A manifold malice may attach to a single act in violation of the law of moral purity.  The burden of a vow in either party incurring guilt, whether that vow be matrimonial or religious, is a circumstance that adds injustice or sacrilege to the crime, according to the nature of that vow; and the double guilt is on both parties.  If the vow exists in one and the other delinquent, then the offense is still further multiplied and the guilt aggravated.  Blood-relationship adds a specific malice of its own, slight or grievous according to the intimacy of said relationship.  Fornication, adultery, sacrilege and incest—­these, to give to things their proper names, are terms that specify various degrees of malice and guilt in this matter; and although they do not sound well or look well in print, they have a meaning which sensible folks should not ignore.

A lapse from virtue is bad; the habit or vice, voluntarily entertained, is infinitely worse.  If the one argues weakness, even culpable, the other betrays a studied contempt for God and the law, an utter perversion of the moral sense that does not even esteem virtue in itself; an appalling thralldom of the spirit to the flesh, an appetite that is all ungodly, a gluttony that is bestial.  Very often it supposes a victim held fast in the clutches of unfeeling hoggishness, fascinated or subjugated, made to serve, while serviceable; and then cast off without a shred of respectability for another.  It is an ordinary occurrence for one of these victims to swallow a deadly potion on being shown her folly and left to its consequences; and the human ogre rides triumphantly home in his red automobile.

But the positions may be reversed; the victim may play the role of seductress, and displaying charms that excite the passions, ensnare the youth whose feet are not guided by the lamp of experience, wisdom and religion.  This is the human spider, soulless and shameless, using splendid gifts of God to form a web with which to inveigle and entrap a too willing prey.  And the dead flies, who will count them!

The climax of infamy is reached when this sort of a thing is made, not a pastime, but a business, when virtue is put on the market with its fixed value attached and bartered for a price.  There is no outrage on human feeling greater than this.  We are all born of woman; and the sight of womanhood thus degraded and profaned would give us more of a shock if it were less common.  The curse of God is on such wretches as ply this unnatural trade and live by infamy; not only on them, but on those also who make such traffic possible and lucrative.  Considering all things, more guilty the latter than the former, perhaps.  Active co-operation in evil makes one a joint partner in guilt; to encourage infamy is not only to sin, but also to share all the odium thereof; while he who contributes to the perpetuation of an iniquity of this nature is, in a sense, worse than the unfortunates themselves.