Application of the Law of Heredity.-A moment’s consideration of the physiology of heredity will disclose a sufficient reason why marriage should be d… - John Harvey Kellogg

Disparity of Age.-Both nature and custom seem to indicate that the husband should be a little older than the wife. Several reasons might be given for this; but we need not mention them. When, however, the difference of ages reaches such an extreme as thirty, forty, even fifty or more years, nature is abused, good taste is offended, and even morality is shocked Such ill-sorted alliances are disastrous to both parties, and scarcely more to one than the other. An old man who forms a union with a young girl scarce out of her teens-or even younger-can scarcely have any very elevated motive for his action, and he certainly exposes himself to the greatest risk of sudden death, while insuring his premature decay. A king once characterized such a course as “the pleasantest form of suicide.” It is doubtless suicidal, but we suspect there are some phases of such an unnatural union which are not very enjoyable. One reason of the great danger of such marriages to the old is the exhaustive effects of the sexual act. As previously noted, in some animals it causes immediate death. Dr. Acton makes the following pertinent remarks:- “So serious, indeed, is the paroxysm of the nervous system produced by the sexual spasm, that its immediate effect is not always unattended with danger, and men with weak hearts have died in the act. Every now and then we learn that men are found dead on the night of their wedding.” “However exceptional these cases are, they are warnings, and should serve to show that an act which “may” destroy the weak should not be tampered with, even by the strong.” “There are old men who marry young wives, who pay the penalty by becoming martyrs to paralysis, softening of the brain, and driveling idiocy.”

Testimony of a French Physician.-A French author of considerable note, remarks on the same subject:-
Nothing costs the economy so much as the production of semen and its forced ejaculation. It has been calculated that an ounce of semen was equivalent to forty ounces of blood. . . . Semen is the essence of the whole individual. Hence, Fernel has said, “Totus homo semen est.’ It is the balm of life. . . . That which gives life is intended for its preservation.”

Masculine purity loves to regard women as chaste in mind as well as in body, to surround her with conceptions of purity and impregnable virtue; but the conclusion is irresistible that those who can gloat over others’ lapses from virtue, and find delight in such questionable entertainments as the most recent case of seduction, or the newest scandal, have need to purify their hearts and re-enforce their waning chastity.