=How a teacher failed.=--A few months ago I lectured in a city where immorality was appalling. The superintendent of schools called into the chapel about six hundred boys, from ten to eighteen, and attempted to lecture them on social purity. He soon became embarrassed, used some street terms, excited lascivious thoughts, looks, smiles and laughter among the boys and utterly failed in his efforts. If this lawyer and teacher failed with the advantages and solicitude they must have had, would not the great mass of parents, teachers and ministers fail for the same reasons. =Parents not wholly responsible.=--A few editors, doctors and reformers have censured parents severely for not teaching their children the truth on these subjects. They should remember that ten years ago a very few parents had read a sane book or listened to an intelligent lecture on these subjects. Their only information had been gained from the playground and street on the sly. Courses of lectures, adapted to age and sex, should be given in every community. Ministers, teachers, physicians, merchants, parents, young and old, educated and uneducated, all should hear them. A few standard books on sex-hygiene and social purity should be put in every home. Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” More people are in physical, mental and moral slavery because of ignorance concerning the laws of sex, than all other causes combined. It follows that those who have learned the truth should impart it to those who have it not. =How children have been treated in the past.=--We have seen how parents have been led in the past to conclude that all information as to the origin of life is injurious to a child. For a child to inquire, “Where was I before I was born? How did I get into this world?” was a sure sign of his depravity. As a result of these traditionary ideas some parents have slapped a child for asking about his origin. Still, others have scolded and ordered the child from the room, commanding him never to ask such ugly questions again. What must be the feelings of a child treated in such an unappreciative and heartless way! Such treatment has never satisfied the inquiring mind of any child. Under such treatment a child will go off alone, pained and puzzled to know what was wrong in that simple, natural, honest question. In most cases the child’s question has been evaded by some one of a hundred falsehoods about “swamps,” “sinkholes,” “hollow logs and stumps,” “bird nests,” “storks,” “old women,” “doctor’s satchel,” and “under a cabbage head.” When only a small boy, I was called from my bed early one spring morning to see a beautiful colt the mare had found. For awhile I looked at the colt with admiration and wonder. Then I very naturally inquired, “Where did the mare find her colt?” I was told that she found it in a nearby brush pile. For the next six months no brush pile escaped my eager eyes.