There are encouraging signs in the present day that such a source of hopeful practical reform will become possible, and that men and women of large experience are rising into that reverential recognition of the Creative Power entrusted to the human race, which will enable them to consult together, and thus gain the wisdom necessary for practical action.
The awful aberrations of our sexual nature, which produce such profound social disorder and exercise such degrading influence on the relations of men and women, result from ignorance of physiological laws and the adaptation of human physical structure to the maintenance of those laws.
It is through the recognition of these facts by the medical profession, and their instruction of parents in the truths of physiology, that the most powerful impetus to human growth may now be given. The medical profession can prove, through its knowledge of the physical and mental structure of the human race, that the great Christian doctrine of one equal standard of morality for our race is true doctrine based upon our human constitution.
Our noble profession is summoned to a mighty warfare in the present deadly strife between good and evil. If as Christian physicians, believing in a beneficent Creative Power, and imbued with the spirit of the Master, they recognise the Divine unity manifested through the compound nature of all life, they will become the vanguard of that growing army of truth which seeks to know and obey Divine law.
APPENDIX I. (Page 24)
Human procreation possesses a double relation—viz., first, a relation to the race; and, second, a relation to the individual. In the former character, as the inevitable method of continuing the race, it is a great providential law whose mysteries we by no means comprehend, and which is placed quite beyond the control of the human will; but in the latter, the exercise of this great power of procreation possesses the distinctive mark of self-control, and as an individual act our power and responsibility are great. In this important subject of procreation, no one can speak with scientific precision and lay down absolute rules respecting its complete method of action. It has been wisely said by one of the most skilful and experienced French physicians:[6] ‘No opinions put forth reconcile all facts. We are obliged to confess that there is a mystery in this subject, that our most ingenious theories fail to enlighten.’
In considering this subject in its relation to the individual, the beneficent educational uses of parentage to the individual must be realized, and the irreparable loss that human society would sustain from the absence or serious diminution of the parental relation. Parentage is the most potent and persistent civilizer and educator of our race. There is no other influence that will compare with the deep-seated and unique power of parentage in breaking down the narrow, unsocial barrier of exclusive individual selfishness. Much has always been said and written about maternal love, but there is a very deep significance in the persistence with which the Hebrew Scriptures exalt the power, the supreme beneficence of fatherhood; and there is a profound reason why universal Christendom is taught to address, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’ It is a special lesson to men. The mother, by the inevitable facts of her nature, when that nature is not corrupted, is moulded into tenderness and providential watchfulness over the weak and helpless; her nature is a harmonious whole, and, as a beneficent general rule, all women are potential mothers. But Nature does not so inevitably educate men. It is only when his first-born child is laid in his arms that the man awakens fully to the wonder and infinite tenderness of paternity. The character of the childless woman does not suffer from the absence of that beneficent discipline and development which come from parentage as does the character of the man. It is very instructive to observe how unmarried or childless women replace by adoptions or by pets their unexercised natural affections.
Any failure to realize the Divine purpose in this joining together of cause and effect amongst the mass of mankind, any efforts which tend to diminish respect for the parental relation and destroy the perception of its essential sacredness, must be disastrous to the welfare of a nation.
The educational influence of parentage as a fundamental fact in human progress must be borne in mind with all the reverence which is due to it, when we seek to remedy the hideous perversions of natural sentiment, which we find in our unhuman slums. It is not by destroying parentage, but by teaching its responsibilities and by restoring its educational influence upon the adult, that we must hope for progress.
In seeking to bring into the freedom of humanity, not only the swarms of poor fellow-creatures sweltering in city slums, but all classes of human beings struggling in the slough of unrestrained lust, we must reverently study Nature’s laws as they are gradually discovered in relation to parentage, by which the Creator gradually develops even the lowest forms of mankind through parentage.