How terrible it is to think of punishment falling on the innocent head of a child! and how evident it is that our present life is not everything, but that it has a continuation, when we shall reap the true rewards or the true punishments of our existence. The choice lies to a great extent in our own hands. Shall we have a beautiful, healthy, prolific son, or a deformed, unhealthy, barren son, incapable of loving and understanding us? The hygiene of generation is the most important part of moral hygiene. If the salvation of the individual life can only be obtained by caring for the hygienic life of the whole of humanity, it is only by rigorously following the laws of health and the laws of life that the salvation of the species can be obtained. Alcoholism, all poisons, overwork, constitutional maladies, dissipation of nervous force, vice, and idleness, are all _causes_ of degeneration. It was science which went on preaching these things for the salvation of mankind, and by these means propagating virtue. But above all, it inculcated the great principle of "pardon," which hitherto had been one of the mysteries of religious morality. A few years ago, no one, however pitiful and generous, could have looked upon the delinquent with the same justice and pity as science has done. It has pointed out that we are _all_ responsible for this victim of social causes, that we must all accuse ourselves of the sins committed by the inferior individual, and exert ourselves for his regeneration by all the means in our power. It was only the saints who had an intuition of this truth, when they offered their merits for all men in common and accepted responsibility for the offenses of all. "You will hold yourselves accountable," said St. John Chrysostom, "not only for your own salvation, but for universal salvation; he who prays must take upon himself the burden of the interests of the whole human race."