CHAPTER XXIII

FATHER’S THIRD TALK--IMPERFECT BOYS BECOME IMPERFECT MEN

=Why some trees, kittens, calves, colts, do not become perfect.=--In the last chapter we found how perfect boys become perfect men. In this chapter we shall find why some boys do not become perfect men. If a crooked sprout is not made straight before it gets to be a young tree, it can never entirely outgrow the defect. If it received a wound before it grew to be a young tree, nature may heal the wound but the scar will indicate a weak place when it is grown. If the wound is a deep one, decay may follow and its life greatly shortened. If a kitten, calf or colt be starved or crippled while young, they will rarely outgrow these defects.

=Boys may injure themselves.=--There are many ways by which a boy may injure himself physically, mentally and morally and prevent perfection in his manhood. We have learned that when the mind is kept pure and no bad habits are formed, that the sexual life will gradually change a boy into a perfect man. Now we are to study the bad effects of wasting this energy. Why are there so many men with defective bodies? When we study the lower animals in their wild state, or when the domestic animals have been well kept by their owners, we find nearly all of them to be perfect. This is due to the fact that the lower animals have not violated the laws of sex. They do not waste their sexual energy.

=Many defective men.=--If you were to visit some of the insane asylums and look into the faces of from one to two thousand of the unfortunates, you would see some who do not possess a sign of intelligence. Many of them were born of parents who had violated these laws. Many are personally guilty and have brought on their own ruin. In the penitentiaries and hospitals we find that many are there because they have been guilty of the same wrongs. If many of these poor people had read the book you are reading, they would now be well and happy.

The following story is told by an author:

=Robbing a vine of its life.=--“When I was only a small boy, one lovely spring morning, I stepped up to a vigorous young grapevine, at the time the sap was rising and flowing out the branches to every bursting bud and cluster of blooms. I had watched my father bore holes in the sugar maple trees, a century old, and we would use the sap to make syrup and maple sugar. I did not know that this really injured the old trees and that tapping them when ten or twenty years old would have very seriously injured them. So, with my knife, I cut a hole in the vine some two feet from the ground. At once the sap flowed as freely as from an old sugar tree. I stood by proudly and watched the sap flow out. Soon a puddle of sap had formed at the foot of the vine and the ground became damp all around. An hour passed and still the sap flowed. I became frightened. I wondered whether, at that rate, the vine would not disappear after a while. With mud, made from the sap and soil, I tried to stop up the wound and stop the flow. Quickly the flowing sap dissolved the mud and washed it down. After repeated failures, I ran to the house and got some rags and strings and tried to stop the flow, but soon the rags would get damp and the sap flowed as before.

“I decided to leave the vine to its own fate. The next morning I ventured out to see what had occurred. The vine looked as it did the day before. I found that kind nature had formed a reddish substance and had filled the wound and stopped the flow. That day I cut another hole in the vine. Again the sap flowed but not so freely as the day before. Day after day I repeated this for ten days. Will you be surprised when I tell you that the buds never matured into full size leaves, the clusters of blooms never matured into large clusters of grapes, and that the vine did not live many years? I had robbed the vine of its very life.”

=Some boys and men sap their life.=--Now there is an act that is performed by many boys and men by which they waste the vital fluid from their bodies. This act soon becomes a habit. It has the same effect upon them that we found in the vine. Instead of their eyes glowing with luster, they become dull and sunken. Instead of their cheeks having the rosy look of youth and health the face becomes pale. Instead of offering a hearty warm handshake, it is lifeless and cold. Instead of muscles being hard and elastic, they are soft and weak. Instead of bright, alert minds, they are dull and listless. Instead of an elastic bearing and a straightforward step, there are the languid movements and the swaggering walk.

=Boys do not know that it will hurt them.=--Very early in life some boys learn to handle the sexual organs so as to produce a sense of pleasure. Not one in a hundred has been told that this habit will injure him. They have an idea that this will make them men. You will some day, if you have not already, hear boys boasting of committing this sin; or they will want to teach it to you. These poor ignorant fellows have not been taught that it is wrong and will injure them. They are to be pitied. They need a friend that will take them off, one at a time, and have a friendly talk with them. You may some time have a chance to give such advice. Where a boy will not take your advice, it is not safe to make him your companion.

=The habit is often commenced early.=--Many boys begin this habit before they are twelve, sometimes as early as five and six. They have watched young men and boys older than themselves. They do not know that the glands do not begin the secretion of this energy until after they are fourteen to fifteen. They try to follow the example of older boys. While there is no waste of sexual material, it injures the nerves and pollutes the mind and starts a habit that, unless stopped in the early teens, will be hard to break off from later. Usually when a boy gets to be fourteen his conscience begins to tell him that the habit is wrong. Fortunately, many boys quit at this age, some check themselves, others go recklessly on to their certain ruin. When a boy breaks from the habit at fourteen or fifteen, this new energy soon overcomes the bad effects of the habit. If he continues until he is a young man, eighteen or twenty, he will have a harder struggle to break from the habit, and it will require a longer period for nature to overcome the bad effects of the habit. Boys who go on through life practicing the habit never amount to much and in many cases shorten their lives.

=How to keep from the habit.=--I hope you have never formed the habit. It is not necessary to do so. It is far wiser never to commit the sin. If you will keep your hands off your sexual organs, refuse to let your mind entertain impure thoughts, your lips to speak vulgar words, your ears to listen to obscene stories, your eyes to look upon impure pictures, you can master your passions, be pure and clean.

=Some effects of the habit.=--Some of the effects of this sin are as follows: It injures the morals. The victim will take on a guilty look; may become irritable and cross; may avoid good company and seek the vile; may quit reading the Bible and going to church. This is one class. They are called bad boys. There is another class that are affected differently and would usually be called good boys. They are very modest, retiring fellows, rather shy of girls and would be shocked at immodest language. As the habit fastens itself more firmly, they become more sensitive, stay more alone, the presence of girls becomes more embarrassing to them, they become quite suspicious and feel that everybody knows of their guilt. In both of these cases, if the habit is continued, it will get the mastery of them and will be very difficult to quit. The latter class will feel gloomy and discouraged. They feel that everything is going wrong and that everybody is against them. This is due to the effect of the sin upon their nervous system. It is hard for them to dismiss this idea. This state of mind will unfit them for business of any kind. Unless they break from the sin and dismiss these gloomy feelings, they can’t hope to succeed.

=It injures the mind and morals.=--The boy who practices the secret sin will one day find that he is falling back in his classes. His memory is not as good as it once was. He cannot solve problems as easily as he once could. If a kind-hearted, wealthy man should offer to put all the young men in a town of ten thousand people through college and meet all their expenses, on the conditions that they study hard and stand their examinations, not half of them would accept his kindness. Why? They have wasted this energy and are without ambition. The young men who have been wise enough to live pure lives, have so much manly ambition that poverty will not keep them from graduating.

Many young men who die from consumption when from eighteen to thirty years old are victims of this sin. In a few cases the sin leads to epilepsy or insanity.

=It injures the sexual organs.=--The sexual organs become soft and flabby, when this sin is practiced much. Sometimes they do not develop properly. The most common effect of the habit is varicocele. This often occurs at the age of eighteen. The blood vessels in the scrotum become gorged with impure blood and feel like a mass of tangled cords. There will be felt a very unpleasant dragging pain in these cords and the left gland. Soon the left gland will waste away until it is no larger than in a small boy. Sometimes both glands become affected. Passion aroused by the mind and handling the organs, even when the habit is not practiced, will cause this disease.

There are other bad effects that do not occur until the boy is a man and it is not necessary to mention them here. You have learned enough for you to know that boys should not form the habit, and, if they have, they should break away from the habit at once.

=How to quit the habit.=--Where a boy has commenced the habit and desires to quit, there are some things he should know and do. The feeling of sexual desire, called passion, is caused almost entirely by the mind. As long as a boy can keep his mind on something else, he will not have these desires. He will need to avoid those things that lead the mind to think about these organs. Handling and looking at the organs direct the mind to them. Looking at the pictures of partly dressed girls, reading obscene books, talking vulgarly or entertaining impure thoughts will all cause passion. All these things must be carefully avoided. You can bring your will into play and become able to say and mean it, “I will never again commit the act.” But, best of all, God can help you and offers to do so. Go often to Him in prayer. Ask Him to purify your mind and heart and give you strength to live a pure life. Ask Him to help you to keep all His laws, to be a Christian and to become a perfect man.