A Solemn Appeal

EFFECTS OF UNCHASTITY UPON THE BODY

“Sexual desire, cherished by the mind, and dwelt upon by the imagination, not only increases the excitability and peculiar sensibility of the genital organs themselves; but always throws an influence equal to the intensity of the affection, over the whole nervous domain; disturbing all the functions depending on them for vital energy, which is thereby increased upon, or distracted from, them - and if this excitement is frequently repeated or long continued, it inevitably induces an increased degree of irritability and debility and relaxation generally, throughout the whole nervous and muscular tissues, and especially the nerves of organic life. And hence, those lascivious DAY-DREAMS and amorous reveries, in which young people - and especially the idle and the voluptuous, and the sedentary and the nervous - are exceedingly apt to indulge, are often the sources of general debility, effeminacy, disordered functions, and premature disease, and even premature death, without the actual exercise of the general organs! Indeed, this unchastity of thought - this adultery of the mind - is the beginning of immeasurable evil to the human family.” - Graham’s Lectures to Young Men, p. 57. SOAP 9.2