"If it was so important that man should have more than one woman to supply his sexual demands, why was the Creator so short-sighted as to make but one Eve? It would have been as easy to remove two or three or half a dozen ribs from Adam’s side as one; and as the whole world had yet to be populated, a plurality of wives would certainly have accelerated the process. Surely, if polygamy was ever required or excusable, it ought to have been allowed at the start. Again, when Noah went into the ark taking with him an assortment of all species of animals, he took some kinds of pairs and some by sevens, from which we might suspect, at least, that he observed the laws of nature respecting polygamous and monogamous animals. But he took only one wife for himself, and only one for each of his sons. Why not two or half a dozen instead? Polygamy would certainly have accelerated the repopulation of the earth most wonderfully; but Noah was monogamous. To say, in view of such facts, that monogamy originated with the paganism of ancient Greece and Rome, is blasphemy."
John Harvey Kellogg was an American businessman, inventor, physician, and advocate of the health reforms advocated by the Battle Creek Progressive Friends movement and the eugenics policies espoused by many in the Progressive Movement. He was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, founded by members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It combined aspects of a Europ
"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."
"”Though shalt not commit adultery.” “Who so ever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” In these two scriptures we have a complete definition of unchastity. The seventh commandment, with the Saviour’s commentary upon it, places clearly before us the fact that chastity requires purity of thought as well as of outward acts. Impure thoughts and unchaste acts are alike violations of the seventh commandment. As we shall see, also, unchastity of the mind is a violation of natural law as well as of moral law, and is visited with physical punishment commensurate to the transgression."
"As we have shown, a child conceived in lust can no more be chaste by nature than a negro can be a Caucasian. But back of this there is a deeper cause, as we shall see, one that affects parents as well as offspring. Between infancy and puberty, are in operation, all those influenced mentioned under “Sexual Precocity.” The frequent custom of allowing children of the opposite sex to sleep together, even until eight or ten years of age, or longer is a dangerous one. We have known of instances in which little boys of seven or eight have been allowed to sleep with girls of fourteen or sixteen, in some of which most shameful lessons were taught, and by persons who would not be suspected of such an impropriety. In one instance a little boy of eight, occupying the same bed with three girls several years older, was used for illustration by the older girl in instructing the younger ones in the “modus operandi” of reproduction. The sexes should be carefully separated from each other at least as early as four or five years of age, under all circumstances which could afford opportunity for observing the physical differences of the sexes, or in any way serve to excite those passions which at this tender age should be wholly dormant."
"The tendency of luxury is toward demoralization. Rome never became dissipated and corrupt until her citizens became wealthy, and adopted luxurious modes of living. Nothing is much more conducive to sound morals than full occupation of the mind with useful labor. Fashionable idleness is a force to virtue. The young man or the young woman who wasted the precious hours of life in listless dreaming or in that sort of senseless twaddle which forms the bulk of the conversation in some circles, is in very great danger of demoralization. Many of the usages and customs of fashionable society seems to open the door to vice, and to insidiously, and at first unconsciously, lead the young and inexperienced away from the paths of purity and virtue. There is a good evidence that the amount of immorality among what are known as the higher classes is every year increasing. Every now and then a scandal in high life comes to the surface; but the great mass of corruption is effectually hidden from the general public. Open profligacy is of course frowned upon in all respectable circles; and yet wealth and accomplishments will cover a multitude of sins. This freedom allowed to the vile and vicious is one of the worst features of fashionable society. Such persons carry about them a moral atmosphere more deadly than the dreaded upastress."
"It is a wide-spread and deadly error, that only outward acts are harmful; that only outward acts are harmful; that only physical transgression of the laws of chastity will produce disease. We have seen all the effects of beastly abuse result from mental sin alone. I have traced serious affections and very great suffering to this cause. The cases may occur at any period of life. We meet with them frequently among such as are usually called or think themselves, continent young men. There are large classes of persons who seem to think that they may, without moral guilt, excite their own feelings or those of others by loose or libidinous conversation in society, provided such impure thoughts or acts are not followed by masturbation or fornication. I have almost daily to tell such persons that physically, and in a sanitary point of view, they are ruining their constitutions. There are young men who almost pass their lives in making carnal acquaintances in the street, but just stop short of seducing girls; there are others who haunt the lower classes of places of public amusement for the purpose of sexual excitement, and live, in fact, a thoroughly immoral life in all respects except actually going home with prostitutes. When these men come to me, laboring under the various forms of impotence, they are surprised at my suggesting to them the possibility of the impairment of their powers being dependent upon these previous vicious habits.”"
"The sin of self-pollution is one of the vilest, the basest, and the most degrading that a human being can commit. It is worse than beastly. Those who commit it place themselves far below the meanest brute that breathes."