Page:An address delivered by the Hon. Mrs. Welby to the married women of Newton on the first Thursday in Lent, 1872.djvu/18

14 as offensive in God's sight, just as wrong, just as shameful if committed with a prospect of marriage as without. And more: it is a deliberate mockery of our sacred and holy marriage service, to treat it as nothing but the means of giving a legal name to a child about to be born.

My dear Friends, what it has cost me to say all this to you, you have perhaps little idea. I have been accustomed never to speak, nay, not even to think, of these miserable and shameful subjects; nothing but a strength not my own could have carried me through my painful task; but so much has happened since I came here to force this crying evil on my attention, that I felt that if I shrank from doing what I could, whatever the cost might be, I should be held responsible before God for a distinct failure of duty.

If what I have said should prove of any use; if by the grace of Gods Holy Spirit any of you should be led to think seriously on these subjects, and to try and make a beginning of