“Here, then,” says Acton, “is our problem: A natural instinct, a great longing, has arisen in a boy’s heart, together with the appearance of the powers requisite to gratify it. Everything, the habits of the world, the keen appetite of youth for all that is new, the example of companions, the pride of health and strength, opportunity, all combine to urge him to give the rein to what seems a natural propensity. The boy does not know that to his immature frame every sexual indulgence is unmitigated evil. He does not think that to his inexperienced mind and heart every illicit pleasure is a degradation, to be bitterly regretted hereafter; a link in a chain that does not need many to be too strong to break.”[12] The only answer to this problem is for the boy to learn to possess his soul in patience, and through example and advice, and earnest, prayerful effort, to compel his own self-control, till he attains that full and complete development of all his powers that distinguishes the man. How small the proportion of all my readers who can lay their hands upon their hearts and say, with perfect truthfulness, that up to the time of reaching their majority they had never, for the sake of selfish or illicit gratification, been guilty of any offence against purity!
With these reflections, which are not of a character to make us particularly self-confident or vainglorious, I approach the second chapter of my task.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Why Not? A Book for Every Woman. Lee & Shepard, Boston.
[6] Dr. Thomas W. Blatchford, of Troy, N. Y., died on the 7th of January, 1866. One of the oldest and most influential members of the American Medical Association, he was beloved by all who knew him.
[7] Hints to Young Men on the True Relation of the Sexes. Boston, 1850.
[8] Discourses, &c., pp. 87, 88.
[9] Moral Education, p. 140.
[10] Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, p. 38.
[11] Yeast, p. 3.