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. 8. OUTRAGEOUS VIOLATION OF ALL LAW.--The violation of all law, both natural and revealed, is the cool and villainous contract by which people entering into the marital relation engage in defiance of the laws of God and the laws of the commonwealth, that they shall be unincumbered with a family of children. "Disguise the matter as you will," says Dr. Pomeroy, "yet the fact remains that the first and {257} specific object of marriage is the rearing of a family." "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth," is God's first word to Adam after his creation. 9. THE NATIONAL SIN.--The prevention of offspring is preeminently the sin of America. It is fast becoming the national sin of America, and if it is not checked, it will sooner or later be an irremediable calamity. The sin has its roots in a low and perverted idea of marriage, and is fostered by false standards of modesty. 10. THE SIN OF HEROD.--Do these same white-walled sepulchres of hell know that they are committing the damning sin of Herod in the slaughter of the innocents, and are accessories before the fact to the crime of murder? Do women in all circles of society, when practicing these terrible crimes realize the real danger? Do they understand that it is undermining their health, and their constitution, and that their destiny, if persisted in, is a premature grave just as sure as the sun rises in the heavens? Let all beware, and let the first and only purpose be, to live a life guiltless before God and man.