1-4G STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



• WHAT CONSTITUTES PERSONAL PURITY. 



People ha^e ticcepted it as the proper uioial code for the unmarried 

 woman, and possibly for tlie unmarried man^ but custom has sanctioned 

 in marriage what G.od pronounces wrong — the prostitution of the most 

 divine powers conferred upon the children of men, and the eternal laws 

 of the universe cry out against it. 



To man they say: The old doctrine of physical necessity, with its 

 appalling sacrifice of womanhood, is a libel on the Creator; the forces 

 wasted in gratification in marriage or out of it, if conserved in the system 

 will build the finest body and brain power; the person of woman is for- 

 ever her own; this law trampled under foot by unenlightened passion has 

 visited an appalling heritage of woe upon the race. 



To woman the eternal laws of God say: Though you have the leader- 

 ship of great-hearted men who are bringing the influence of their best 

 manhood and the truths of science to your aid, yet the great work of 

 redeeming the world from this weight of woe and ignorance is yours. 



*'But, oh, tell me the way out and teach me my duty," says the mother- 

 heart of the world, and that cry is a call to enlightened and love- 

 guided womanhood to shed wide and broadcast the larger light which 

 illumines their way. 



Light, and love and loyalty to God and loved ones must be the motto 

 of any woman who would know her duty. The cry is for light. As Hugo 

 says, "The only social peril is darkness." Light alone will dispel the 

 darkness. And light will yet prevail. Deep down in every human heart 

 is the imstge of God. 



"So, underneath this cloud of sin, 

 The heart of man retaineth yet 

 Gleams of its holy origin, 

 And half-quenched stars that never set." 



THIS IS THE HOPE OF THE RACE. 



We can hold fast to that. "If the vile sand which you trample under 

 foot be cast into the furnace and allowed to melt and seethe," says Victor 

 Hugo, "it will become a splendid crystal." This is another way of say- 

 ing that evil bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and out 

 :of ithe mire and grime of perverted good, which all sin is, tried in a 

 furnace of pain and uuhappiness, shall yet come to the race the splendid 

 crystal of personal purity and consecrated parentage. 



As I have said, the great bulk of the work must fall upon woman. And 

 she must begin with herself. The first great step is to come to the right 

 mental attitude upon this subject. If one has lived under the shadow 

 of the old thought, as most of us have, it will be the work of months, 

 perhaps years, do the best we know, to eradicate the old thought-taint 

 which these years of ignorance of God's fixed and eternal laws have en- 

 tailed upon us. When the right attitude of mind has really come we 

 will know, and be sure it has not come until we have a deep and abiding 

 sense of the essential sacredness of the reproductive functions in man 

 and woman, till we see God himself in reproduction. 



When this mental state is reached the hardest part of the work is 

 done, and the forces of the universe are in league with us. Let me illus- 

 trate: Take a tuning fork in each hand. Strike one. If they are tuned 



