Leviticus 15:16

16. Seed of copulation In the restatement of this law in Deuteronomy 23:10, the impurity is described as involuntary. It is not an infusion, but an effusion. In Luther’s version the words im schlaf, in the sleep, are added. In the light of this precept of the law it would not seem that “the sexual impulses, and their dream images in sleep, are morally wholly indifferent.” The spirit feels disgraced, as though it had lost its kingly sceptre and had been involuntarily dragged about by the wheel of nature, as Hector was dishonoured when his feet were bound to the axle of Achilles’s chariot. Antiquity, from India to Egypt, loathes the dreamer who defiles the flesh. The form of expression, go out from him, does not seem to refer to the solitary vice, masturbation, improperly called Onanism, (Genesis 38:9,) one of the most destructive crimes ever committed by fallen man; and yet it must include this vice. “In many respects,” says Dr.

A. Clarke, “it is several degrees worse than common whoredom, and has in its train more awful consequences, though practised by numbers who would shudder at the thought of criminal connexion with a prostitute. It excites the powers of nature to undue action, and produces violent secretions, which necessarily and speedily exhaust the vital energy. Appetite ceases; nutrition fails, tremors are generated; and the wretched victim, superannuated even before he had time to arrive at man’s estate, debilitated in mind to idiotism, tumbles into the grave, and his guilty soul (guilty of self-murder) is hurried into the awful presence of its Judge.”