Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1859-07-09

en- into an unspeakable pity. To think Of
youths bright hopes and precious innocence
of love of truth and purity-of honor
and manhood and womanhood--of genius
and talent--of all goodly gifts of person
and graces of mind--of all sweet affections
and aspirations gone downtown into the
abyss Of perdition--blotted out or spoiled
-ah, this is by awful eminence, the horror
of the world
Yet visions Of ruined men and women
are not uncommon. We walk out into the
world on some pleasant day, everything
fair and fresh around us, and, with health
in our blood and peace in our hearts, we
think how good and beautiful life is yet
we rarely walk far without meeting some
one to whom all its goodness and beauty
are lost We meet some wretch whose
haggard face aud feeble limbs and fetid
breath betray the victim of debauchery,
dying by his last foul disease. Behind him
walks the bloated form of one who has
surrendered his will to his appetite. His
bIoodshot, meaningless eyes and heavy,
staggering feet give index to the curse
which is upon him. We turn our ewes g.
way from him with a shudder, but only to
be greeted by sight that makes us still
more sad We meet form of beauty-a
woman-but the wanton grace of her step,
the artificial flush upon the cheek, the hoI-
low eye and brazen gaze, tell Of the pros
titution or loss Of that which seems to us
the one angelic element of the world. All
these are human wrecks-lost lives-men
and women who have surrendered all that
is best in them to that which is basest-
men and women who have turned their
backs upon God and heaven, gone down
into very hell of beaStlineSs. Whence
and why are these wrecks 2 Let us see.
In the Constitution of mana con-
stitution which associates spirit with mat
ter by marvellous marriage of organisms,
and intimately interchsnging sympathies,
and subtle interdepencies-the Creator has
so constructed the body that it shall con-
vey to the mind, for its comprehension, the
properties of material things. The prop.
critics and qualities are communicated by
and through the senses, and these senses
are so constituted as, in their exercise and
Office, to be affected by pleasure or by pain.
Chiefly the Office Of the senses is that of
conveying pleasure For the sense of smell,
the vital alchemy at work in the flowers
elaborates an infinite variety of perfumes
For the sense Of taste, the food is prepared
in meats and fruits and grains of infinite
variety of favors. The auditory sense is
regaled by birds and brooks, by instruments
which the cunning hand of man has made,
and by that greatest of all instruments the,
human voice. Light ministers to the pleas
ure of vision, reflected by the numberless
forms of beauty. In fact, there is no path
way that leads into the penetralia of our
natures, and gives passage to the compre-
hension of the good things of God, that
does uot absorb something of the divine
aroma of that which it bears. The pro-
cess of eating, by which we prepare for
the food necessary for our sup
port, is process Of pleasure. We do not
gorge our food like the anaconda, impelIed
by bald and beastly greed but its quail
tiles please our senses.
Now, so long as those senses are kept to
their appropriate ministry-always a sub
ordinate one, in that they deal entirely with
the qualities and properties of matter-so
long will it be we'll with the soul to which
they minister but whenever the soul turns
to them as the source of its highest pleas
ures, and seeks for the multiplication and
of those pleasures as the great
end of its life, then the whole being is pros
tituted, and absolute, unmxed evil is the
natural and inevitable result. There is no
law in the universe more certain in its op-
GRAFTON than that which Furnishes SenSuality.
The man who makes god of his belly
feels the result in an unwieldy, gouty frame
and stupid brain. The man who delights
in the intoxication of bis senses by the use
Of stimulants, wears them out, and poi
sons, even TO their death, both body and
soul. The man and the woman who seek,
by the qualification of desires unchastened
by love and unwarranted by law, to fich
from aheaven-ordained relation the delights
Of its hallowed commerce, and give them
selves up to this form of sensuality, never
fail to win themselves moral corruption or
nduration, and bodily imbecility and dis
ease. AT the gate Of this garden of sen.
sual pleasure the angel stands with his
sword of fame and no man enters unsmit-
ten of him. In the path of sensuality in
oil its multiplied forms God has placed bar
rierS mOuntain-higb, to stop men, L fright
en- them back from the certain degradation
aud destruction to which it leads. The
path to life is in the opposite direction.
have said thus much upon the philoso.
ply of the prostitution of the soul to sense
that | might the more readily reach the
convictions of generation which, active
as it is in intellectual and Christian devel-
opment, has stronger tendencies to sensual
ity than any of its predecessors in this
country. AS wealth increases in any coun-
try, the tendencies to sensuality, through
the temptations of idleness and the growth
OF the means of qualification, always in-
crease. The history of national decline
downfall is but a detail of the effects of
sensuality. The elevation of style iu liv-
ing beyond certain point, always imping-
es on the sensual. Beyond this point, that
which we call luxury commences, aud lux.
ury is but sensuality refined. In this coun-
try, we are all seeking for luxury and
those who connot afford it, associated with
homes, home pleasures and home restraints,
embrace such forms Of sensual qualification