Dear Patty,
When I had put things straight after I got home last night, and could sit down quietly and think over our strange conversation, my heart sank within me. I was so hurried for fear of being late for the coach, while we were talking, and so grieved and surprised by what you told me, that I could not, there and then, go much beyond the sad news itself. Dear heart! what sorrow and shame in a decent family! And so nice a girl too, as your cousin seemed. Her father will scarce ever lift up his head after it, to say nothing of a poor child brought into the world with a stain on its birth, and without a right to a father’s care; both mother and child a reproach to each other.
But after all, it is not so much that, as what you said along of it that has gone so sorely against my heart. Why, my dear child, where have you heard such things? Whoever it is that has put them into your head has some bad design upon you, you may be quite sure. If it be a man, be he who he will, he means you harm. Man or woman, they are no decent body’s thoughts, at any rate. Only following nature, indeed! You did not think that was an excuse when the servant girl took your ribbon, for all it was nature enough in her to like a bit of finery. What! and are we to liken ourselves to the beasts that perish? I don’t know whether it is most wicked or most foolish to make a pretence that their ways can ever be a guide to us. It is setting the ass to drive the man, for sure, if we are to learn from them. Has not God made man quite different from the brutes? Has not He made him in His own image, and given him laws to keep, and reason and conscience to guide him in keeping them? The commonest things of every day shew us on what a different footing we reckon ourselves. We do not punish the animal that breaks through our fence and eats our hay-grass, for it has had no laws given to it, and has no knowledge of right or wrong; but we deal very differently with the man who watches his opportunity, and takes the meal out of our bin.
And as to pretending that there can be no great harm in a sin because it is common, no honest mind can be deceived by so plain a falsity. Heaven knows thieving is common enough, cheating and lying are common enough, drunkenness, swearing and housebreaking are common enough; but no one goes so far us to pretend that these are not wrong on that account. Why, child, there would not need to be all this hiding, and shame, and even child-murder, if every one did not know quite well in their own hearts that the thing was a sore evil, sin and disgrace. Never lend an ear on the devil’s side, above all on this subject. It does not do for any woman to dally and balance between right and wrong on such slippery ground. If she does, she is sure to lose her footing. The only safety is in the straight open road of right. Keep to it, and never play and trifle with the first leadings to evil ways. No one can forecast what misery one heedless step in these slippery bye-paths may bring after it. What do you, or what does any decent young girl know about the hidden dangers, and pit-falls, and the vice, and the wretchedness that make old hearts sorrowful to think of?
The subject is a painful one; but it is much too serious and weighty to slur over because it is awkward to speak upon it. Such truths as these should be solemnly laid before the young, for they need to hear them above others; and since in this your father cannot so well talk quite plainly to you, it is for your aunt, who loves you as a mother, to take a mother’s place. Mark what I say—there is a deal of difference between man and woman in this matter. Though they sin together, the woman sinks by far the lowest. How God will judge hereafter between the two, I am not now going to ask; but in this world the shame and loss come much heavier upon the woman. Modesty is, above all else, a woman’s virtue, and the loss of it is a terrible blot, which lays her open to the contempt of all, even of the very man who robs her of it. I have heard tell that it was said by a very knowing man, who wrote a great many wise things long ago, “When a woman gives herself up to a man, and goes the whole length with him, it binds her closer to him, but it cures the man.” This was said by a French writer more than a hundred years ago, and that only shows the more plainly that it is a truth of all times, and all countries. And look if it is not so. Do not we see in a hundred cases, up and down, that the man leaves the woman in her disgrace, and cares no more about her?
Patty, my lass, hear a plain word from your old aunt. If a woman is the first to come forward, or is over ready to follow on the first beckoning, a man knows pretty well that he need not put himself out of the way to marry her in order to have her; and if he is unprincipled or thoughtless, he will take advantage of her weakness, and sin and shame will follow, as sure as night follows evening. My child, take a good counsel from one that loves you. If any man, let him be who he will, follows after you, and you care for him ever so much, aye, and trust him for meaning to make you his wife ever so surely, keep him in his right place, and do not let him go one step beyond what is decent. He will respect you the more, and his love will be the deeper and the truer in the end. Mind this—if you show yourself willing to go half way with him, he will never be the one to stop you. It rests with you to take care of yourself, and to help him too, to keep in the right road, so that you may both stand before God and man on your wedding-day, honest, and free from blame and shame.
But Patty, my dear, all this has not been much more than worldly wisdom, but we are bound to look beyond that, and to consider the solemn command of Almighty God to keep ourselves modest and pure in His sight as the servants of Christ. Some would say I had begun at the wrong end in speaking first of earthly shame and earthly credit; but I think that, may-be, young folks listen readiest when we do not begin too seriously with them. But, dear child, I could not with a good conscience end, without laying before you, with my heart’s prayer for God’s help, what His holy Word says about this grave sin of fornication and uncleanness.
In these days we seem to think we can make it lighter by giving it an easier name—speaking of the fornicator as “wild” or “gay,” and miscalling a woman’s shame “misfortune.” But let us hear what God’s word says. “Marriage is honourable in all.” “But fornication and all uncleanness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints.” “What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?”
The marriage law was given to man in the very beginning by God himself, who ordained it to be a sacred state, in which two should be as one flesh. Our blessed Saviour speaks of the wedded pair as “those whom God hath joined together.” What shall we say then of such as despise God’s ordinance, and set at defiance the restraint He has laid upon them, as though that was not needful which He has commanded? They who, in despite of His word, are as one flesh together without the holy bond of marriage, are wilful sinners against God, insulting His will, and defying the law which He has given and confirmed in Jesus Christ. And let none cheat themselves into thinking that if they manage to keep the sin secret, and to be free from the burden and shame of the birth of a child, there is any the less real harm in it. It is the foul blot of the unclean deed upon the soul, the stain before God, that is the evil to be dreaded most. That stain is the same whether it is kept hidden from the world or not, just as the lie is a sin on the soul, all the same, though it should never be found out.
Oh my dear child! when I think of the depths to which a woman may sink, a depth of infamy I do not dare to put before you in all its terrible plainness, I tremble to think of any young girl listening to the man or woman who would lead her to look upon this sin lightly. Turn your mind from the very thought of it. Shut your ears against it. Let it not once be named. Pray to God in your daily prayer, to hold you back from that temptation, to deliver you from that evil, to keep you by His Holy Spirit from impure desires and from occasion of falling; and ask Him for the purity of heart which will make you pure in living.