice
is in every respect more pernicious, more debasing, and more immoral
than what is generally considered as violation of the commandment which
says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and is itself a most flagrant
violation of the same commandment.

Those who imagine that they "have a right to do as they please with
themselves," so long as no one else is immediately affected, must learn
that we are not our own masters; we belong to our Creator, and are
accountable to God not only for the manner in which we treat our
fellow-men, but for how we treat ourselves, for the manner in which
we use the bodies which he has given us. The man who commits suicide,
who takes his own life, is a murderer as much as he who kills a
fellow-man. So, also, he who pollutes himself in the manner we are
considering, violates the seventh commandment, although the crime is in
both cases committed against himself. Think of this, ye youth who defile
yourselves in secret and seek to escape the punishment of sin. In Heaven
a faithful record of your vile commandment-breaking is kept, and you
must meet it by-and-by. You are fixing your fate for eternity; and each
daily act in some degree determines what it shall be. Are you a victim
of this fascinating vice, stop, repent, reform, before you are forever
ruined, a mental, moral, and physical wreck.

Self-Murderers.--Of all the vices to which human beings are addicted,
no other so rapidly undermines the constitution and so certainly makes
a complete wreck of an individual as this, especially when the habit
is begun at an early age. It wastes the most precious part of the blood,
uses up the vital forces, and finally leaves the poor victim a most
utterly ruined and loathsome object. If a boy should be deprived of
both hands and feet and should lose his eyesight, he would still be
infinitely better off than the boy who for years gives himself up to
the gratification of lust in secret vice. For such a boy to become a
strong, vigorous man is just as impossible as it would be to make a
mammoth tree out of a cu