alone would make me an enthusiastic prohibitionist. We have tried life
on the present terms and it has beaten us. We have allowed the common
sale of a drug that is the proved enemy of our best life. It has
damaged us physically, industrially, and financially. But its most
deadly damage has been done in connection with our sexual life. It not
only misleads the unmarried, but in many homes it is daily destroying
all possibility of married happiness. No doubt the difficulties of
temperance reform are very great. But the real cause of the delay of
effective reform is want of will in the community as a whole. I cannot
but think that if the deadly and intimate connection between drink and
sexual vice were realized, the will to effective reform might appear
among us.

When I consider all the forces which I have thus briefly reviewed, and
remember that behind them there is the power of a central and universal
human instinct, I no longer wonder that sexual follies abound in our
country, and that we have not yet solved the problem of purity. What I
do wonder at is that there are hundreds of thousands of young men and
women who, in spite of all these facts, insist on living clean and pure
lives. There is something in human nature that fights very hard for the
true way of life. Boys and girls with bad hereditary influences to
hamper them, and brought up in very unfavorable surroundings, do yet
constantly refuse to succumb. Even those who have made mistakes
constantly refuse to be beaten, and hold on tenaciously to the narrow
way. Though the modern world has been deluged with novels written to
display sexual irregularities in a romantic light, and to express
contempt for Christian moral standards, and though no doubt thousands
have been misled, it remains true that surprisingly large numbers
refuse to be befooled in such ways. I believe the reason is that,
strong as mere physical desire may be, love is a stronger thing still.