ance, and
who are to-day suffering the result of these vicious practices,
the policy of silence stands condemned, and intelligent knowledge
abundantly justified. The emphatic words of scripture are true in this
respect also, "the people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."

2. LIVING ILLUSTRATION.--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 them are, to some extent, bearing the penalty of the [transcriber's
note: the text appears to read "sins" but it is unclear] 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.

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 hea