disease or suicide, or is lost to the world and to all joys and friends
behind the doors of an insane asylum.

He died of no disease known to medical science. He simply faded
away--weaker, more nerveless and hopeless day by day; he faded away
until, almost before any one knew it, the grave yawned to receive him.
Poor, miserable, hopeless wreck--poor suicide, for his own sin and crime
were the real causes of his death.

How many such there are at the present day. We meet them on the street,
in business and at church. Our insane asylums are full of them. We
find their wives unfaithful or unhappy; and their offspring--when they
are cursed with any--poor, miserable, weak fledgelings, with aged,
wasted faces, water on the brain, with rickets and softening of the
bones--idiots or imbeciles--dying early and scarcely regretted even
by the parent whose progeny they are, for every wail of the little
suffering voice pierced his heart and reminded him of his lustful sin,
and passionate, inexcusable indulgence that caused all this misery.

"And the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children,
even to the third and fourth generations."

Alas, how true! how indisputable! The imperative Laws of Nature once
broken, the consequences are _inevitable_.

Of late years it has become the fashion amongst certain men to scoff
at this terrible vice of secret indulgence, and to claim that its
evil effects are overrated, are portrayed too vividly. Ask some poor
unfortunate whose confidence you may succeed in gaining, and listen to
the pitiful tale of lost health and vitality he will tell you. Mark well