Long engagements.—Such engagements are seldom necessary and rarely advisable. Don’t be in a hurry. The first chance may not be the best one. Study her and her family well. Your children’s rights should be respected; choose for them a good mother. A young man should never trifle with his affections or the affections of young women by numerous engagements. This is a serious matter. The affectional nature can be trifled with until it cannot be relied upon.
Certain rights not yours.—After you are satisfied with the choice you have made, the important question been asked, a favorable answer received, and the engagement has been effected with the approval of both families, remember that there are privileges that are not yours until the legal phase of marriage has completed your oneness. Any violation of chastity before marriage is a sin against society, weakens self-respect, causes a loss of confidence in each other, and often leads to domestic discord in the future.
When you call.—After the engagement is made you will want to be with your betrothed much of the time. When together have something sensible to talk about. It is a good thing for lovers to read interesting stories to each other. While sentiment and the occasional repetition of the avowal of marriage will add interest to these calls yet this can be over-done and becomes very monotonous. Be frank, sincere, versatile and entertaining, but be discreet.
The nuptial night.—In relation to the nuptial night there is some very delicate and vital information every engaged young man should possess. The primary purpose of marriage is reproduction. Marriage is said to be “Consummated in the first act of cohabitation.” In Greece it was a custom for three days to intervene between the marriage ceremony and the “consummation of marriage.” This was a very wise custom. The bride is usually nervous, exhausted and excited over the occasion. However much she may love her husband, he is yet to her a stranger. This nuptial night should be a night of sweetest, tenderest courtship. The bride should be promptly assured that she will be protected by her lover and that no sexual demand will be made until she extends the invitation. You have often noticed reports in the daily papers of the young bride deserting her husband a day or two after marriage, or committing suicide. Their husbands were ignorant, low and brutal, in almost every case. A young man should understand that his bride is not in a condition of body and mind to meet the sudden change which the marital relation brings.
The considerate young husband.—If a young husband is considerate, awaits his wife’s invitation, practices self-control and moderation for the first few weeks of marriage, his wife will be spared much anxiety, nervousness, and possibly diseases of the genital organs and an invalid condition for life.
If an engaged young man is informed, sensible and pure, and his bride possesses these qualities, there would be nothing indiscreet, unmanly, or even unchristian for him to assure his betrothed that she need have no fear in approaching the nuptial night.
CHAPTER XL
MANHOOD WRECKED AND REGAINED
Few perfect men.—When we study man in his relation to the world about him, in relation to his physical, mental and moral possibilities, we get a glimpse of what nature and his Creator planned for him to be. In sacred and profane history, on the farm and in the shop, behind the counter and at the bar; in Congress and in Senate, on the platform and in the pulpit; we find some splendid examples of ideal manhood. But look at humanity in the mass. How few perfect men do you find in a community! Look at the enervated and stunted fathers, the nervous and sickly mothers, the puny and weak children, the poorly developed babies and dwarfed minds, the crowded reformatories, penitentiaries and asylums. Why are sixty-seven per cent. of the children defective at birth? Why the aimless, shiftless, purposeless, ne’er-do-well men? Why so much of deteriorated manhood? The causes are many. Many people are ignorant of the most common laws of health. Many live in unappeased hunger and some are improperly fed. Whisky, tobacco, opium and morphine are all doing their part in wrecking manhood. But the most prolific cause of blighted manhood is the sin of sensuality. It is fully equal to all other causes combined. One state health board asserts that if all men understood the laws of sex and kept them, there would not be the need of one doctor in ten that we now have. This indicates the injurious physical effects of this sin.
Wrecked minds.—An eminent doctor of France claims that the insanity of eighty-two per cent. of all the females and seventy-eight per cent. of all the males in the asylums of that nation involves their sexual mechanism, function, or both, and that early sex instruction would have wholly precluded much of it and postponed the mental break much later in life in many other cases. This indicates the mental effects of this sin.
Kept from Christ.—More people are kept from Christ and more fail to live the Christian life because of their sex problem than because of all other problems put together. This indicates the moral effects of this sin.