6.  PREVENTION.—­Practice the laws of sexual abstinence, take frequent sitz-baths, live on oatmeal, graham bread, and other nourishing diet.  Avoid highly seasoned food, rich gravies, late suppers and the like.

[Illustration]

[Illustration:  AN INDIAN FAMILY.  THE SAVAGE INDIAN TEACHES US LESSONS OF CIVILIZATION.]

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THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS.

1.  MANY CAUSES.—­Many causes have operated to produce a corruption of the public morals so deplorable; prominent among which may be mentioned the facility with which divorces may be obtained in some of the States, the constant promulgation of false ideas of marriage and its duties by means of books, lectures, etc., and the distribution through the mails of impure publications.  But an influence not less powerful than any of these is the growing devotion of fashion and luxury of this age, and the idea which practically obtains to so great an extent that pleasure, instead of the health or morals, is the great object of life.

2.  A MONSTROUS CRIME.—­The abiding interest we feel in the preservation of the morals of our country, constrains us to raise our voice against the daily increasing practice of infanticide, especially before birth.  The notoriety that monstrous crime has obtained of late, and the hecatombs of infants that are annually sacrificed to Moloch, to gratify an unlawful passion, are a sufficient justification for our alluding to a painful and delicate subject, which should “not even be named,” only to correct and admonish the wrong-doers.

3.  LOCALITIES IN WHICH IT IS MOST PREVALENT.—­We may observe that the crying sin of infanticide is most prevalent In those localities where the system of moral education has been longest neglected.  This inhuman crime might be compared to the murder of the innocents, except that the criminals, in this case, exceed in enormity the cruelty of Herod.

4.  SHEDDING INNOCENT BLOOD.—­If it is a sin to take away the life even of an enemy; if the crime of shedding innocent blood cries to heaven for vengeance; in what language can we characterize the double guilt of those whose souls are stained with the innocent blood of their own unborn, unregenerated offspring?

5.  THE GREATNESS OF THE CRIME.—­The murder of an infant before its birth, is, in the sight of God and the law, as great a crime as the killing of a child after birth.

6.  LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY.—­Every State of the Union has made this offense one of the most serious crimes.  The law has no mercy for the offenders that violate the sacred law of human life.  It is murder of the most cowardly character and woe to him who brings this curse upon his head, to haunt him all the days of his or her life, and to curse him at the day of his death.

7.  THE PRODUCT OF LUST.—­Lust pure and simple.  The only difference between a marriage of this character and prostitution is, that society, rotten to its heart, pulpits afraid to cry aloud against crime and vice, and the church conformed to the world, have made such a profanation of marriage respectable.  To put it in other words, when two people determine to live together as husband and wife, and evade the consequences and responsibilities of marriage, they are simply engaged in prostitution without the infamy which attaches to that vice and crime.