ID# 808:
Sermon #56: Religion and Eugenics AES Sermon Contest 1927, #6
Date:
1927
Pages: (1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11)
Source:
American Philosophical Society, AES, 57506: Am3

Sermon #56:  Religion and Eugenics AES Sermon Contest 1927, #6

[page heading] Eugenics - page #8. [end page heading] Church, the School, the State, - must all be linked in one great concerted and unified program of Eugenic education for the realization of the ideal. It is the duty and the high privilege of our home builders to explain to their children the mysteries of life. To explain how God takes human life into partnership with Himself for the reproduction of life. To impress the child with the sacredness and sanctity of the whole generative process to such an extent that he will keep himself pure and unspotted from the world. Just here we need social rebirth. Thousands of parents have sinned against their children by their failure to give them instruction concerning the mysteries and the functions of life. Sitting in her prison cell for the murder of her mother, Dorothy Ellingson, only 16 years of age, confessed to me in reply to my question as to whether her parents had ever explained to her the mysteries of life, that they had not, and that her knowledge of the same had come through her "sheik" companions. It is a story sad enough to cause even the angels in heaven to weep. But the tragedy of her life is repeated in the lives of each Loeb and Leopold and the thousands of youths who fill our jails and penitentiaries. The sins of callow youth are more largely due to ignorance than to intent and are to be charged not so much against the offender as they are to be charged against the home that has failed to impart needed Eugenic instruction. "To be forewarned is to be forearmed." To be educated in the mysteries of life is to be forearmed against the social sins that assail our youth.

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