strength, that one is responsible in full for the weakness. The weak
and naughty in this matter are plain, ordinary sinners of a very sable
dye.

Theirs is not the view that God took of things when He purged the earth
with water and destroyed the five cities with fire. From Genesis to the
Apocalypse you will not find a weakness against which He inveighs so
strongly, and chastises so severely. He forbids and condemns every
deliberate yielding, every voluntary step taken over the threshold of
moral cleanness in thought, word, desire or action.

The gravity and malice of sin is not to be measured by the fancies,
opinions, theories or attitude of men. The first and only rule is the
will of God which is sufficiently clear to anyone who scans the sacred
pages whereon it is manifested. And the reason of His uncompromising
hostility to voluptuousness can be found in the intrinsic malice of the
evil. In man, as God created him, the soul is superior to the body, and
of its nature should rule and govern. Lust inverts this order, and the
flesh lords it over the spirit. The image of God is defiled, dragged in
the mire of filth and corruption, and robbed of its spiritual nature,
as far as the thing is possible. It becomes corporal, carnal, animal.
And thus the superior soul with its sublime faculties of intelligence
and will is made to obey under the tyranny of emancipated flesh, and
like the brute seeks only for things carnal.

It is impossible to say to what this vice will not lead, or to
enumerate the crimes that follow in its wake. The first and most
natural consequence is to create a distaste and aversion for prayer,
piety, devotion, religion and God; and this is God's most terrible
curse on the vice, for it puts beyond reach of the unfortunate sinner