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"Hell Upon Earth" Made Heaven
or
Marriage Secrets of a Chicago Contractor

As Told To
Rev. George W. Savory



New Digital Edition
based on
The Third Print Edition (1907)


Table of Contents

• Opening Quotations
• Preface
• A Few Opinions
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - The Old Man's Story
• Chapter 2 - The Alphabet of Love
• Chapter 3 - Philosophy of Love
• Chapter 4 - Love's Descent To Physical Plane
• Chapter 5 - Woman's Queenly Rule
• Chapter 6 - Love's Best Ultimation
• Chapter 7 - Better Births
• Chapter 8 - The Wife's Account
• Chapter 9 - The Bible: A Practical Guide
• Chapter 10 - Drifting Apart: Its Causes
• Chapter 11 - Lost Love Restored
• Chapter 12 - Courtship and Temptation
• Book List

"They twain shall be one flesh."

"The love of one alone of the opposite sex is the jewel of human life, the inner sanctuary of tne Christian religion, and the fundamental of all loves, because its cause is from the universal marriage of love (female) with wisdom (male) - originating in the character of the Creator and therefore stamped upon every created thing - and into this love are collected all joys, delights and pleasures from first to last, all blessedness here and hereafter."

"THE STATE OF LOVE BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN DETERMINES ALL OTHER LOVES, DETERMINES NOT ONLY THE JOYS OF MARRIED LIFE, BUT THE INTEGRITY, PURITY, WISDOM OF THE LOVE FOR CHILDREN, THE LOVE FOR THY NEIGHBOR, FOR ONE'S COUNTRY, FOR THE CHURCH, FOR THE WORD OF GOD; DETERMINES THE NATURE OF ALL THE OUTFLOWING AFFECTIONS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT; DETERMINES, THEREFORE, THE ENTIRE CIVILIZATION AND OUTWARD CONDITION OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE."

"I hate inconstancy! - I loathe, detest.
Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made
Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast
No permanent foundation can be laid!"

"Spirit of knowledge, grant me this:
A simple heart and subtle wit.
To praise the thing whose praise it is
That all which can be praised is it."
[i. e., Love.]

Love at Home.

"There is beauty all around,
When there's love at home;
Ihere is joy in ev'ry sound,
When there's love at home.
Peace and plenty here abide.
Smiling sweet on ev'ry side,
Time doth softly, sweetly glide,
When there's love at home."

"In the cottage there is joy,
When there's love at home;
Hate and envy ne'er annoy,
When there's love at home.
Roses blossom 'neath our feet.
All the earth's a garden sweet,
Making life a bliss complete,
When there's love at home."

"Kindly heaven smiles above.
When there's love at home;
All the earth is filled with love
When there's love at home.
Sweeter sings the brooklet by.
Brighter beams the azure sky;
Oh, there's One who smiles on high,
When there's love at home."

"Jesus, show thy mercy mine,
Then there's love at home;
Sweetly whisper I am thine,
Then there's love at home.
Source of Love, thy charming light.
Far exceeds the sun so bright -
Can dispel the gloom of night.
Then there's love at home."

Preface

This book is the voice of a doctor - striking for your health by the shortest, surest route - never apologizing for the all-wise Creator who made woman beautiful and man passionate.

This book is the voice of a preacher - striking for your salvation from sin by making you see that only the good can ever be truly married or know the bliss of wedlock, the sum of all earthly joys.

This book is the voice of a teacher - striking for your complete knowledge of the only easy road to health, happiness and heaven, the road through perfect matrimony - as complete a knowledge as conventional thinking will today permit the multitude to be taught.

The book would never have been born, if the schools did not avoid the most important branch of human knowledge - the relations of the sexes. The author tries to be a "minute man" in the very beginning of a war for independence against all old oppressive errors. His walk for many a day lay under the "Washington Elm," and he always stopped there and pledged his pen to serve freedom at least as willingly as the sword of that man whose name he bears.

Who would care for equal privilege to enlist himself in this war - not against a foreign tyrant, not even against the domestic tyrant Greed, who with Satanic skill and glee is now pitting class against class - but against that far worse devil. Lust, who stands back of Greed and goads him on to inflame brother against brother?

What man of wealth, who agrees substantially with the principles herein set forth, will pledge support to the author in establishing, amid these fragrant orange orchards, a College of Matrimony? - where can be taught, and whence can be published by book and periodical, by correspondence lessons and well equipped missionaries, and proclaimed over the whole earth all the mighty secrets of Sexology which can be discovered by patient investigation, truths now neglected to the destruction of society, of homes and hearts and life's dearest hopes, neglected to the decay of old age, manhood and infancy, neglected to the filling of asylums, prisons and sanitariums.

Why may not gold be consecrated to "this last and grandest reform the world will ever see," as well as the pen of a man rich only in children? The author deliberately sacrificed a good position and salary in order to be free for this service to humanity - largely avoided and despised as well as neglected. He is misunderstood by some, and denounced by a few prudes and sectarians, but is happy and encouraged to labor on till he can compel a hearing, so long as his usefulness is attested by the many letters received from all English-speaking countries, a few extracts from which are subjoined.

To save one home from wreckage, one unloved man from despair and suicide (or debauchery), to bring about one happy marriage - removing the isolation and yearning and immaturity of two souls otherwise unripe forever - to usher into being here and unending one soul that would not have been born - what is such a privilege worth? The pen trembles with the awfulness of the responsibility! The breath is bated and the tears start with joy and thankfulness over this great honor! the glory of becoming such a servant to humanity!

Do not read this book as most infidels read the Bible - picking out, like buzzards, only that which can be made to feed their own corrupt nature - but read it from cover to cover, reserving judgment to the close. Thus only can you gain from it any light or help toward attaining manhood or womanhood, toward the becoming "one flesh" which means happiness here and hereafter. Perfect agreement we must not expect, for no two people photograph the mountain from the same view-point, but if we are in substantial agreement, let us say - as the book has taught some incompatible couples to hopefully exclaim - "If thy heart be as my heart, give me thine hand!"

Claremont. Calif. GEORGE W. SAVORY.

"And as the dove to far Palmyra flying,
From where her native founts of Antioch beam,
Weary, exhausted, longing, fainting, sighing,
Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream,

So many a soul o'er life's drear desert faring.
Love's pure congenial spring unfound, unquaffed,
Suffers - recoils - then thirsty and despairing
Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught!"

A Few Opinions

"I can offer no criticism. Enough that it helps me, and that I can keep it moving." - Lady in England.

"I will do my best to circulate the book, for it is more needed in this corrupt age than any I know. " - A Lady in New York.

"We stretch our hands to you across this great continent - our hearts embrace you! For we are one inspirit. God speed you." - Lady in Boston.

"This is a book out of the ordinary run. It should be read by all young people who are thinkmg of matrimony." - Los Angeles "Daily Tmies. "

"Amen and amen! to the book from wife and myself. Have read it twice and shall read it again. I know it will make homes happy." - Denver real estate Agent.

"When I settle down to marry I shall want that book for reference, and send now for more. I lay a copy on my desk [law office in Tennessee] and it disappears never to return."

"I think it is the grandest book I ever saw, and I want to tell you I am happy from its lessons. I cannot thank you enough for the good it has done me, and my wife exclamis, 'God bless him!'"

"We have gone through it many a time, and each time find something new to learn. Of course it is very plainly put, but if it were not, probably the same good would not be done." - Several readers in England.

"It is certainly the best book I ever read. It has had more to do with changing my life than all else I ever read. I have now started to live the life I ought to have been living for the last ten years."

"We like every page of it. It will not hurt any pure-minded person. We have given it to our girls to read. Have loaned it to neighbors who all approve, and am sending for another copy for loaning." - J. M. Edmiston.

"Publish it by all means! If I had only known these things my home would not have been wrecked. I should not have had three times to dodge my husband's bullet, nor would he have filled a drunkard's grave at last." - So said a widow when asked her opinion of the MS.

"The fact that Bro. Savory has a large family of children above the average in deportment and intelligence, proves conclusively that his views upon these vital and important subjects of Marriage and Heredity are correct, and that the theories he so ably advocates can be realized in practical life. He is by nature and education most thoroughly fitted to speak with authority, and has written successful books upon the reform in the home." - From Pastor, Rev. J. M. Schaefle.

"This book affects me more deeply than any other I have read - often moving me to tears. Your book will cause great offense to that large class who are 'sickly virtuous and hypocritically pious.' It is the most important popular treatise on the relations of the sexes which has yet appeared." - Arthur L. Bristol.

"It is specific, realistic, and shows the sincere desire of the author to make his meamng perfectly plain to the humblest capacity. The appearance of the work was inevitable, and it will probably hasten the time when these truths come to death-grapple with the opposing falsities, which now dominate the world." - The New Age, Australia.

"Mrs. M. and I have read your book with deep interest and hearty approval. Any mistakes which you may have fallen into are innocence itself compared with the error or crime of silence on the subject in wnich the Christian Church is submerged. You have seen a great light. Go on with your work. This will help you a little" (check for $50)." - Rev. Jas. E. Mills.

"I heartfly agree with your book and see very plainly where the world could be made much better by accepting its teachings. Oh! how I regret that I could not have known these things in my younger days! So much could have been avoided that has made sorrow and trouble. I have read the book three times and still return to sketch it as I have opportunity." - J. W. Gilbert, Ky.

"My heart-felt thanks for your brave book - which I have read and reread. Truths of this kind are seldom expressed, but should be plainly spoken, and I would have none of your utterances left out or modified. May many husbands and wives find in it the blessing they need, and may many children - otherwise unborn - arise hereafter to call you blessed for your manly stand." - W. Filmer, Ontario.

"This is a most remarkable book indeed. It ought to be read by thousands who are despairing and dying for want of it. It points out and illustrates the true way to that love which is the soul of all good and all bliss, and does this in a manner that has been faintly attempted by any other. Hungering multitudes need lust such a warm and earnest nature as that of Mr. Savory to reed them - to give them the heavenly food they crave and adapt it to their state. We rejoice that the book has been thought out and written and believe it must do very much toward starting a new era of thought and life in and respecting the marriage relation. We cannot commend it too earnestly. Do by all means procure and read this book. Send it to friends also whose aim is pure and yet who are seeking greater satisfaction in the conjugal relation. Mr. Savory is right. He has done the work of a master. He has made it plain as no other has that conjugal love is the love which will regenerate the world, and that to regenerate is not to destroy the passion, but to fulfil - to fill it full of soul or love for another." - Rev. S. H. Spencer, Editor New Christianity.

Introduction

The month of September, 1893, spent in careful study of the great Columbian Exposition at Chicago, brought me into contact with many people worth describing, but one man, who opened his heart to me, showed me greater treasures than all other men or nations displayed.

At the close of a hard day of tramping through the bewildering mazes of costly and ingenious exhibits, I was sitting at my window in a hotel overlooking the vast grounds and watching the dazzling fireworks, when a knock called me to admit for a seat by my side a venerable man who was a privileged character to all the guests because of his sweet innocence of age. After looking out over his gold-bowed glasses and gold-headed cane almost without reply to my admiration for the brilliance and magnificence, he turned toward me and laid his hand softly upon my knee. He was trembling with emotion - not with age - but, as he did not speak for several minutes, I simply laid my hand upon his and waited for him to unburden his mind. At last he spoke, and we will now follow his words so nearly as I can report them - but of course it took many evenings and mornings also to fill out his strange story.

Chapter 1 - The Old Man's Story

This sparkle and blaze, grander by far than anything I ever dreamed of seeing on earth, points me to that glory beyond, which I must look upon soon - if ever. I am eighty years old, and I lay last night pondering over the past, reaching out towards the future, wondering whether I could leave the world some warning from my mistakes, thinking I could die easier if I told my whole story just as I must, in a few short hours, face the record before the judgment seat.

I own this hotel. My nephew who manages it persuaded me to invest, partly to give him a summer's harvest, but as you see the house is built to stay, and will be turned into apartments for housekeeping at the close of the Fair. I am a contractor and builder myself, or rather was once, and have made most of my fortune in this city - a larger one than I can now properly manage. But I care little for money. I boast a better wealth than can be compared with silver or gold, bonds or mortgages. I would gladly give all my worldly goods if I could build a path - an electric railway if it were possible - across the moral bogs into which I fell, and in which I now see so many floundering. My boast is not religion, it is love, human love, conjugal love, love purified of much dross and thereby made capable of reflecting some portion of heaven. For I do believe in heaven, and God and the Bible, though I now see all things of religion to be far profounder than any theology has fathomed, and am therefore often misunderstood and rebuked by the "orthodox" sectarian. All the religion I dare profess is Love, not love for God, nor for the neighbor, simply love for my wife - though she has been in heaven ten years - but I also dare assert that all people lack true religion who lack this true sex-love - however spiritual they may appear.

I want to tell you my story, then I want you to write it out for me, putting it in better words than I use, but keeping it so plain that all must understand the message of life I am burdened to utter before my own grave is completed. No doubt you are a good preacher, but last night's great disturbance proved you a good doctor, and told me that I had waited well these years for the right man to speak for me. You at least will not be shocked by my plain, blunt talk, and if I say anything that might seem harmful, you are at liberty to omit that. But I have learned at last that nothing should be hidden except what would cause sin. Our own sin is gotten rid of only by dragging it to the light, calling it by its worst name, renouncing it, learning to abhor it, trying to help others conquer the same - by such a practical method really judging ourselves before the last great day of judgment. It may be I am in my "second childhood," but if so you and the readers of what you write must charge my lack of shame to the ignorance if not to the innocence of infancy. No clothing, no concealment, can longer hide the moral nakedness of our boasted christian civilization, but it is only because I believe I have discovered the true robe of purity that I am willing to snatch away the "fig-leaves" of shame.

When we were first married we settled in a stirring town fifty miles from New York and I entered at once upon my trade, making a fair living but not attempting business for myself. My wife and I both liked society, were both interested in music, and I became leader of the choir in the Presbyterian church of which we were both members. Very soon we had three babies, and these of course cut short my wife's pleasure in society, while I continued to go out because in constant demand not only as singer but as player upon the bass viol. My wife often urged me to go when I was unwilling to leave her, but I know (and partly knew then) that it cost her much to so persuade. It also cost her much to stay at home so constantly herself. It was not strange then that she murmured so soon as a fourth babe was expected. I murmured as well, and was more than willing to suggest that it was not absolutely necessary to welcome this new burden.

To tell the truth, our love for each other had cooled very greatly during the few short years of married life. She had faded, and I now met other women who charmed me more than she. The children, instead of uniting us more and more, seemed each one to widen the distance between us. Sick a good deal, and seldom able to go out with me, she gave me less and less satisfaction. She knew all this and wept in secret, but was powerless to change the bad state of affairs. We had few real quarrels, though there were times when our words were few and sharp, or sullen, but any happiness was a sort of forced blossom which soon shattered.

My health became so much impaired our family physician volunteered the advice that my passions needed satisfaction and must have it outside of home since they could not be gratified at home. Yet I remained true to my vow. My religion was a policeman to me, strong enough to prevent actual crime. But my mind was not so easily curbed, and longings unchecked often put me into real torture. Such was the hell I lived in for some years, gradually getting deeper and blacker - though pretty successfully hidden from the world.

Now for my final plunge! I suggested and argued against conscience that since child-bearing was killing my wife, it could be no sin to save her life by the removal of the cause - though I dimly perceived even then that the real cause was back of love. In her hopeless, nervous state she tearfully consented and I started for New York to seek a medical man willing to so thwart the course of nature. The only man considered suitable was out of town but would return two days later. I determined to wait and meanwhile see the city. Tired at last of all its beauty, and curious to know whether its wickedness was as great as represented, I decided to spend the last evening in the district most notorious for unblushing evils.

I felt myself strong man enough - for was I not over six feet in my stockings! - to laugh at the temptations others might find in profligacy, and was curious only to see how weak and silly people can make themselves. I had forgotten that Samson the giant was not so strong as Joseph the stripling - that something more than athletic power is needed as a bulwark against passion. Knowing something of art, I quieted my conscience by repeating that I was doing only what all artists who study the "human form divine" must do (though my real object was to see sin), and wandered from one house to another paying various sums to "models" to pose in my presence. Some leering hints were given as to my being so "easily satisfied," but for the most part these fallen women depended upon their unveiled charms to conquer me. Herein they were mistaken, for the freedom and abandon of those who would consent to pose repelled me, while at the same time there was growing within, all unperceived, a powerful lust for those who refused to pose. I was just returning to the gaudy parlor of one such, when the fire bells rang out, and I paused to watch the passing engines.

While questioning whether to follow to the increasing blaze a little girl passed, crying piteously. I stopped her to enquire into the cause of her grief, and found that her mother had gone in the direction of the fire to buy groceries, leaving the child in charge of a sleeping baby. I assured her that her mother would not be harmed but would soon find her way back around the fire, and she then consented to let me lead her back to watch the baby.

Confused by the sudden interruption of my passion, I said little on our short walk, and hardly knew whether to go into the humble house and wait the mother's return, or follow the fire, or return to my study of "art." Leaving the child at the door, I now saw dimly that if art had been any motive with me at first, a fire had sprung up within me much like the one now lighting up the distance. Taking a turn towards that fire, I passed a small stone church whence came the sound of an old anthem I had often sung. Caring little for fire hunting, I entered and sat down in the rear to hear the singing through.

The speaker rose immediately and announced "Marriage" as the subject of his lecture, saying that he had chosen mid-week instead of Sunday for its delivery in the hope to meet some who could then attend without neglect to their own church services. He further promised to clear the subject of all except the most practical aspects of it, hoping thereby to help any who were not acquainted with the teachings of the church upon this subject. As it was a new thing to me to hear a preacher speak in this manner, or venture to handle the subject of marriage at all, I at once settled down to listen, especially as I felt the need of instruction, and the preacher though young seemed dead in earnest and solemn as a prophet.

"I dare speak upon this theme at all," he began, "and I am impelled to speak with all possible plainness and emphasis, because I am certain that pure marriage love is the bliss of heaven let down to earth, that adulterous love is the torment of hell broken loose, and that every man is therefore in the essential heaven or the essential hell. Though a 'great gulf' divides between these two loves, it is seldom so fully 'fixed' here upon earth as to forbid all passing, and indeed the two loves look so much alike that the gulf is little noticed. If I can so describe each love as to make one man discover himself widely separated from the life of heaven and then lead him to plunge across the deepening chasm, I can endure any amount of censure for my seeming immodesty."

If I had left the church at once after the close of the service, I could have told little about the discourse, because I saw my state and duty clearly before he was half through, and then simply sat dazed and stunned till roused by his hand-grasp after nearly all had gone. Then I got my tongue sufficiently to say that he had been the means of a powerful reformation within me, and that I must have for my own at any cost the manuscript from which he had read. He offered to copy it and then send me the original, and to this I eagerly assented. That night I did not sleep, and the next forenoon I still kept in bed - thinking, thinking, thinking - for I no longer had any desire to find that doctor, and I did not wish to reach home before evening.

After a few common-place remarks my wife and I retired, but I was still sleepless. In the light of the moon which flooded the room I stole an occasional glance at the face of my wife, as it lay upturned and pale as if chiseled from marble. I could not decide whether she was asleep or awake, but I thought or imagined I saw tears rolling down her cheek. An hour passed and her breathing was still so imperceptible that horror seized upon me. What if I was now lying by the beautiful corpse of what I once thought contained an angel? I lay and tortured myself with such dreadful fancies as a sort of penance. For had not my cold indifference as effectually killed her as if it had been concentrated into a single fatal bullet?

No longer able to bear the suspense, I turned toward her and kissed the wet cheeks. This gave her a start, for she evidently supposed me asleep, but for a few minutes her face merely grew more rigid as if she was in an agony of prayer.

Now I ventured to loosen her nightrobe and lay my cheek in her bosom - gently, reverently, as if it were the holy of holies - feeling myself to be a returning prodigal too polluted to touch so sacred a spot, but reasoning desperately that the greater the sin the greater the need of contact with purity at its very fountain. Instantly she clasped me close, and as in raptures began calling me her "best babe."

Long I lay there, thinking, praying, groaning inwardly. All my life passed in review. Especially came to mind every act and word of coldness or unkindness from the day we were married. I saw plainly that I had indeed made our marriage "a failure," though to the eyes of others it might still appear happy and peaceful. Certainly my ideals and hopes had proven "castles in the air." And if I, a great strong man with a prosperous business and every external comfort, was utterly miserable over this decay and almost ship-wreck of love, what must be the bitterness of disappointment of this gentle, sensitive woman? I had sworn to protect and cherish her, and I had almost trampled her under foot. I had loved her merely with a fierce animal passion which had crucified all her true love for me - or rather imprisoned it deep in her heart as if buried alive. Though I had kept my body under subjection so far as other women were concerned, by what a narrow escape I had fled from the brink of perdition! but my thoughts? Ah, no! "Hath committed adultery already in his heart." How many times this verdict of guilt must have been recorded in heaven against my name!

How long I lay there I do not know. It seemed an age, yet I kept myself there though it seemed the great white throne - the judgment seat all too closely attended by the flaming torments which were eager to gulp me down. Every great throb of her bounding heart sent a stream of fire burning my life's lie into every fiber of my being. No! burning it out of my being - quenching with a last hot hissing that infernal fire which had been my delight so secretly as to have been half unsuspected. I even wished as my ear counted every beat that, it really would burst and drown me in its purity. Had that honest heart ever felt a thrill of love for any but me? Nay! my very thought makes it stop and stand still now. Oh! what a dog I have been! I wish I could weep, but am too badly seared with sin for that. See my position in society; in the church. I ought to confess and be excommunicated as a base adulterer, for that is what I have been all the time, even with my wife. I never loved her except for her body and what pleasure I could get from her rather than give to her. I have been living the life of hell, I am myself a part of hell!

At last, I can endure such self-revelation no longer. With a deep groan I turn upon my back and shudder till the bed shakes. Instantly she bends over me drenching me with a fresh flood of tears. Calming somewhat under her caresses and admonitions, I now gather her up in my arms and tell her that she is the true babe entrusted to my keeping only to be murdered by inches body and soul. Then she punishes me unwittingly by trying to prove how "good" I have always been to her.

At last a ripple of laughter shone down through her tears and as proof of the changeless love she bore me, for the first time in her life, she offered the ultimate delights of love and with greater ardor than I had ever seen. But beyond passive union I refused the pleasure at that time, lest I quickly drift back into the old sensualism just discovered to be synonymous with hell fire - lest I bury out of sight a second time in her bleeding heart all external manifestations of affection. Thus we slept and I dreamed that from the great white throne the multitudes of good and bad had gone to the right and left hand, and that the Lord had reserved me solitary to look more deeply into my real motives and true character.

The next morning I started out to play the lover over again, not quite so effusively as of old but more practically and honestly, for I was now resolved to really give as well as get - and yet was quite awkward in the attempt. The good-bye kiss was restored, and I pulled out my pipe and significantly placed it upon the mantel before starting for my work.

At night I hurried home wondering if any change had really taken place in our lives that would prove permanent, and found my wife at the door to greet me, with a red rose at her throat and a manner as warm and bright as it was a month after our marriage - the added dignity seeming only like ripeness to that immature fruit. As I came up the walk I noticed that her figure looked much broader than usual at the waist - a good model for a statue of Venus - and on placing my arms about her I discovered the absence of whalebones, and gave her an extra embrace in mute thanks for her sacrifice of a fashion always followed as strictly a necessity for her. When she drew me into the house I glanced over her shoulder and saw another rose, a white one, nestling in my empty pipe, while an orange-colored ribbon was festooned around it till it was almost hidden from view. She had known I abhorred tight lacing as a worse thing than cramping and deforming of feet among the Chinese, and I knew she abhorred the smell of tobacco as much as that of the pole-cat, but neither of us had previously loved sufficiently to sacrifice our idols to please each other. If my love toward her was now cold and feeble and awkward in its manifestation, it was at last honest and determined, based upon duty, not upon beauty or selfish gratification.

She never mentioned my errand to New York, nor did I till after another bright boy was born to us. Meantime her health had gradually improved and so had mine.

Best of all we had cast out all fear in our effort to come into "perfect love." Many an evening we spent discussing the grand principles set forth in that wonderful discourse on marriage, and in searching out texts from the Bible that after some study revealed the same inspiring truths. My wife now treated me with perfect frankness and familiarity, no longer considering it any part of modesty to conceal her love for me or even her person from me. Una was again learning to ride the lion. The posing of her beautiful form - strange as it may seem - had in itself a powerful effect to cool my unruly passion, while at the same time it increased my reverence for her in a wonderful degree. The confidence she now placed in me could not be dishonored by any ignoble act. I was determined to be as self-contained as she expected me to be, and indeed - contrary to all argument from so-called modesty - the very freedom of her manner - lawless abandon some would call it - proved a powerful means of transforming the baser passion into that higher affection which is very nearly akin to worship. Her confident and hopeful, yet dependent attitude toward me, fairly lifted me out of myself, and rapidly transformed me into at least some semblance of the ideal she wanted in a husband. I had never experienced such powerful surging of love. It now gained so complete mastery of me that I would follow out the least wishes of my wife, and delighted to forestall any expression of them. All thanks I now utterly refused.

Her devotion to my wants was even more complete. She always had been most faithful to duty, but I had often grown jealous to think that she would do as much for an enemy. There was no mistaking the intense delight with which she now tried to do everything with reference to my taste. Even in the conjugal act she now made no concealment of her pleasure. I had at last discovered the secret of calling forth a woman's passion, viz: to be always a lover, always gentle, always generous, always giving pleasure but never seeking it except as giving is seeking highest joy. We usually went to sleep clasped in each other's arms - sleeping sweetly as babes -, passive copulation was indulged without fear of excess, and complete coition was enjoyed very frequently with physical benefit always, because the pleasure was mutual and because all animalism was excluded by complete fusion of soul preceding and accompanying the act. Still I found no physical inconvenience from months of abstinence, because soul union was in itself so satisfying, body being now entirely subordinated.

Here is the whole secret of happy marriage. Soul must be put into it. If I was ever "born again" it was upon that eventful night with my head pillowed in my wife's bosom. If ever I have truly prayed since that it has best been during coition. This conjugal act must be made an altar of incense, the gateway of heaven, not a selfish embrace between two, but the two together fused into the "one flesh," made into one holy Bride, laying hold in that sublime "mystic marriage" of the Bridegroom who embodies all that we can know of the Divine. An utterly irreligious man can never know the joys of marriage, and the more spiritual any become the more they are able - with proper instruction - to enter into its surpassing delights. This spirituality must however be something deeper and more practical than the mild modern asceticism which passes under that name, and which (because we are exhorted to "crucify the flesh") degrades and destroys the flesh - not knowing how to purify it as alone really commanded.

But I want now to give you for revision and insertion as a chapter in your book some notes I preserved of our discussion over this new view of marriage which changed my hell upon earth into a heaven. We tried to talk with our own pastor but found it of no use, for he recoiled from our frankness as if we were moral lepers, and at last declared that he felt it wrong to discuss the relations of the sexes, giving no better reason however than that the world was corrupt enough to need the mantle of shame and silence.

Chapter 2 - The Alphabet of Love

One evening just after supper our old family physician dropped in for a brief call, but found a "case" which kept him busy till near midnight - no disease of body, but as he at first declared "two very unsound minds."

Dr.: Well, I thought if you persistently refuse to honor me with any calls these days, I would return your compliments of former days and come for once without orders. Besides I rather want to enquire if you have of years been employing a doctor who is smarter than I, for I have not seen any mother more rosy in many a day.

Wife: We have been trying Dr. Nature mostly for the past few years.

Husband: It all comes of my refusing one of your prescriptions, doctor. I have learned that love is life and hate is death, that love is heaven and lust is hell.

Dr.: Why, my boy, you seem to hint that I once prescribed a dose of the pit for you.

Husband: That you did, and it was a medicine which came near sending my soul there, but the cup was struck out of my hand just at my lip. You were honest and sympathetic merely, but the trouble is you medical men seldom look upon your patients as anything more than animals. You admit the value of a good laugh to be sure, and so give as hard jokes as we will accept, and agree to take any amount of mild blasphemy from us, but this is all because it gives the diaphragm a little gymnastic exercise. Now honestly, do you know or care whether a man has a soul, and can you tell the first thing about its connection with or influence over the body?

Dr.: As a church-goer and orthodox citizen generally I believe a man has a soul. As a physician I do not touch that part of a man's make-up. Brain and nerve I study, but theology or even Bible are not taught in medical schools.

Husband: Well, then, please consider your medical education incomplete, and let me teach you your ABC's.

(a) All life as it emanates from its Divine Source is sexed.

(b) Cohesion, fertilization, mating, marrying are simply powerful manifestations of this sexed life from God on the mineral, vegetable, animal and human planes - manifestations of an effort of that one dual current of life to produce a fullness of forms for its own complete and perfect perpetuation in every possible way and shape or receptacle.

(c) Given an orderly marriage in mineral or man (or a seeking for complete union with proper mate) and there must exist strong noble life "after its kind." Weakness or premature decay prove sex disturbance - at least not far back. Loving is living.

Dr.: That is good medicine so far, though you are a trifle sweeping in laying all our ills to sexual misconduct.

Husband: But I do not charge all this disorder - sometimes perverse, sometimes merely ignorant of right - upon the individual sufferer. It may rather be his grandfather who with unbridled lust vitiated the blood to the third and fourth generation.

Dr.: Then your putting of minerals and vegetables into the marrying line with animals and men is somewhat poetic. Yet even the scientist, standing by some mighty cliff, studying the law of cohesion of particles, discovering that the "solid" rock (which looks to our weak vision so inert and dead) is really very much alive and in a constant quiver of mating vibrations, even he must turn poet for the moment - yes, a worshipper of that God who is the upholder of such tremendous life. I confess, indeed, that you do not overstate the incompleteness of unmarried life. I have worn out the joke of the worthlessness of "half a pair of shears" in the vain effort to marry off some who seem to prefer single blessedness - looking to posterity to give me employment, you see.

Wife: Well, no joking now, Doctor, for your alphabet is just begun! We have wanted this opportunity for a good talk, partly to have you set us right if we are getting too enthusiastic, and partly to see the truth a little clearer ourselves in the effort to present it for discussion.

Husband: We will not stop for much discussion yet, seeing we are so nearly agreed. But try a few more truths:

(d) Man must become more than an animal in sex love or he will become less, lower, worse than an animal.

(e) Love for the opposite sex is animal; love for one only of the opposite sex is higher, human, spiritual. The first is as a soil in which the second should be planted, to germinate and mature.

(f) Monogamy, one man with one wife, is the law of nature as well as of the Bible, and can never be affected by polygamy whether permitted to ancients, or secretly followed by moderns.

Dr.: Well, now, for purpose of debate merely, consider me a mild "free lover" for a moment. I flatly deny your assertions, and call for your proof.

Wife: Do not debate, Doctor, or you will make yourself what you fight for. Call it a discussion merely, a friendly discussion, and let each remain a judge as well as a lawyer, ready at the close to give an unprejudiced verdict though it throw himself out of court.

Husband: The desired proof is at hand, but weighty only for those who really wish to know the truth in order to live it. Study lovers attentively. Are they or are they not in an exalted state? Are they narrow-minded and prejudiced because they magnify the good qualities of the chosen one! Love is blind they say. Do you endorse that sentiment?

Dr.: No. I say rather, love opens the eyes so fully to the charms of one that no defects and no other mate can be seen for be very dazzle. But I think they all have similar charms, and hence love is prejudiced - if not blind.

Husband: Any love that should so open the eyes to the charms of all would not be love, it would be admiration, sex worship and probably only a sort of refined animalism. It takes concentration of love upon one individual to produce any such opening of the eyes. You know that genuine love is a very different thing from general devotion of a roving character, and I will leave you to say which you think more ennobling to character, which proves greater exaltation, which is more unselfish, magnanimous and therefore broader-minded.

Dr.: I suppose I'll have to drop my "free love" advocacy long enough to admit that general and undeterminate love of sex is commonly mere romantic fancy or something worse.

Husband: Now then look at the lover more closely. The fact is he does not love the sex less because he loves one of the sex more. For the first time real love gets ablaze within him. One woman suddenly becomes his angel, and this makes all other women his sisters. Before he was an animal, now he is a man. As the "old year" must go out when the "new year" comes in, so lust dies the instant love is born. Test the lover on his way to the arms of his beloved, and you will see whether he is more of a man than before. Let some harlot cross his lone path at midnight. You know, if you have ever been a lover, that she can no more tempt him than a sow could tempt. Yet he will not spurn even her, but will try to lift her to a better life.

Dr.: Proof enough! I know you are right so far, both from my own experience and that confessed to me by patients. Go on with your alphabet.

Husband: No lover ever argued for that beastliness misnamed "free love," and it is necessary to take any honest man who does argue in its favor back only far enough to recall his lover's days to convince him of his error. But there is the difficulty. Those days do not last. And it is the effort to make them last which leads some to call for one love after another, in sucession rapid enough to keep the love from ever cooling. Snatching at heaven they miss it by an inch and land in hell. Yet some men are so little above the animal that they grovel there, fondly imagining all the while that it is indeed heaven. But to progress:

(g) Soon after marriage, love begins to cool, because this first mating is also largely animal.

(h) This cooling proves to all thoughtful minds the impossibility of continued satisfaction except by progress to higher planes of union.

(i) This progress must take place by distinct steps, sometimes so revolutionary as to seem at first backward, and it is possible only with such as have in themselves a mental marriage of wisdom and love, of knowing and doing.

Dr.: Now you are dipping me in too deep! Where did you learn to ferret out the causes of all things? I agree that lovers get over their nonsense soon after marriage, and that some soon fall to quarreling, but your transcendental talk about higher planes seems to me far less practical than to tell both husband and wife to quit their selfishness and egotism.

Wife: That is just what it all means, only it is an effort to go further and provide a better path, a path far more delightful than the old hard road of selfishness when once its shady windings are understood.

Husband: Lovers never ought to "get over their nonsense." Love should be always "blind" - or to read the saying right, should keep so keen a vision for perfections hidden to other eyes that it can never ponder on the imperfections that do exist, never accuses but always excuses defects, faults and failures. Yet a man should learn to call his wife an angel not because of her hazel eyes, but because of the pure soul that looks through them - be they hazel or iron grey. This is what I mean by higher planes, and the abrupt, difficult, revolutionary steps necessary to attain them. The reform is so radical that it often plunges a man into despair, and even when the transition is about made he wonders at his own callousness and brutality towards his wife. So materialistic and sensuous is our age that few have ever passed through the trying experience, and many would even laugh at such brief mention of it as I am giving you.

Dr.: I fear my spirit is not entirely lacking in levity, for I certainly know nothing of any such Methodistic anxious seat and being born again, as touching my wife, but I would like to know what you mean by that "mental marriage of knowing and doing" which must precede this transfiguration of wedded bliss.

Husband: I mean that every man has in him the male element of wisdom or knowledge and the female element of love or will which is prolific of action. Only as a man loves the wisdom he can search out will he make any practical use of it. Only as he wills or desires to apply knowledge to life is he in a state sufficiently aspiring and progressive to enter upon any higher than merely animal marriage. He may be willing to refine and polish his animalism, restrict himself to one mate, live decently and politely in society and even in church circles, but until he heartily loves the best he knows, and strives to know the best to be known for the very purpose of mending his ways, until then he can never hope to discover what true marriage is, nor enter upon the joys of full union with his wife.

Dr.: Well, now you are dissecting me unmercifully, but I am interested, for this is surely something odd. Preach away! Did these new ideas of yours fall down from heaven?

Wife: Do not call him a preacher, for he is getting well branded as a heretic, and our pastor is really alarmed over the sad state we are in; but these ideas could come from nowhere else than heaven, and what is far better they make heaven wherever welcomed and put into practice.

Husband: If they seem new to you remember they are almost as new to us. We are still in the alphabet along with you.

(j) This marriage of wisdom and love in the life of each individual, male or female, is heaven let down to earth.

(k) All who really do or honestly strive to do the best they know, and the best they can discover, are in heaven already or (what is the same thing) in the Lord's true spiritual church.

(l) Such are meant by the "wise virgins," by the "Bride," "the Wife of the Lamb," and those alone constitute this mystical "Wife" who know and do the commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr.: Why not the commandments of Socrates or Confucius?

Husband: Only because the same principles as uttered by them are matters of reason rather than religion, or at best of a religion groping in the dark.

Dr.: But truth is truth through whomsoever uttered.

Husband: Yes, and is always really from the same Divine source of all truth, but the stream flows far clearer through the lips of Jesus.

Dr.: But what do you mean - can you not illustrate what you mean by that marriage in the mind of the man between wisdom and love? I am very dull and swinish.

Husband: You know you ought to love poor old bedridden Tom Bartlett. Your door bell rings on a stormy night to call you from slumber to help him through what all think his last struggle. You know you can relieve him, and perhaps save his life to pester you another year. You love all your patients, even that one, incurable yet undying, and you give up your ease to make him comfortable once more. There was a marriage in your mind between knowledge of duty and will, desire or wish, and the offspring was performance, action, cheerful response to the call. He only is a good or truly wise man who has constantly taking place within him such a union of understanding (or truth) with will (or love) - prolific hourly in noble faithful acts in his proper field of service to the state, church or family. Only a worker can know what marriage means.

Dr.: Well, now, that last word suits me and gives me a little hope that I am not beyond reaching heaven by your new road - not much chance for a country doctor to be a drone!

Husband: Many who are considered more religious than you will perhaps find themselves not nearly so well prepared for heaven. Prayer and acceptance of creeds can help only so far as they deepen the purpose to serve our fellow-men unselfishly and steadfastly by our every-day occupations. Worship is a mockery so far as it hopes to curry favor with the Father of all, yet much of all the praying is simply a selfish superstition of this sort - trying to tease God over to wink at the wrong we have done, and aid our pet plans even though we have taken little care to place ourselves in line with his benevolent policy for mankind. Heaven means service, not stagnation. We are shown that the only way to be greater than others is to become "servant of all," while we sometimes prove that it really is more blessed to give than to receive. God is the greatest servant of all, giving with hand and eye that never shut. He who forgets himself in doing for others, who makes his daily business his religion, enlists in the "hosts of the Lord," and thus makes himself so stalwart morally, so nobly brave, that any true woman can love him. Then the pair "God hath joined together" will start a tributary of heaven as a matter of course.

Dr.: Well, this alphabet is more interesting than the one I learned in the old red school house. Can I master the rest in another hour?

Husband: I can expand these points somewhat further, but as for learning even the alphabet of truth, that requires an eternity, for no truth is more than dimly perceived till put into steady practice in the varied experiences of life.

(m) This mutual devotion to a life of usefulness leads to a basis for marriage in friendship, friendship in the performance of the same or similar services for society.

(n) Such love for a wife - as a helpmeet in faithful service - is like a powerful lens, which on the one hand concentrates man's scattered rays of kindliness into an intense love for the "neighbor," and on the other hand opens his soul for telescopic vision heavenward in loyal love for God and godlikeness.

(o) Marriage now becomes a transaction for eternity as well as for time, because husband and wife both look forward to a happy reunion beyond the grave, and therefore eagerly purify their love of anything that would prevent its continuance in heaven.

Dr.: Why not? I never could see any sense in putting death into the wedding contract - "till death do you part" - and I always hurried up the parson to get every young husband converted while he loved his wife so much that he could hug his meanest neighbor, and must find some God to praise for so sweet a gift as his captured angel.

Wife: But would not such a conversion vanish with the sweetness of the "angel"? Have you ever been able to suggest to parson or young husband anything which would keep us always angels, and our husbands therefore always full of love for God and man?

Dr.: No, I confess that is beyond my materia medica. Care (either with poverty or riches), disappointed hopes and ambitions, selfishness, sickness and other ills seem to strip off the angel wings from young wives (in the eyes of others as well as of their husbands) till in many cases a man is a decent enough Christian anywhere except in the presence of his wife. She becomes a coal of fire, instead of a heavenly telescope, setting him ablaze at every contact, and the fumes seem those of the pit.

Wife: Might not the purpose to make marriage a thing for heaven as well as for this world become the high, transfiguring cloud that would consecrate and sanctify the whole - dedicating every labor and pleasure to so much grander ambition as to gradually eliminate the selfishness and make all life a foretaste of heaven?

Dr.: Theoretically this ought to accomplish much, but practically the world contains few who believe in any real and tangible heaven. Their heaven is a happy sort of fogbank into which they float, and there hope for some more individual life after a resurrection and general judgment - yet still a sexless existence. Therefore to say to the average church goer even: "Give up this fleshly delight and you will gain greater reward in heaven" is almost a waste of breath. He may curb his passion long enough to get converted, but the bird in hand is worth two in the bush with all of us.

Husband: What if the bird in hand is only a hawk tearing at our vitals, a carrion-eating buzzard gloating over the corruption of our hearts, and the birds offered in exchange are not only beautiful doves but always hovering as near as the others and entreating an opportunity to nestle in our bosom and heal its wounds? In other words this heavenly sex-friendship, though looking to eternity, is not a reward of the future any more than of the present. Nothing is to be given up. Purified passion brings immensely greater joys, considered even from a physical standpoint, than passion which runs riot. To live for eternity is to thrill, to electrify this earth-life of ours with energy and delight unimagined. Even the virility or potency of husbands is multiplied thereby to an extent that you medical scientists would scorn to credit or even consider.

Dr.: You amaze me by such a claim, and I cannot credit it that religion put into married life will do for waning physical powers what we are constantly prescribing in vain to accomplish. Of course moderation and abstinence are good, and so far as religion secures these it may help - is this all of your claim?

Husband: No indeed. I do not advocate repression. Are you often called to treat injuries resulting from the common excesses of the first few days or weeks of married life?

Dr.: Barely. And it is a wonder that medical or even surgical treatment is not often required. It certainly would be, if such storms of passion were allowed at a later period. Those unrestrained "honeymoon" debaucheries of the marriage bed I am sure are the beginning of estrangement - often the complete death of love on the wedding night.

Husband: I agree with you. But if my idea could prevail of perfecting soul union by well-regulated courtship before love was permitted to descend into the body, then such beastliness would never be let loose. Then it would be disgusting to the man as well as to the woman. He would prefer to prove himself a hero by rigid self-control. But your own testimony goes to prove true my belief that if this soul union could be well established, then physical ills would seldom follow even very frequent coition. For on the first coming together, "at the first torch of love," there is some genuine love, though of a low grade, which vanishes later when satiety or exhaustion results, or when the external attractions diminish and the inevitable cooling begins. And it is this early love, external though it be, which makes excessive physical congress comparatively harmless. Now if we can learn how to keep love alive, physical matters will take care of themselves, but it must always include a free, mutual, reciprocal coming together. This early love is only the flash of the kindling wood and soon goes out, but it is a real fire while it lasts, far superior to the smoking, sizzling back-logs which are all that generally remains. Can we make the kindling wood somewhat less flashy, so that it will do its complete work of setting the big logs into a steady fire? This is the problem we think we have solved, know we have solved it for ourselves.

Dr.: With that end in view - you agree with me then - that it would be far better to avoid those excesses. I know one man whose wife told me that he said to her after the wedding that he did not propose to claim his conjugal rights, that he should wait till she came to him voluntarily. It was several weeks before she dared risk the possible degradation of their poetic affection. But then there was no shock, no overcoming of modesty, yet no concealment, no coarsening of love but rather an exaltation of it, till now she declares after seven years of wedlock - and three babies to bless the union - that every day contains more bliss than a month of the honeymoon.

Husband: Would you, then, urge all to restrain passion till the wife herself makes some advances?

Dr.: No, for some women would never awaken of themselves - especially intellectual and highly educated women. Some are too cold or modest to admit or permit any desire, while others are too weak and undeveloped maternally to feel any desire beyond a certain degree of sisterly fondness for the husband. Yet such need all the more to be approached very gently and gradually, in order to unfold the flower of their womanhood as fully and normally as possible at this very late period of their lives. I know a physician who declares he was ten days accomplishing full conjunction, preferring that the natural impediment should not be ruptured as it is in the ordinary violent approach. He, too, was well rewarded for his consideration by a most happy married life. Now if your spiritual ideas of marriage will teach young men some such degree of self-control as that, you may put me down as a hearty believer in spirit, soul - or any name you may please to give to that governor of the flesh.

Husband: This result may not always be attained on the first coming together - for passion is often so hot then that it burns up reason - but it can be reached by the most passionate so soon as this first ardor begins to cool. But keep in mind the fact that the truly married are lovers always, and excesses do not exhaust. Or rather say, put soul into marriage and excess is impossible. Physical connection will never be indulged except as following real union of soul, and when that spiritual union grows towards perfection there will be an increase rather than a decrease in the frequency of coition, and there will always follow all the thrill and exhilaration which was experienced in the early days of wedded bliss and more. This is not mere theory with me, it is experience.

Dr.: If you could make the world believe that -

Husband: I should never expect to do it, even if I had an angel's eloquence and disregard for "public opinion," but I know it as a fact, the most blessed fact of my married life. Here and there a man may be found who is humble enough to try to profit by my testimony.

Dr.: But if the physical act of union is the same in both cases, I should like to know how you distinguish between carnal love - lust I suppose you would call that - and spiritual or true marriage love. Are there any outward signs of difference? Anything by which a man can examine whether he is wholly carnal and test his progress if any is made towards purity?

Husband: I will give you for the rest of your alphabet some parallels or contrasts which helped me in the effort to sharply distinguish between black and white. But you must remember that only as noon is enjoyed can midnight be revealed, that only as one climbs the mountain can he properly abhor the bogs in which he has long and contentedly dwelt. It is only an angel who really knows that a devil is a devil. Ponder this list of contrasts:

Lust is: Love is:
1. Hell, a getting 1. Heaven, a giving
2. Selfish, demon-like 2. Devoted, angelic
3. Blasphemous, beastly 3. Prayerful, spiritual
4. Polygamous, adulterous 4. Monogamous, conjugal
5. Thoughtless, rude, coarse 5. Considerate, gentle, refined
6. Petty, cowardly, bullying 6. Noble, brave, protecting
7. Distrustful, secretive, prudish (or obscene) 7. Frank, confiding fully, nude freedom
8. Joking, headstrong, obstinate 8. Studious, obliging, yielding
9. Vain, boastful, domineering 9. Humble, modest, helpful
10. Fault-finding, sarcastic, cruel 10. Praising, excusing, magnanimous
11. Scorns pet names, or uses them irreverently and hypocritically 11. Finds no words tender and holy enough to express deep feelings
12. Self-conscious, stingy, lazy (but sometimes a "hustler" instead) 12. Self-forgetful, generous, industrious (yet not over-ambitious)
13. Regards wife from other women - as their inferior - warm alike to all 13. Regards other women as sisters, through wife's eyes, as though wife always present
14. Eyes much averted, avoids walking or sitting near wife, especially in public 14. Sees eye to eye, greatest pleasure by wife's side or footstool (no "club-man")
15. Unites bodies only briefly and imperfectly because estranges souls 15. Unites soul, mind, then body - physcial delight increases
16. Demands sexual indulgence even when wife is unwilling 16. Waits on wife's disability, never uses slightest compulsion
17. Impetuous, precipitate, physical fury in coition, seminal discharge premature, wife cheated 17. Calm ecstasy, reaching climax togeter, wife's ardor genuine and fully satisfied
18. Aversion follows embrace, often weakness and loathing, usually turns back to back 18. Greater reverence and tenderness follows, cannot turn the back after such pure pleasure
19. Scorns "passive union" as passionless, impossible or harmful 19. Passive union welcomed, frequent, blissful, often preferable
20. Scorns "soul union" as sentimental and absurd - "never saw any soul!" 20. Soul union thrilling even when bodies are miles apart
21. Scorns union with Divine Bridegroom as "too pious and ghostly" 21. Accepts celibacy when best, happy as "Bride of the Lamb"
22. Personal pleasure real object in life, wife made a slave to self-gratification 22. Wife's pleasure the earthly object of life, feeling her delight as his own

Of course not every case of lust would show all these bad characteristics, nor would every true marriage stand all the tests here listed.

Dr.: Let me have that sheet of paper for a day or two of study, and I will promise to recite my lesson well some other evening.

Husband: Take it in welcome, but you will hardly need the caution to keep it off from your office table.

Dr.: I understand. Even sunshine hurts sore eyes. Very few are ready for such discussions as we have had, and those few are hewing out this better way for themselves. But weak eyes are sometimes made strong by getting out of dark rooms, and perhaps we are all sensitive on such subjects for the simple reason that we "love darkness rather than light because our deeds are evil." For one I am ready to face the glare if it does make me wince.

Chapter 3 - Philosophy of Love

Nearly a week passed before we saw the genial doctor again, but he came then before supper was well over, and this time he brought a number of sheets of paper each headed with a question. Here they are, yellow with age and containing also the substance of the answers as I hurriedly wrote them down while we discussed what ought to be said.

Dr.: 1. If only such as love God can be truly married, must those who desire the best possible married life accept first of all the personality of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the vicarious atonement and all the rest?

Husband: He must accept the best, love the best, use the best, act out the best, obey the best, be like the best. But if he is like the best he knows, he will certainly be humble and teachable, like the little child set in the midst by our Lord as a type of all who hope to be of His kingdom. Hence he will never suppose his view of God is complete, or for one moment deny that some other standpoint might afford a better outline of his illimitable perfections. Therefore the "first commandment" - to love God - does not mean to accept any other man's description of Him. But no man can have the joys of true marriage unless he is disposed to treat the Bible, prayer, the church and all religious subjects with respect and candor. Not that theology and the church are above criticism and reform, but that every mind capable of responding to the magnetic thrill of pure love must find or make for itself a theology, must have some God to acknowledge and follow after. So honest and free from prejudice, so hopeful is that mind of attaining clear views of God. But the world sadly needs better teaching upon this subject, for the devout are now in confusion as to the proper object of love. I myself seek more and more to obey Jesus Christ and to see in Him all that I can know of God - the invisible shoreless sea of Being called the Father, made visible, approachable and lovable in the Human manifestation called the Son, while the Holy Spirit is simply His powerful influence everywhere at work - and consciously in hearts that welcome.

Dr.: But you practically say only that a good man will be a good man toward his wife, and that none are truly happy except the good.

Wife: Yes, we have seen that no true marriage can exist between husband and wife except as preceded or accompanied in each by that mental marriage between wisdom and love, between knowing and doing. This is an individual matter, independently worked out, and should be largely accomplished before husband and wife come together. This marriage within the individual mind becomes in its fullness the mystical union between the soul and its divine Bridegroom. It is the receiving of the at-one-ment, loving what God loves.

Husband: Let us dwell a moment longer upon this fundamental truth, this scientific fact, this spiritual principle. In all minds there is the feminine element of love as well as the masculine element of wisdom, and no man is fit to marry a wife till these two elements are daily uniting in the mental life to beget and bring forth noble deeds. Then again every mind, male as well as female, is female toward God, and no person is fit to marry till the mind opens heavenward to receive from God the Bridegroom (as a fond wife welcomes from her husband) the prolific seed of truth for daily fructification of the life unto faithful labor, sacrificing service, helpful uses.

Dr.: 2. Why do you insist on the eternity of marriage?

Husband: I do not insist on the eternity of every marriage, for many marriages are made in hell instead of heaven, but on the eternity of marriage as an institution I am glad to lay the emphasis of repeated assertion. I firmly believe that marriage love is the very life of heaven, while its lack or lust is hell. The hope of increasing union even to eternal ages is a necessity for any true perfection of marriage here upon the earth. Married life will be base in thought and practice if it is believed to end with the grave. The highest ideal and incentive to secure improvement and purification are then sadly lacking, hence the physical must then be exalted and the spiritual degraded or denied - if indeed it is at all known or even dimly comprehended. In such case the marriage-bed can be little more than an animal heat (however refined), and by so much as we are more than animals by that much must mere union of body be disappointing and at last must end in quarrel and estrangement.

Dr.: Is there any hope for those already estranged by quarrels?

Wife: Yes, all hope! But the husband must determine upon two things: first, that he will now deal with his wife's soul and with her body only as her soul becomes fused with his soul; second, that a new courtship shall be begun on these spiritual lines and never be neglected.

Husband: Ignorance of this vast and delightful subject of love has caused many a good man to drift into sensuality and despair. Every act of coition should be an epitome of courtship and marriage. Instead of seeking primarily for physical pleasure, he should long for oneness of mind and heart, and to this end should ask what will bring about the higher union, with its purer delights. Instead of getting he will now begin to think of giving, of giving whatever will most please the best that is in his wife's character. Judicious praise for her best qualities will follow, and she will be often assured that she is more to him than all the world beside. Caresses must also follow if a man really feels his words of praise, and then if not too often requested the conjugal act will be enjoyed by the wife as truly as by the husband - while he will be amply repaid for any restraint and for all his appreciative words. Women are not averse to proper coition, but cannot help abhorring mere carnality. It must always be remembered that there is a circuit in love. Woman is full of love, and when man learns to receive it and return it to her in the true order, she will respond with ardor. The bosom is the seat of marriage love, and the true husband will learn to find great delight in simply clasping the wife in his arms. Though indescribable, there flows from his wife a powerful yet soothing stream of magnetism which nerves the husband to do his best, and at the same time fills him with an inner peace too delicious for words. When this nectar becomes his daily food, it will shield him against similar inflow from any other woman, and will so fully satisfy as to forbid excesses. Yet at the same time this steady reception intensifies a thousand fold the delights of sexual intercourse, for the simple reason that it is a proper preparation for that ultimate act. Let the man then recognize his limitations, and never attempt to give what he does not possess. He must first and gradually become filled with love by receiving it through its only possible and proper channel, his own wife.

Dr.: You seem to find the fabled "fountain of youth" in the bosom of the wife!

Husband: It is there or nowhere! This pure stream of magnetism beats all the electric batteries, drugs, stimulants and patent foods combined for curing disease or weakness. Its full flow develops first of all sexual vigor in both - potency unlimited in husbands, passion in wives to match. And sex power if not squandered means health and longevity. This bosom love gives satisfaction even when it cannot be permitted to descend for full ultimation.

Wife: Let the man also remember that woman cannot give her love till she sees something to love. To the extent that a man is manly, noble, self-sacrificing, clean of heart and mouth, faithful in labor, patient, calm, judicial in mind - to the extent that a man is a man, to that extent his courting is made easy with a woman. His wife's bosom just aches with the pressure of love waiting to flow into his soul whenever he has shown himself particularly kingly. "None but the brave deserve the fair" - morally brave, not mere brutes in physical daring. The wife's stream of love is turned away (or turned back to oppress her own heart, making her selfish and embittered) by the husband's undignified or cowardly speech or act or habit, whereby he belittles or degrades himself - such as the use of profanity, vulgarity, joking and teasing, or using tobacco, whisky, etc.

Dr.: 3. Why do you insist that true love can exist only between two? - what about polygamy?

Wife: For the same reason that we insist on a pair of shears having only two halves!

Husband: Seeing that love with one wife seems confined and especially seeing that the first ardor passes away after the wedding, in a few months or even days, some thoughtful men have seriously advocated polygamy, or at least a quiet concubinage. But this they have done in sheer ignorance of the exquisite delights of true marriage - even when coition is seldom or never possible. The great objection is that polygamy gives us apes, not men. "Arrested development" must be written upon the brow of every man who has not yet risen to the height of loving only one woman. Love for the sex in general is animal. Love for one of the sex is human. Love of the sex must come first, but while it looks broader and larger, it is really only the coarse scaffolding of conjugality, the chaste temple planned by the Creator. So soon as full manhood is capable of receiving from its Divine source the stream of real wisdom, unless perverted the untaught mind of itself seeks one true mate, resolved to shun all others and cleave unto her. Thus is at last formed the real unit and basis of government earthly and heavenly - a perfect one from an imperfect two. As the love of wisdom, moral wisdom, leads inevitably to such union, so does it furnish a reason for the woman's response. She must have wisdom embodied. He must have love embodied. Each is conscious of an indefinable lack which the other makes up.

Wife: The sun's rays give a genial warmth to all things, but if you want to start a fire you must concentrate them with a burning-glass. While we see much so-called love in the world, those souls that have been set on fire of heaven are comparatively few because the men have so rarely refused all rays of love except those concentrated upon them by their own wives.

Dr.: But would not such refusal prove narrowness, and prevent even proper kindness toward an own sister!

Wife: Go study the young lover. Is he less kind, polite, and truly loving toward his sisters and mother because he has now found one woman to love supremely? No, no! A bachelor may be bursting with sexual excitement, but that is not love. In the sight of the truly pure in heart, as the angels look down upon us all, that mere fleshly heat appears as absolute coldness and deadness and hardness of heart - a volcanic crater burned out and desolate, as compared with the hearth-stone of marriage love - but it is possible to transform that desolation into a little Eden, to build a hearth whose smoke shall rise toward heaven as incense from the holiest altar of the patriarchs. But the fire there must be kindled by the burning-glass of conjugality, the love of one man for one woman. Any other fire is the "strange fire" that will cause the earth to open and gulp down all into the pit whence it originated. All thought of familiarity with any other than the lawful partner must be abhorred as the very breath of demons - then heaven begins, then there will be true brotherly love for all women. True love for one woman, while it kills lust, must always bring with it true appreciation of all women and a readiness to protect and serve them chivalrously.

Husband: This point deserves your eloquent plea. "It is the thorough sympathy with one which makes us bountiful to all." "The one beautiful soul is the only door through which we enter into the society of all true and beautiful souls." Many good men are in the shade on this subject, partly because of disappointment in marriage (their own poorly disciplined affections being largely to blame for the disappointment) and it is necessary to repeat again and again that no Eden is possible except by shutting out of every chamber of the mind the vile imaginings and longings that creep in like a troop of grinning harlots. Not for one moment must there be permitted any thought of desire for any except the one wife, no matter how unsatisfactory she may be, and of course all contact with other women (as in crowded cars) will be avoided if possible and will be chaste if unavoidable. Even the touch of hands as in shaking hands will be gentle and brief, and such a thing as the dance will be refused as at the very best a temptation into which the Lord never leads us. Novel-reading and theater-going will be little indulged, and none at all if it is clear that the interest in such things turns upon the questionable morals presented, especially if they stir and influence the very passions we are striving to supplant with something better.

Dr.: You demand too much. Very few are ready to give up so many comparatively harmless pleasures even for the sake of a happier home.

Husband: But they cannot have heaven and hell too, either here or hereafter. If they could once taste the joy of unselfish devotion to a noble wife, no theater could tempt them to spend an evening away from her side, and a dance would seem as it now does to me not only a gilded cheat, but a ridiculous waste of time, energy and money - not only a vestibule of hell, but a place for transforming wise men into monkeys. If the dance can be defended or winked at by easy-going parents as a place for young people to become graceful and familiar with the opposite sex, it is utterly beyond defense for any who have once found their mates. These things are not so harmless as they appear. It is because their advocates are blind with the pleasure they find in them that they can argue for their innocence. So men argue for tobacco, even for whisky, but the best testimony comes from those who have given up such things. A cigar would not have much effect on an old "tobacco-soak," but it makes the young man sick, if it is his first one. So we must judge all pleasure by its effect upon one not yet callous from questionable entertainments. Give an uncontaminated young lady her first "French novel" and if she can be persuaded to finish it, she will blush for many days over the mere thought of its disclosures. Wise a man must be to secure the full confidence and love of a true woman, and that wisdom will include the putting aside of all harmful spices either for mind or body, so promptly as it is shown him that they are injurious - this is the wisdom, moral wisdom, without which no true marriage can exist.

Dr.: 4. Why is friendship essential to this pure marriage?

Husband: Because marriage - any marriage worthy the name - is primarily a union of mind and heart and soul, of common interests and hopes and ambitions, of common beliefs and habits, of common application of truth to everyday life.

Wife: Love must find something for its tendrils to lay hold of, and there must be some points of similarity at the start - the will of each yielding as the married life progresses toward perfect union, until the husband is ready to plan for anything the wife loves, and the wife is ready to love at first sight anything the husband has planned or executed. Each will learn to act even in the absence of the other as if the absent one had asked such acts, and to find the highest delight in so doing, while each will learn to differ only where important to urge the opposite course, and then to do so in all kindness and love - always leaving the other in perfect freedom to choose.

Husband: Wives are endowed with an interior wisdom and with exterior love, while husbands are externally wise and understanding and have their love within. Husbands therefore see from the understanding while wives see from the will. Men reason and reach conclusions slowly and calmly, while women decide quickly in accordance with their affections or impulses. A true woman is a prophet for her husband so long as he honors her by consulting with her, and he is a reckless man who will plunge into any enterprise against which his wife warns him because she feels it will be disastrous. On the other hand, a true man is an unprejudiced judge, and every true wife delights to rest upon the deliberate counsel of her husband. Neither must compel the other, and neither will want to do more than contribute his or her view to the matter in hand. But as a rule the wife will then prefer the husband to decide all weighty matters, and he should accept the responsibility without any "I told you so!" if it turns out as badly as he expected. Any such recrimination simply kills out the prophet that is in his wife's intuitions. It is by such mutual plannings that hearts are drawn together, and herein lies an argument for early marriages - the nest should be built by a pair, not all finished before the wooing of a mate. The customs of society must be so changed as to encourage early marriages.

Dr.: 5. Why is compulsion or a desire to rule so destructive to love?

Wife: For the same reason that the nest should not be built independently, and then the wife brought to it as one more ornament that the man owns. "I have not called you servants, but have called you friends," said Jesus. Friendship must be free, and the more absolutely free any wife feels the more capacity will she have for loving. No wife can respect a petty tyrant, and love cannot exist without respect.

Husband: The "love" that is so common in these days and which ends disastrously so often is really only greed for possession and lust of the flesh. The order of such love is (1) the pursuit and capture, (2) the defense from others - often chivalrous or even bloody but really only animalism, (3) conquest or reduction to obedience. The very courtship often betrays the lack of any true love, for if it fails to secure the prize, the "lover" often murders his lady as a general blows up the city that will not surrender. Contrast now the genuine response to love, all the more beautiful because very rare, which loves the lady it cannot win, loves her for a lifetime, even delights to see her happy even though captured by another mate and gladly cares for their children after both parents are dead. It is the essence of true love to make the object of love happy without any thought of return, and nothing is love which will not endure this test. True love cannot be happy except as it finds opportunity to serve the loved one, and it will invent opportunities where none appear of themselves. Love serves, hate compels.

Wife: Any "arguing" is a strain upon love, if indeed it is not proof of its rupture, and certainly the effort to "always have the last word" is proof of its destruction. All comparisons of characteristics of husband and wife - especially as they reappear in the children and sometimes magnified - or comparisons of labor accomplished are odious, unless they are made to the credit of the other as honest praise. In the decisions each is obliged to make in his or her respective sphere the effort will be more and more apparent that the opinion of the other is considered. This opinion or wish, though unexpressed at the time, will be law just to the degree that union of soul is taking place and freedom is left in making decisions. Joking is often more dangerous than arguing and the wise husband never allows that habit to begin its growth.

Dr.: 6. If progress in married life is by revolution, is there no steady growth?

Wife: Yes, step by step the path upward must be patiently climbed, sometimes falling, sometimes a deep valley of humiliation to descend and cross, but first of all we have to get off the wrong road and get onto the right one.

Husband: Normal progress from the first germ of love might require no revolution, but we all make crooked paths at the first, and must be willing to frankly admit our mistakes and headstrong self-seeking, and humbly ask after the better way. Man without woman is a brilliant but frozen north pole; woman without man is a luxuriant tropical swamp so overgrown that the light of the sun never penetrates; united they make a temperate zone, well lighted, well warmed, and fruitful of all useful things because well ordered, and receptive of the proper combination of light and heat, of wisdom and love. When first married most men blunder by trying to make the wife over into another calm, critical, frigid zone, while some women blunder in expecting their husbands to view all from a like wealth of untutored affections. So comes in unconsciously the critical spirit, sarcastic and domineering. If not foolishly separated by easy divorce, they generally wake up to the necessity for a better basis of marriage, and fully acknowledge that it is not two men or two women that are needed to perfect marriage, but that this perfect unit needs all the masculine and all the feminine elements which each has to contribute.

Dr.: I see. A wife and a hen-pecked husband are really two women, neither happy, and no marriage is there. So a husband and a brow-beaten wife are two men, both poor sticks, both crooked sticks - writhing you might say - and ao marriage is there.

Husband: Exactly so. Some never do wake up to remedy the error, and so go writhing through life in this abnormal style, in such distorted and strained relationship to each other, when a little honest talk over the matter, with some confession and forgiveness on both sides, would enable them to start over again with far better prospect of success than any can boast immediately after marriage. It is usually not for some time after marriage that internal differences appear, and then comes the strain upon the bond of wedlock. Then it is that such disclosures are made as often compel one or both to admit the lack of any real harmony. Now they have simply to try to create this, or if that is impossible, to draw as near together as they can by means of less interior principles. Religion is the most internal bond, while love of children (and care of them mutually entered into) perhaps comes next, but personal attentions and solicitude for the welfare of the other will do much to restore affections that have cooled.

Dr.: 7. Then your new views of marriage do not entertain a thought of divorce?

Husband: One cause only, adultery, is sufficient for divorce, according to our Lord, and it is possible to become so spiritual as to forgive even adultery. When internal differences appear and seem eternally disjunctive, then it is not for either to dream of "elective affinity," and long to make one more attempt at mating. It is more than likely that as great differences would be found with the widest possible choice. It is rather for each to consider whether there are not evils of life to be rooted out in order to make the present union as perfect as any other could hope to become. Let them go read the realistic poems "Betsey and I are out" and "How Betsey and I made up." Then let them study the Bible and pray awhile for a good look at their own hearts, and for grace to weigh their partner at his or her real interior worth. As that poem-picture shows, the drifting apart comes largely from restraining any outward effort to cling together, comes of suppressing the manifestation of affection by caress or tender words - because these things seem to some weak and silly in any but lovers - so that a great overturning is needed to prove to each other that the affections are still warm and loyal, though hidden away and shut in by an outward stolidity or studied superiority and indifference to such trifles.

Wife: All this restraint I now know is proof of fear and pride and self-love. One can praise and pet another, as they can also point out a fault in another, without fear or thought of self, if only there is a deep and full love. And then both praise and blame will be taken as proof of love - yet not unless expressed in loving terms and tones.

Husband: Insanity, drunkenness, or some terrible diseases like cancer, may necessitate separation from bed or from the house, and even for life, but they give no ground for divorce.

Dr.: If in such cases the passions are so strong as to compel gratification with another, have you nothing to offer but stern prohibition?

Husband: I can only say that in such cases the animal rules and not the man. Are there no Josephs in our day? The best trainers of athletes prohibit, and they have to do with young men of strongest passions. Abnormal and ungovernable passions are not strong passions necessarily, but are rather to be found in weak and nervous men. Direct your patient to hard muscular labor - at least to the full extent of his strength - on a spare diet (excluding flesh food, oysters, honey and most sweets, tea, coffee, tobacco, and everything containing alcohol), order him to sleep on a hard bed and to rise very early in the morning, then even without medicine he will soon subjugate the dog-nature within him. Our very dogs can be tamed of their ferocity, as everybody knows, by refusing them any flesh - always more a stimulant than a food. If however a man is determined to be nothing but a dog, and a savage one at that, he will not give up these things, for "his god is his belly." Still some ignorantly fire their passions with mustard and pepper and onions and pork and wine, sleep on the softest beds (even the disease-preserving feathers, which should especially never be put under anybody's head when cotton makes so much cooler pillows), and then take an extra nap or two in the morning for the very reason that it affords a voluptuous pleasure - yet with all such steady firing of their passions they wonder why it is they cannot keep them cool and under control. As well expect to control an unbroken colt with one hand while steadily applying the whip with the other. Of course there is a large class also who crave and use every stimulating thing they can find for the very purpose of increasing the grossest of passions, but it is not worth while to consider them, for our doctrine of a high spiritual pleasure offered them would generally be simply "pearls cast before swine."

Dr.: All these hygienic palliatives and many more - including the cold sponge bath every morning - I have urged, and with some they all seem to amount to nothing. In such cases I have then advised them to indulge but only moderately, and to keep to one woman - looking forward to a happy marriage as soon as possible - for I believe that far less harm is done then both to the man and to society than by roving about.

Husband: There are no doubt different degrees of wickedness in hell itself, and you may be doing some good by keeping such men from plunging into the deepest hell, but it is most important to see clearly and constantly that all this is hell - every grade of animalism without or within wedlock. But now does not this failure in some cases of all physical means for cooling the passions, prove to you that the real battleground is the mind? Only as a man instantly, like a sentinel, challenges upon the very threshold of his mind every thought of unhallowed desire - no matter how much like angel robes may appear its plausible garb - only as he casts out every such cheat and temptation before his mind can be debaucbed, only so can he hope to be master of himself and able to stand proof against any temptation that may later appear in the bodily form of woman.

Dr.: Yes, I am sure that every man has the power to keep himself pure, but the difficulty is to get their weak will to stop dallying with such seductive thoughts. They are not adepts at introspection, and do not seem to think anything wrong but actions. Then they protest that it is utterly impossible for them - born so full of passion - to choke back the libidinous imaginings, since these are their very life, fill their dreams, etc.

Husband: According to their method it is not possible, but dreams are generally nothing except a mirror of our regular trains of thought, and if we allow ourselves to imagine the delights of sin during the day, we must expect nothing but dreams of swinish joy all night - until it shall all culminate in one eternal fevered dream of like, grossness, a greed forever unappeasable, the "fire that is not quenched," the very torment of hell.

Chapter 4 - Love's Descent To Physical Plane

Dr.: 8. But now did I understand you that in wedlock the physical pleasure can be restored? If you can really give back to the jaded and half-paralyzed their potency, virility and passion of youth, your spiritual temple will soon be crowded, and nine-tenths of the sins against marriage vows will cease.

Husband: God made this pleasure, not I. He made it to be the sum and climax of all other pleasures, for the entire five senses enter (or should be permitted to enter) into this conjugal bliss. For this reason it should be enjoyed when possible with the noon-day sun flooding the chamber, and with never a shred of clothing between the godlike forms - "the human form divine!" How speedily would the resolve and agreement to so treat each other - with perfect familiarity, complete reverence, delicious tenderness - remove all the old shame and fear of each other! How soon would vanish the nervous haste (which means lust not love), and all of the impurity of thought and act, so long fostered by the darkness of the hour, by reserve and concealment. "Ye love darkness rather than light because your deeds are evil," is as true in married life as in religious and ecclesiastical. God never dulls these delights of wedlock, and it is always probable that some wrong has been committed if the pleasure does become dull before old age. If pleasure is diminishing because of wrong use, it may be restored by right use - provided no incurable disease has resulted. I do not speak now of physical wrong so much as of spiritual, or rather I would make clear that the use of any organ (even the eye) for merely physical pleasure is an abuse of it. If a man who receives only a coarse pleasure from the sex embrace and less of that than he once felt thrilled with, whether the decrease is due to his own half-paralyzed nerves or to his wife's reluctance, disgust or lack of passion, - if any man who is not sure he is gaining the utmost satisfaction from the marriage bed will call a halt and make diligent effort to test heaven's order in this matter, such a man will soon learn whether I am right. After making his own those most exquisite delights of heaven, he will then look back upon his present attempts at pleasure and know all to be mere groveling, and unsatisfying because only the carnal husks of love.

Dr.: Pray make clear to me that high order once more, and I will guarantee it shall be tested by several inside a week.

Husband: A flaming sword swings every way at the gate of this new Eden. Not many dare attempt an entrance by first treading on the head of the serpent of lust which made the sword necessary. Then if any can be induced to make a honest battle for supremacy over the flesh, the test requires more than a week. A year is none too long time to wait for the results. Here is the true order in a nutshell: Every act of sex union should be an epitome or miniature of courtship and marriage. If there is haste, precipitancy, lack of the preliminary fusing of the mind and soul, then the order of heaven is disregarded, there is an attempt to snatch heaven (not win it), and missing it by an inch, the fall is even into hell.

Dr.: That is, a man then tries to eat his cake before it is baked, and the result is the whole mass sticks in his throat and soon ends in nausea and dyspepsia and loss of appetite.

Husband: Exactly. He has ignored the fact that he is a man, has descended to the plane of the dog, and yet cannot understand why he is not satisfled with that sort of a life - forgetting that if he acts like a dog, he must expect only a dog's delights. But heaven's order requires the whole of a man's life, includes far more than considerate treatment of a man's wife simply at these supreme moments. The husband must at all times be gentle, brave, industrious and all that goes to make up a noble man. True love is never the fruit of an hour's courtship. "Love at first sight" often turns to hate on second sight. At best love must have long gradual growth. The wife must be photographed in the heart, until no important step is ever taken without at least a good mental look into her eyes. This is why I said your patients had better delay their reports for a full year. The fact is, not one in ten will give this true order of their being any fair trial, because it seems too poetic, or too religious, or too humiliating for a fair and honest start. Then half who do attempt reform will drop back into old ways, because they begin from the low motive of simple desire for greater physical gratification. Only a few men in a thousand are wise in the sense of really desiring to live morally right, no matter what pleasure of sense may have to wait.

Dr.: This I suppose is the reason why young women sometimes say to their lovers, "I will be your sister, but I cannot be your wife." Their intuitive prophesy bids them beware the sensualist that comes to them in the form of a lover.

Husband: Yes, but if such maidens only themselves knew what marriage is, they might make those same sensualists over into angels and then marry them. Or if they would give plain reasons for final rejection, such suitors before approaching other young women would generally improve their manner of courtship and often reform their whole view of marriage.

Dr.: But how make angels of them? Here is a new question before us, yet I want a little more explicit statement first in regard to the restoration of sex passion in women and virility in men.

Husband: Well then, I said right use tends to restore what wrong use destroyed. By this I meant, put soul into the coitive act. Less frequent indulgence for a time is commonly advisable in order to learn self-control. This self-control should then always keep back any manifestation of physical desire, except as there can first be summoned some true appreciation of the wife strong enough to compel tender words or caresses or both together - not tumultuously expressed but calmly, though with yearning if not tears in eyes or voice, tears of delight of gratitude and of sympathy. The low loving tone and tender reverent touch were what the maiden received at first, and they are what the wife has a right to expect always. These have a power over her heart and thus over her body which is irresistible if properly applied.

Dr.: Your self-restraint is not quite so ascetic as the monks and nuns once endured, nor so prohibitive as that still inculcated by some reformers.

Husband: The social purity workers of today often do more harm than good by taking the wrong viewpoint. Restraint secured by slander of the sex function, through shame over this normal appetite, has merely turned the spendthrift into a miser, both equally a failure because both misusing the sacred trust of virility. The flesh is not vile in itself, nor a mere nothingness as some idealists teach. Coition is as pure an act as drinking a glass of milk - but only when wholly free from shame, wholly in accord with law and order both natural and spiritual. The flesh is not the opposite but the servant of the spirit or must be made its servant to gain life's full joys. The only restraint or "crucifixion" I urge is the restraint of bit and reins to the colt. Don't kill the colt because he is frisky, nor starve him into moving like an old cow, but train him to perfect obedience to your higher will. Don't kill the serpent, but remove its fangs - yea, "take it by the tail, and it shall become a staff in thine hand," a powerful help over life's rough road. Don't hate and despise yourself because sexual passion sometimes sweeps over you - meditating suicide as relief from unappeasable torment - begging the Lord in your ignorance or cowardice to kill out this powerful appetite, but rather thank Him for such proof that you are a man, and ask of Him wisdom and strength to control this mighty power and guide it into proper channels for its orderly manifestation.

Wife: "Work up your passion into poems!" exclaims one author. And is not superb sexuality - "a full head of steam" - needed for success in any department of life's work! All literature, music, art, inventions, the world's vast commerce, all the grand achievements of genius spring out of the desires, affections, passions of men. Even war itself is a fruit of perverted passion, and the struggle between rich and poor for possession of earth's bounty arises from the same source, and is likely to wax worse and worse until this abnormal passion, this insane sexuality is cured.

Husband: And it will never be cured by mere repression. As well stand on the beach in a storm, broom in hand, and try to push back the ocean's roaring waves! If we cannot find the true order of the Creator written in our members, for the proper ultimation or expression of this tremendous inflow of mating power from Him, then we must continue to be overwhelmed by it - driven as slaves or doomed victims before the serpent of sensuality. We cannot run away from ourselves, cannot escape life with all its functions and responsibilities, cannot turn our eyes or mind away from the beauty of woman which the Lord made to charm and attract us - even though we know that "he that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already with her in his heart."

Wife:

"Not for beauty's sake is beauty.
Not to charm the wondering eye
With an idle show of splendor
Soon to fade away and die,
But a token and a promise
Of a blessing hid within -
Good immortal, which the patient
And the wise shall find and win."

Husband: We shall be always seeking this "blessing hid within" all the pleasures of sense, if we are "wise and patient," seeking ever the soul of things, even "eating and drinking to the glory of God" - knowing that unless we "eat the flesh" (goodness) and "drink the blood" (truth) of the Lord, we have no true life in us - striving indeed to eat material food so calmly and thankfully and dependently that the real manhood may be nourished with wisdom and goodness at the same time. The spiritual man, then, will feel no shame in admiring the beauty of woman, because he feels no lust, and that because he looks beyond surface beauty to the beautiful soul "hid within" - even when hidden under gross sensuality - looks above and beyond to the beauty of the Heavenly Bride, "the Lamb's wife," mirrored so imperfectly even in the loveliest woman. Unsatisfied desire is of course the very worst torment of hell, which the old furious conjunction satisfied only to satiate or overwhelm for a time and then stimulate to more furious demands than ever - till the conjugal life of many otherwise godly people is one series of sexual sprees alternating with periods of rest from exhaustion - but this new ultimation of love - quiet conjunction of the organs of sex, an internal caress - satisfies while it also calms, leaving desire always at full vigor yet always abundantly satisfied. Toward his wife such a man, who has conquered the flesh and learned how to rule his own spirit, will be very free and demonstrative, though perfectly considerate and dignified. Bosom will not merely be pressed to bosom, but the breasts will be fondled and kissed idolized as the very fountain of wifely affection. The beauty of the wife's breasts as well as of her face and figure will be often mentioned in emphatic praise, and the womb itself will be sometimes sealed through hours of sleep by the broad palm of the devoted husband - reverently clasped as the holy of holies whence issues forth all being, yet familiarly touched because lasciviousness is now gone and with it all the shame it produced. Every woman has some elements of beauty, and it is no more foolish or effeminate for a man to be often praising her beauty (resulting from love) than it is for that same man to expect the wife's praise for his brawn or brain. It is the order of nature, yes the law of God, for, "When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business; but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he has taken." (Deut. 24:5)

Wife: Pity it is that the slavery of modern business life scarcely allows the average man to be at home enough to get acquainted with his own family. Off before the little ones are out of bed, and seldom returning from the city till they are in bed again, mechanic and merchant alike are with their children only on Sunday. And the lonesome wives of wealthy men are sometimes starved into friendship for coachman or chef.

Husband: Woman's love must be kept welling up by constant reception of it on the part of the husband, else it will become choked and dwindle away - or find some other outlet! It is these appreciative words and caresses which keep her love outpouring and in turn keep her bosom so well developed that it can be praised - in fact keep her whole body well and vigorous. The organs of sex are the most vital, wonderful and beautiful of all nature's treasures, and to shut our eyes to them and try to ignore them is not to make ourselves pure, but it is to help destroy the organs themselves. Abuse must be changed into pure and proper use - not into disuse and its resulting death. Partial sexual suicide would be the proper verdict upon many a saintly (?) dyspeptic. When husbands exalt the womb into its true position in their estimation and treatment, then few wives will be found with unhealthy discharges therefrom. (Those catarrhs, so prevalent and now often neglected to the poisoning of the whole system of husband as well as wife, will then at least be religiously syringed away from this citadel of woman's life. This cleansing will not only sweeten the whole system - mental and moral as well as physical - but will in particular tone up the womb itself so as to make the wife eager to welcome the marriage embrace, as she should properly always be ready.) If with all such tender endearments the wife still objects to coition or even to the passive union of the sexual organs, her objections must be respected, and the husband must be so fully master of himself as to accept even a flat refusal cheerfully, knowing that such treatment will eventually win if anything can. Besides he must not thus caress with the one selfish object in view every time. He must delight to give the pleasure of such fondling even when he knows he must deny his own desire. He must be a lover always. He must study to become the sincere lover who finds his highest delight in seeing the loved one happy, and who will never allow gratification to his own appetite unless pleasure can beyond all question be given to his wife at the same time. He must be a lover not only in bed, but up and dressed, when at work as well as when off duty. Faithful service will fill every day, and all for the love of her who is his life. Then instead of spending his evenings away from home, he will cut off club and companions for the most part in order to sit at his wife's feet to read or sing or study. He will even find in her disabilities occasions for thankfulness because they give him greater opportunity to minister to her wants.

Dr.: Well, I must declare that if you had such ideal husbands, there would surely be fewer wives broken down. I am sure also the response to that sort of steady courtship would be equally constant, and that doctors would hear no more about the passionlessness of women. I can testify to the great value of the syringe, and would add that the water should have a small spoon of salt stirred into it and be of an agreeable warmth. This simple treatment is often all that is needed to cure sterility - by removing the acrid secretions - and prepare for the conception of a healthy child. But now how about the failing powers of men?

Husband: Virility or potency would be at once and greatly increased by both the restraint and by the life-long courtship. Chivalrous wooing not only develops the maiden into a wife, the nerveless wife into a magnetic and luscious wife, but makes a true knight of the suitor, a nobleman of him. Further than that, coition with little or no delight on the part of the wife is slow suicide for the husband. If this calmer approach, with real love for her character, can be brought about so fully as to restore the passion of the wife, then every embrace will be medicine and tonic. Any embrace which is known to be unwelcome to the wife can be only a yielding to the annual and hence an embrace of lust. The embrace of lust kills, while the embrace of love restores life. The effect in either case may be slow in manifestation, but it is as sure as law is law and admits of no exception. The man who thinks his health improving because he is now magnetised by strange bosoms will surely see the day when he must admit that he was simply burning up - and how many burned out fires smoulder down into darkness every year! On the other hand the man who learns to love, with a self-sacrificing, spiritual love, will find his health gradually improving, and he will add years to his peaceful pilgrimage here on earth. Potency, virile power, may be increased by this method even down to old age. The right use of this power develops it wonderfully - i. e., the soul use - then again by moderation in order to greater service the very essence of love is stored up in the reservoir of the mind. Love gives and serves. Therefore the power of loving is exactly equal to the faithful performance of service to mankind. According as a man delights to be of some use in the world so is his ability in conjugal union. According also to his desire to serve the world by the propagation of helpful truths, so is his desire for children and his masculine power to beget them. Let any who doubt this look about for the proof, which is most abundant, and especially let them devote themselves with renewed energy to some useful occupation, always sharing every new truth with all around, and they will find convincing proof in the great increase of their own virility. God never meant lazy men or stingy men to snatch the golden apple of love. Boast their pleasures as much as they please, they have been content with the mere husks of love's rewards - never dreaming there could be anything better. These husks, with such as boast their ability to serve several women, are not merely the veriest counterfeit of conjugal felicities, but may be correctly described as husks turned mouldy, an uprooting of the food of decay. As well might the oyster, stuck fast in his oozy bed, boast more constant gratification of appetite than the lark who spends so much time trilling out his soul as into the very face of the Infinite! Quality counts more than quantity. The smallest angel is better than the biggest beast. One hour of true wedded bliss is worth more than a long life of steady indulgence in sensualism.

Chapter 5 - Woman's Queenly Rule

Dr.: The power of woman over man, what about that? Is her queenship mere poetry?

Husband: A full treatise is needed to explain it, but at the risk of being misunderstood I will say a little. Three or four words embody my light on this subject, viz: concentration, responsiveness, frankness, and expectation or confidence. The woman has the power to nauseate the man's love for her just so far as it is mere lust, and to call forth the germ of true love which lies buried in him beneath the ashes of that volcano.

The first word, concentration, means that love originates with the woman, and that so fully as she fixes upon one man all her affections (refusing to consider any other as a possible mate) so speedily will that warming infiuence manifest itself, so surely will he be drawn to her side. She is born a queen but she must learn how to ascend her throne. She need never utter a loving word or in any manner betray her effort to "catch" a husband, for it is chiefly a spiritual process, and sometimes even the woman is unconscious of exercising any such choice. Let young women learn the secret of laying hold of the inner manhood, the life ambition, the grand purpose, the highest ideals of a man, and then no mere butterfly of a flirt can ever take him away. This is acting like Mary who received the high praise, "She hath chosen the good part that shall not be taken away from her" - that is, the soul and not the mere body to which alone the multitude of Marthas know how to cater. When women take as much pride in their power to love - their ability to sympathise and identify themselves with the deep longings of an honest man - as they now take pleasure in dress and confections and "going somewhere" to be admired and flattered and humored, then marriages will be more numerous and divorce be done away. When a young man's soul is thus grasped and drawn out, his feet will not be slow to follow the young woman who has learned to practise that priceless womanly art.

The second word, responsiveness, means that she must be ready to accept modest advances on the part of the man with proper heartiness, yet not with so much eagerness as to make him hold her cheap and common - a mere beggar. Then there must be instant discrimination, and a correct judgment of motives and what is proper between lovers. This will make it easy for true love to grow, while it will restrain the fleshly and impure. The girl who accepts familiarities or rude caresses from her lover is lost. Yet she could restrain his carnality with such tact and dignity as to transform it into reverence and true love for her, or she may allow anger or force to so repel as to either drive him away or make him determined to conquer if it mean the death of both. Thus the wife also must always strive to so gently brush aside mere sensuality and so tactfully call forth the hidden nobility of the husband that he will be ever advancing almost unconsciously to higher planes of wisdom, and will soon approach her only at his best and with utmost consideration for her wishes and her pleasure.

The third word, frankness, helps here very greatly. Lovers are always misunderstanding each other and suffering according to the depth of their love because of fancied slights. It may not be best for a young woman to tell a man how much she loves him, but it is a good thing for her to tell him what qualities in him (or in any man) she likes and what she dislikes. She could then tell by his effort at improvement how much he was willing to sacrifice for her sake. And this growing freedom between the two, would lead to the laying of true foundations for married life - or none at all. Even a full talk occasionally on marriage and their ideals and hopes for that state, would open hearts wonderfully and show whether any real soul-union were possible. Books on this subject ought to be read with care, if not together at least with mutual purpose to find out and follow the best rules of wedlock. Each ought especially to "search the Scriptures" (with concordance) for light on matters of sex. Pastors, physicians, parents and any wise and happy married friends should be consulted freely and in full confidence by all young married people - or those about to marry - not to obey slavishly, but to learn all possible from the experience of others, so making servants of them.

The fourth word, confidence or expectation, means that the woman should believe that the germ of pure love is at least latent in her lover, and capable of developing him into the hero she wants for a husband. This expectation, if clung unto with tenacity and patience all her life, will make him at last all she demands. In other words, every woman is a sculptor, commissioned of heaven to chisel a nobleman, out of an exceedingly rough specimen, to make an angel out of a beast. This she begins to do almost miraculously during courtship and she should continue the grand work all her life - never admitting defeat. Hence all that I have said of the maiden applies with double force to the wife. It is this freedom with which she rests upon her husband that enables her to evolve more and more his highest nature and keep down his basest. God implants the germ alike of manhood and conjugality, but to the wife is entrusted the glorious responsibility of developing that germ. If his carnal propensities are proving his master and seem the only thing that draw him toward her, she will cool these by a little love-making of her own. She will even hug and kiss him till he is glad to escape, rather than allow herself to be no more than a pander to his passion. Such caresses from her will surely cool this sort of love, and may even go so far as to drive him away from her forever. But she will always stop short of this result, far short of it, for she has an intuitive perception of his state which enables her to judge accurately what is needed, and apply her influences with great nicety. If he has at first only a feeble spiritual love that can respond, and he seems in danger of cooling permanently toward her, she will next conceal and feign indifference, "fight shy," or "play coy," till he revives and pursues after her with love upon the old animal plane. Yet it will not be quite the same, for at every new effort to appeal to the higher motives within him, the marriage must be elevated somewhat - until the freedom of perfect love is at last attained.

Dr.: 9. Would you not have so many children as to break down the wife? This great freedom in love, and especially the increased passion of the woman and potency of the man must produce larger families, and it is the diseases consequent upon child-bearing that give me most of my practice.

Wife: No children at all need be borne in that state of perfect love. Complete satisfaction for both is then attained with no conception possible except as mutually desired. But can you imagine such a blissful marriage that would not be very prolific from choice! When a wife loves her husband with true devotion she is eager to bless the world with new copies of the character she idolizes - reveres because she perceives the ideal "hid within," and is working daily to develop it so that the world at large must also recognize and pay homage.

Husband: The children would be many more than the average American family boasts in these degenerate days, but the diseases would not be a fraction of those now afflicting our women. It is a great mistake to chatge the numerous female disorders upon child-bearing. They are due to wrong sexual conduct all 'round, on the part of parents and grandparents as much as of the individuals themselves. Love is the life of the organs of sex, as truly as sunshine is the life of the plant, and if my assertion is true that the world now sees but here and there a spot of real love, what can we expect but the diseases consequent upon the shutting out of this sunshine of the heart and home? Every unhealthful stirring ot the affections makes its suicidal scar upon those central and chief organs of affection. No matter who argues for the harmlessness of certain amusements which are enjoyed chiefly because the affections are called into activity, they do deaden the finer moral sensibilities without fail, and they draw upon the life-blood or - to speak more scientifically and medically - they engorge and congest those life-centers, the delicate organs of sex, which ought never to be so flooded and pressed except with the purpose of immediate performance of their legitimate functions. For all such false excitement is sham life, teasing, exasperating and at last either half-paralyzing the organs and the brain and all the life-force, or throwing all into a sort of chronic nervous fever. This is not a religious argument, but a sad and very common fact of science which should not merely prohibit most novels, theater and dances, but also do away with long courtships - for it is seldom possible to keep such long familiarity upon the mere friendship plane, with no affections descending (at least in thought) "below the belt." No, it is not child-bearing that deforms our mothers. It is the general unhealthfulness of our moral atmosphere, with its ignorant animalism - as animal and often as ignorant in so-called "cultured circles," as among the uneducated - it is this miasma that, enclosing us all as in a poisonous London fog, shuts out the true sunlight of heaven and home - till many deny the personality and even the existence of God. Why sir, be as much ashamed of your nose as some are of the sex organs, and in a few years it would atrophy and have to be propped up with some patent support!

Wife: Oh, for more beautiful women! Oh, for mothers so filled with love, with the perfect love which casts out fear, that beauties should become common and no longer spoiled and vain - no longer dependent on costly dresses and ornaments, and therefore finding ample time for babies and for the soul refreshment of their husbands. (Holland's poem, "Mistress of the Manse," enforced this idea beautifully.) Woman's beauty is a magnet to draw men to her. It should always be the outward flowering of an inner beauty far more powerful to draw upward the husband she has chosen till he is joined to her by a better tie than admiration for the mere beauty of the flesh.

"The works of God are fair for naught.
Unless our eyes in seeing
See hidden in the thing the thought
That animates its being."

"That outward form is not the whole,
But every part is moulded
To image forth an inward soul.
That dimly is unfolded."

When woman is thus genuinely beautiful in character - sweet and winsome - the husband will femain true and constant even when the beauty and magnetism of the flesh have faded away.

Husband: Where real love is, there child-bearing seldom drags but often builds up and strengthens weak constitutions. Now do not enumerate exceptions too hastily. External politeness between married people, the use of many tender phrases and pet names, may appear absolute proof of great love, when in fact they are only a garment put on in company to conceal the deepest hatred and contempt. Unwelcome tasks are proverbially wearing, while duty performed with eagerness and delight leaves mind and body the more vigorous. Thus it is that a wife who deeply loves her husband will delight to bear him many children, and will generally find herself able to endure more and more the care of an increasing family - while her selfish and barren sister can scarcely take care of herself and her curtained and quiet rooms. No sir! God said "Be fruitful! and multiply! and fill the earth!" And it is not He who curses those who obey. It is the devil who applies the curse - demons of lust - if there is any curse connected with this beautiful order of nature, or command of God - whichever you prefer.

Dr.: But suppose the parents are consumptive or have become from some other cause than child-bearing, utterly unfit for the responsibilities of parentage. Many are too poor to provide properly for any child, and must such accept the burden of large families? Have you no method of limiting population?

Husband: Poor and puny children are better than none, for they should be begotten for heaven as well as for earth, but it is not wrong to limit the number of children when, though they really are desired, substantial reasons nevertheless forbid further increase - reasons that would ever be uttered before the bar of God. Poverty is a poor excuse, because charity or adoption will even in our crooked times provide for all that are born. In fact this plea is seldom urged except by those who have set their ambition to live in some particular style - not always high but none the less exacting and set by the exactions of arbitrary custom rather than by the real necessities of life. As to the methods of preventing conception, I dare accept none of them except the one of abstinence.

Dr.: You mean of course abstinence merely during the period of menstruation - adding the three days previous to the flow and the ten days after it has ceased. And it is true that conception very seldom takes place except in those two weeks or more during which the germ is present, but does not this permission of periodic abstinence conflict with your spiritual philosophy? If coition is ever allowed except for the purpose of begetting children is it not somewhat carnal?

Chapter 6 - Love's Best Ultimation

Husband: Not any more sensual than when conception is desired, provided love is its origin and object. Passive union is always abundantly satisfactory, when once the spirit has trained the flesh till it is under perfect control, but habitual enjoyment of this calm, dreamy ecstacy, in quiet physical conjunction, does not forbid climax or orgasm whenever both prefer. (Any reader who needs still more explicit application of these principles to his or her peculiar conditions, is at liberty to write the author - address in back. Many pages were written but omitted from this book, because the general public is not yet prepared to accept the full light - secrets of sex which physicians and specialists have discovered by long experience.) Coition may be very pure and spiritual even though conception is prevented by confining it to that portion of the month most remote from the menses, for the semen has another use to perform than that of impregnation. It is not a vile excretion as some imagine, but is the purest and most vital fluid of the body, and may be said to contain the soul of the husband. If this soul-bearing fluid begets a child it has performed one of its holy offices, but if no conception takes place there is no waste - unless it is washed away as something unclean - for it enters into the life of the wife as truly as milk into the life of the babe. It is by means of this most precious elixir that the maiden finds herself rapidly becoming "one flesh" with her husband. The true wife longs to receive this pure stream from the inner life of the husband because she feels a want, a soul hunger, thereby supplied. Yet she could not explain why satisfaction comes with its abundance, and you medical men will probably laugh at this assertion as utterly beyond your slow-going chemistry.

Dr.: I should certainly be compelled to lay this point upon the table for the present, labelling it "poetic," but the poets have often proved good prophets to lead forward even our slower science. Your kind of poetry certainly does not seem to let go of the physical! And I am wondering why you do not urge men to turn away from the flesh - curbing their passions so strongly that they can give their whole attention to business, to culture, to other pleasures besides those of sex - in a word to forget or ignore this distinction of male and female. Of course my work forbids this, but you seem to be trespassing on my domain. Stick to the morals of sex in your reform ideas, and let us doctors look after the flesh!

Husband: Ah! it would be much more pleasant to follow your advice. But the trouble is you doctors do not look after the flesh until it is too late to save it - or at least its weakness and suffering - and the worst of it is that the abuse of the flesh means sin of the soul. This abuse must be clearly shown or the sin of the soul will not be admitted. Spiritual death precedes death of the body in most cases. I cannot talk right sex conduct effectively without studying the full laws of sex life, and then advocating a pure and full expression of the laws discovered.

Dr.: But why do you advocate passive conjunction and then defend so earnestly the old legalised riot?

Husband: I do not defend that. Neither can I go to the extreme of many reformers who allow connection for procreation only. For their dictum is calling unclean "that which God hath cleansed" - or will cleanse for any man who is willing to consecrate even the sex impulse to His service. While I urge a calm, quiet conjunction, I do not declare that nothing can be pure except that. On the other hand I would rebuke any conjunction which is so disorderly as not to be an outgrowth and honest expression of soul union, of pure love and mutual desire - to be manifested by the wife before any physical union is permissible. While she is not to independently assert a right and defend it, the husband is bound to express love only in a manner acceptable to her who is the source of his love - provided it is real love.

Dr.: I must repeat that men no doubt need your ideas on the spiritual nature of marriage. But why are you so solicitous about the physical expression of love? - or ultimation as you like to call it?

Wife: Expression is one of the chief studies in all schools - though sometimes called "art" simply. It is the study of the music teacher as well as elocutionist, of the orator, singer - even of the hostess and guest of honor - this art of expressing the feelings and thoughts of the soul. Shall there be rules of etiquette but none of sexual etiquette? Shall we demand ethical conduct of our citizens out of doors, and yet leave home ethics to each man's ungovernable passion? If there is a science of expression for art, oratory or music, surely there must be a science of expression for love - the mother of all art, oratory and music.

Husband: And though we must not imagine have yet discovered a fraction of the principles of this science, we must be pushing that investigation, and also urging the use of the few principles already yielding results far superior to the old blundering. Furthermore, we can cultivate the soul only as we do curb and guide its expression or outward ultimation. The Lord develops the internal man or soul, but He is able to do this only as we avoid the sins and mistakes of the external - only as we promptly put into practise every law of right conduct or expression that we can learn from anybody's lips or pen.

Chapter 7 - Better Births

Dr.: Well now, perhaps you can look deeper than I and tell your prospective spiritual husbands how to control the sex of their children. I know a man with several girls who would give a small fortune to know how to bring a boy into the world.

Husband: I can only say that I believe we have so controlled the sex in every instance, knowing before its birth what the child would be and having a name waiting for the advent. I believe it will work in all cases, though many parents are too careless in their observations and records to be reliable proof for or against any theory. It is very simple. Connection just before the menses will produce a boy, several days after the flow will produce a girl. But I am more interested to urge this calmer conjunction, so that children may be born under the best possible circumstances. Stirpiculture or eugenics, the science of being well born, interests me greatly. But what a pity these good names have been appropriated and polluted by "free-love" societies - which have little desire to give birth to any children!

Dr.: You have touched upon heredity once or twice before. Have you any testimony to give upon that score!

Husband: Merely this: I had read something of it, but did not heed the warnings, for the simple reason that I felt it too poetic for any practical attention or use. Now I know that all is true. Look if you please at our younger children and compare them with the first three. The younger have bigger brains, and stronger bodies, are better looking and quicker to learn - in short are every way superior. This difference could be accounted for in part by our better health and closer union, but is due more to the better treatment the mother received during the period of gestation, and still more to the proper division of her time between books and recreation and labor. Music, art and poetry were much before her mind, and when the children are older, we expect great results from this prenatal training. If all husbands would resolve to conquer the flesh or die - adopting this passive union as a means - then procreation could easily be changed from our present haphazard methods, which largely produces "scrub stock," incorrigible children, prone to all iniquity, all unwelcome or at least uninvited - changed in method so as to transmit the highest qualities and powers to the offspring, because always conceived when both parents were at their best. "Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me!" - most of us would exclaim if we knew our entire history. "Mistakes" we should have to label ourselves, and it is a wonder that the world is half as good as it is with so blundering a beginning for all. If parents cared as much for their descendants as the farmer does for good cows and hogs, they would call a halt and say as he does: "It costs as much to feed a runt as it does a blooded animal." They would then set at work deliberately to become the progenitors of giants of brain and brawn, would take for their ambition to be called the father and mother of a Milton or Mendelssohn, a Webster or Beecher, a Longfellow or Lincoln, an Agassiz or Edison. Will not you help urge all young couples to study up the laws of heredity and transmission of faculty so as to regenerate the world by this greatest of all professions, maternity - this "borning better babies?"

Dr.: I should be glad to drop some hints as I go, but people are very sensitive on these subjects and skeptical as well. Then I am so rushed to take care of their "little runts," I am liable to forget that I might have urged their parents to produce genuises and saints instead. I wish I knew of some good little book of rules for this prenatal training of children. Of course I could teach in general that every child has a right to be begotten when both parents are in their best physical and mental condition. That the mother should be kept throughout the period of gestation or pregnancy in a happy state of mind - free from fear or worriment or anger - with regular proper exercise, but not so much labor as to produce fatigue. Then I know of course that if she gives great attention all this nine months to music she will be quite sure to have a born musician for a child; if to oratory, an orator; if to art, an artist; if to machinery, an inventor, etc., etc. Some scientists now question, however, whether it is not education and environment that make the man rather than any of these influences before birth.

Husband: Yes, there are some who call themselves scientists who even doubt that the earth is a globe, and offer very "scientific" arguments to disprove our knowledge on that subject. No parent ever doubts the laws of heredity or prenatal influence who has reared a large family of children who differ greatly, provided they can recall the conditions at conception and during the nine months following. There are no laws more fully proven than these. Any "scientist" who doubts here is either a poor observer or so much of a materialist as to deny the existence of mind itself. If I could show to young husbands and wives half of the facts I have seen, they would not only believe in heredity but would hasten to put into operation those strong influences for good that would ensure them worthy children in place of the idiots and degenerates which curse many families.

Dr.: 10. How dare you talk so plainly? This is the last question on my papers. You say nothing about modesty - though to be sure you condemn certain things as impure and passion-breeding - and neither you nor your wife show any such quality as modesty in your conversation. I should think you were both doctors and like myself so accustomed to all parts of the body as never to think any organ more to be hidden than the hand or eye.

Husband: I hope we are not impure if we must be considered immodest, but to tell you the truth we have concluded to shun that word "modesty" as one that has been so long misapplied as to lose any good meaning. I seek to so live as to have nothing to be ashamed of, yet I am not half so "modest" (as you would say) as I was when really filled with the lust-fires of hell. I am coming to be a "heathen" I suppose, for it is said they were innocent and comparatively moral in their nakedness, until the missionaries went to them and persuaded them that it was horribly wicked to be seen naked! I believe in art, nude art, though I would not parade it too lavishly before the weak, and would strive to have all enjoy it from the sense of beauty rather than passion. Every line of beauty to be found anywhere in nature is to be found in the graceful figure of woman, and I pity those husbands who have never been permitted to feast their eyes upon the lovely forms of their wives. I am almost an idolater of my "Venus" - and therefore a "heathen" in a double sense I suppose, though I am thankful to know that I am not alone. In fact I believe that the influence of nude art under proper instruction is a great aid to purity. The line has been drawn in the wrong place in the effort to point out the difference between purity and impurity. Religious teachers and reformers have been eager to cover up and forget the fountain of sin because they knew not how to make it pure. Like Adam and Eve after the fall they have tried to conceal their shame. Like the ostrich which thinks itself hidden because its head is buried in the sand, they have said ignorance is bliss, and so have withheld the teaching which alone could keep our youth from the evils now destroying thousands of the most brilliant of them soul and body. Now a change is coming. Now it is seen that only ignorance of sin is bliss, while ignorance of right living brings a curse, leads to sin - ignorance of the body and its functions or uses can but result in its abuse. The concealment of shame has passed for modesty, and the excessive bashfulness of our boys has been thought a proof of their chastity, when it is for the most part a proper feeling of guilt and humiliation. Save the boy by making him loyal to purity for himself as well as for the maiden. Make him loyal to purity by making him a devotee at the shrine of beauty, beauty so high and chaste and angelic that it cannot exist without absolute purity, without a perfectly healthful and orderly action of all functions of the body and all affections of the mind.

Dr.: I agree with you here. I have long advocated the teaching in our schools - boys and girls each in separate classes perhaps and with teachers of their own sex - of the full anatomy and physiology of the sexual organs, in order to point out intelligently the dangers of wrong use and the happiness of right use, but I do not expect to live long enough to see our youth blessed with this light and guidance, for lack of which they must continue to perish. Their desire for instruction is so great that now they gather unclean and misleading scraps from stable-boys and alarming pamphlets of "quack doctors" or from experiments upon themselves which simply mean slow dying. I want also to endorse more fully your plea for simple food and plain living in general. "Early to bed and early to rise" may be getting old-fashioned, but it is good for even this generation to remember. Evenings at home, ought also to be made a motto for young and old. If home means nothing but bedroom and restaurant, there is little chance for development of friendship, respect and love. No child should be allowed to run the streets, especially at night. Early marriage would be made possible by plainer living, simple manners and philosophic contentment, possible in most cases where this happy event is now postponed to wreck two lives and prevent other lives coming forward to fill their places. The coming well-regulated nation will make the requirements of the head of a family so light as to encourage early marriage, and as you have said the unwritten laws of society at large should hasten on so desirable a reform. As to abnormal passion in married men, I know that it is often caused by mere obstruction of the lower bowel. In such case, excessive indulgence only increases the feverish heat there. If a man who is troubled in this way will accustom himself to rise at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and secure an evacuation, he will find immediate relief, and his sleep for the remainder of the night will be enough sweeter to more than pay for the trouble. It is hardly necessary to add that what appears under such circumstances to be "love" ought rather to be labelled "constipation!" A good syringe may sometimes cheat a lawyer of his fee! I know some wives who have successfully applied a suggestion of mine to cool this raging passion - a fury amounting with some almost to insanity - by stroking the husband's bare back. Two have even reported that they became so free with their husbands that they could hold the heated organs in their hand or gently press the scrotal sack with wonderful and speedy result of calming into quiet sleep. This cooling is no doubt due to the withdrawal of the positive electricity with which the male often becomes innocently surcharged even when no healthy sex appetite is present. These cases seem to illustrate the absolute freedom which you declare should always be found between husband and wife. I know also that men of sedentary occupation - saintly and excellent preachers not excepted - are generally more tempted to animalism than manual laborers. Yet it is difficult to get them to take any bodily exercise. In the absence of a garden or of a pile of cord-wood to saw, I know one preacher who makes dumb-bells out of his babies, tossing them as regularly every day as he takes his meals. He has also worked out various pranks that he plays with them, and given names to a score of attitudes in which they go through a regular "circus," to the great glee of the children and equal benefit to the chief performer. He says he had tried various gymnastic apparatus, but soon tired of everything and then neglected exercise until he got his "great moral circus." You should see him with a baby's chubby legs around his neck, the child's arms swinging on high to the tune of "rig-a-jig, jig and away we go!" sung by both, and the parson "dancing before the Lord with all his might" - as he calls it.

Chapter 8 - The Wife's Account

I preserved also a letter which my wife wrote to her younger sister and which will tell my story better than I could do it. This sister had become desperate and thought divorce or at least separation the only way to settle the differences between herself and husband, but they were persuaded to both make an honest and intelligent effort to harmonize, and they are yet living together in beautiful devotion to each other, though of course now well advanced in years. The letter is partly descriptive of our home life as it appeared a few years after our second marriage - or second birth as I generally consider it.

She says: You tell me that you have lost your power over your husband, that love is dead and buried, but this I cannot believe. You have simply hid your talent for loving in a napkin. You no doubt had good reason for doing so, and it would be vastly easier to bring back that power of loving from its lurking place (or tomb as you call it) if you had no fear of its defilement.

But consider a few things patiently and calmly. You admit that your husband is not at heart a bad man, that he provides generously for you and the children. Here then is your hold upon him. He wants to do right, but he is unable because he is starving to death. I almost know that if you could look into his heart you would find he thinks you have lost all love for him. And have you not been just a little proud and prudish? Will you not then give him some special proof that your love for him still lives - though driven for refuge to the deep caverns of your heart? You may say he will become colder than ever and despise you besides. But I beg you to try it. Be brave and sincere in the attempt.

Take a proper time, say in the evening when he is getting tired of the papers, and just climb into his lap. Nestle up to him in the real old cooing fashion, no matter how cold he seems, and tell him honestly that you are dying for his love. He will feign stolid indifference at first perhaps, but I tell you he can't hold out many minutes. No true Ruth ever yet lost a Boaz.

Think of some wrong you have done him, if nothing more specific than the steady selfishness of desire to get from him rather than to give to him, and at least tell him as much good of himself as you have just told me. I know he will turn lover on the spot. And then do you be sure you never again let such a gap yawn between you two - who ought by this time to have become "one flesh." But if you let him go on drifting further and further from you, by and by some woman will make him believe she appreciates him. Then you may awake to bemoan your folly, and to understand in your grief that no man can love a woman who falls to respect him or who fails to show that respect by frequent words of commendation.

You may say you could quietly praise, but that I ask advances which are unwomanly and contrary to nature. Well, you have on hand a case totally "contrary to nature," and you must feed "spoon victuals" even to a big man when he refuses to help himself to a square meal. Ah! that is the trouble? He has "helped himself" too greedily all along? Well, let me tell you a secret that I would dare write to no other mortal. If you will begin to help him without a blush, you will soon destroy all that greed and give him in its place a decent gentlemanly appetite. If he were wholly a brute that experiment might only partially succeed, but as he is really a noble man of generous nature and tender feelings, you may surely reckon on the most cordial welcome if you nurse him into life again - lavishing your bosom's love upon him. He knows that his precipitancy is chiefly to blame for your drawing apart. If you should now invite him to try a more quiet repast without any excitement and with desire for crisis refused, he will not abuse such cordial hospitality - for in so doing "thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."

This secret every woman would know without instruction, if our intuitions were not so dulled by sin, but as it is we all have to learn the power that is implanted within us by virtue of our sex. This is woman's "sixth sense," swifter than lightning, stronger than any sword. Use it and be free, be queen. This God-given power holds absolute rule over the passions of men. To the extent that those passions are impure to that extent they will be killed by frank declarations of our love or voluntary unveiling of our physical charms. There is no quicker way for a woman to nauseate her husband and drive him from her than to be continually "gushing" with tender speeches. But lustfulness needs to be cooled down sufficiently to give true love a chance to spring up. If cooling too rapidly, the wife has only to "play coy" once more and flee from the husband sufficiently to call him on again. You are still your husband's queen, but I fear you have been - like me in sad years gone - more dignified and "graceful" and proper than loving and sweet and clinging. Though faithful as the sunrise, you have accepted acts and words of love and tenderness but have returned them seldom and sparingly - fearing no doubt to lose his respect and therewith his love. Yet a man can love a womam who is neither profound nor witty, while woman must find wisdom in the man to secure any basis for her loving.

I wish you could see the perfect abandon with which I now treat my husband. I have learned by bitter experience that the opposite course blasts the home. The first love is almost always external, bodily, and prone to excess, but if this excess be forgiven, the mere carnal love will soon develop into one that is pure and spiritual. I do not mean that then it will ignore physical delights - not even in the days of our honeymoon did I enjoy that pleasure as now - but I mean that it will put soul into them, so transforming them from uncleanness to heavenliness, to true chastity. You may be shocked at all this, but I tell you honestly - text or preacher to the contrary notwithstanding - that I believe that such pure marriage love constitutes the very center and circumference of the bliss of heaven unending. On the other hand I feel equally certain that the carnal sort of love we indulged for several years is the fire of hell - lust-fire. It was little better than adultery though sanctioned by the law and excused by our ignorance of this better way, which I am striving to outline for you in your despair.

But I can scarcely bring myself to give you more than a few hints of the delights of our new marriage - the golden wedding it ought to be called though fifty years have not yet gone. It has restored us both to health besides giving us a steady joy that rivals heaven - that cannot be left out of heaven and have any heaven left - and it has given us three blessed babies that would otherwise have been spurned.

Of our more external life you may have a further glimpse if you will never tell how foolish we are, foolish as most would think us. But your memory is better than my description can be. How did you two act when you were courting? Well, we "go courting" every evening. Only we don't sit up half the night, for the courting goes on till morniiig sends us again to our tasks, and that too without preventing the most refreshing sleep and sweetest of dreams - such as we merely used to wish each other. Oh, this life is so full of blessing that I sometimes feel like asking the Lord to hold back some of the bliss! Novel writers end all with the wedding, and commonly that is the end of "love's young dream," but blessed are they who learn to dream again! to put all their first dreaming into actual life and then add some new tint every day, some sweeter honey than earth produces.

This is just the secret of it all, and must have the emphasis of repetition. This love comes down from heaven. We cannot mistake its origin, for it is too unselfish to spring from our weak selves. As when angels we shall never tire of heaven, so this true love, this giving love, can never cloy, but must increase its joys as we learn more and more to yield our all to a mate who will not abuse our confidence. Do not pronounce me crazy, but follow the path which I tell you upon my honor leads to Eden and must to heaven hereafter.

Oh, no indeed, we do not sit without a light and do nothing the whole long evening but hold each other's hands! This second courtship has a little common-sense mixed with it. It is the lover's castle in the air brought down to solid foundations and lived in. At night when my husband comes in sight nothing is now so important in the house-work as not to be dropped to give him instant welcome. I know that he will not find fault if the biscuit burn while my arms are 'round his neck. Away as he is all day, I know that my embrace is the crown for his faithfulness. I know that he looks forward to such a hearty welcome more than to the food, rest or shelter that home means. I know it because he told me so when we "got married over," and because now we talk about our love as freely - though not so commonly or lightly - as we do about our taste for food or art, and talk as well about the best ways of developing in capacity to love and thereby perfecting our union.

I know too that by this greeting moment spent in his great strong arms my petty cares are all dissipated like a sun-burnt fog-bank. Then I have no need to call on his sympathy by a recital of them, nor he on mine with his rougher trials and temptations. That moment lets him look through my eyes into my soul, and as he playfully smooths out the possible wrinkles in my forehead the spirit too assumes an unruffled calm, so that tempests ready to engulf him also - for I still get "thoroughly stirred up" sometimes - subside without his ever knowing of the disturbance.

The same I believe true with him. Though ready if I ask to tell me of his affairs, everything is always "all right" and it is a perfect marvel to me how good-naturedly he looks upon the wrong treatment he often receives, and how shrewdly and patiently he manages his exacting employers as well as those under him, some of whom are very ignorant and obstinate. But he says all goes smoothly simply because he is "in love," and that if he should lose his temper he would lose his "crown" - for he would punish himself for such folly by refusing my welcome at night. Once he did refuse it for this reason, but by close questioning I found out that the day had been a round of vexations, and that he had actually picked up and hugged into silence one little "pepper-pot" of a man right when he was "swearing mad" because required to do a poor piece of work over again. When I learned this, I gave him a double "coronation," and told him to keep part of it on interest for another like occasion.

But I have help in providing this sort of entertainment. Even the youngest little year-old "sweetnin" has learned to do his part of the hugging. He seems, like his two little sisters, to be "nothing but a bunch of love," and in this, as in fact in all respects, these three are much superior to the older children. So soon as they can take him away from me at night they pull him down upon his big rug and for the next fifteen minutes there's music - or a menagerie!

They take turns as driver, and most of the time they are all on their "elephant" - or trying to hold on. Some of them soon scramble off to "card" him, and I should think every hair would be pulled out of his head in the operation and his skull crushed in by the awkward baby feet - as well as every bone in his body broken. But he says it really rests him, and calls it his "massage treatment." He likes to lie so that he can watch me as I complete the preparation of supper, and sometimes as I pass he catches me and kisses my feet. Then for a moment he will look sober and I know that he is thinking of the time when it was not so, and thanking Him whose name is Love for teaching us how to love and increase our love with every passing day. Supper would be ready when he arrives but for his preference for this little "thanksgiving reunion" before.

When we sit down to supper we all unite in repeating a prayer made up of appropriate texts from the Bible, and then all except the smallest repeat the verse we all committed the night before. After all have been helped some child generally says, "now give us our food for the soul," and the Bible - a large-print but well worn copy - instead of the daily paper is made the pleasant basis for conversation. Eating leisurely, sometimes quite long passages are read, but generally not more than part of a chapter, and from this is selected the text we try to learn before leaving the table. This is very pleasantly done by each repeating it with special emphasis upon a different word, thereby bringing out its different possible meanings.

As each one finishes eating I get my thanks for preparing an acceptable meal by a hearty kiss, and if they are particularly grateful a hug is added. Servant? No! we wouldn't have a servant if she would pay wages for the privilege of doing our work. We hire some work done by the day - sending it away whenever it can be sent - live simply, and serve each other, even the children delighting to do all we are willing to teach them. Supper is not over till we gather about the organ and sing two or three songs, nothing being acceptable if it is a standard hymn unless "there's some love in it." I wish you would resume your music. Sing if you cannot take time for the instrument. The human voice is worth more than all the instruments of man's invention, and singing is health restoring for both body and soul. "Music is the sister of love," and will nurse a fading love back to life as nothing else can do it. I know you say you don't feel like singing, but I beg you to sing in order to come back into that feeling which will then keep you singing. Do it as a medicine even when you feel more like weeping or scolding. There is no more powerful means of changing your whole state of mind.

"Provide the ultimates" for the joys of affection, and you will soon find again your old fond loving nature - never yet revealed to your own children. Give hearty expression over and over to what you know you ought to feel, and the feeling will by and by burst forth of itself. Act lovingly once more and you will rejoice to find that your better self is not dead, only atrophied from disuse. Ah! do you mean that you would not want your husband to know that you could be happy enough to sing under your circumstances? Does not this really mean that you prefer to play the martyr and keep him equally miserable, unless he will yield to your will and carry out your plans? And what is that but the rule-or-ruin policy of demons? Shake yourself loose from any such suspicion. Get up a family concert tomorrow night - even if the tears choke your songs. Once started you will sing again every night, even if you have to go without your supper to get time.

Then while I clear away the table the children demand their story and as many as possible crowd into their father's lap while he reads or tells them something from the Bible or from science or from his own experience - occasionally making up a story to illustrate a moral lesson. After this we join in the work of putting the children to bed, allowing them as much of laughter and frolic as they wish until the last one is safely tucked in, after which perfect silence is required and seldom broken. If I am longer than usual over the dishes the children rejoice because they have the story supplemented by a little more romping.

All this programme is completed before you would suppose, and then we have quite an evening left to ourselves. This is generally spent by "my lover" reading aloud while I sew, and he is never so easy in the best chair as when doubled up on a rug by my side. Sometimes my sewing is greatly interrupted, especially if the children have not properly finished their "carding the elephant."

Yes, all this "nonsense" every night between "old married folks," and the best of it is these are only crumbs of a love too holy to permit further description, too interior to be put into feeble words. It is this holy union, this becoming one in spirit, that alone can make you two again one in the flesh. And it is to persuade you to spare no pains to seek this soul-union that I have boldly offered this glimpse of what we revel in.

All too boldly you may say, even immodestly. But I shall reply, my love for you and my desire to lift you out of your distress is sufficient motive, and as to "modesty," I have it is true lost most of the pride and prudishness I used to call modesty. To me now there is nothing immodest but sin, and a refusal to tell the plain truth to help the world out of its impurity and consequent sickness - in order to selfishly preserve my reputation for modesty - would be to perpetuate those impurities and would therefore be very immodest because practically consenting to crime. But till your letter stirred my whole heart I had been committing this criminal immodesty toward my own dear and only sister! I hope you can forgive the long sinning. But if on the other hand this letter seems to you to be the greater offense, I fear I can never be made to see in it the slightest immodesty. You may call me "doctor" now or "pastor" instead of sister if you need some relief for the shock to your sense of the proprieties.

And since I consent to assume this pastoral attitude toward you, I will add one or two more exhortations upon this great subject in general.

"Marry for love, and for love pick much oakum!" Here is the worst old gibe against the only marriage, marriage from true love. How could the poor fisherman marry at all, if his chosen could not love him enough to help him with his "oakum?" You and I, fed on novels, foolishly dreamed that when we married our husbands would love us so much that they would keep servants to do all the work and never permit us to soil our pink fingers. A very few women have realized such romantic dreams, and they are the ones to be pitied and not we who have to "pick much oakum." Even severe drudgery would be better for body and soul than the unhealthful and selfish idleness and luxury they vainly try to enjoy.

As we grow older and wiser we can see that real love always demands the privilege of serving, and that anything called love which seeks mainly to be served is spurious - merely love of self. The wife who joyfully bears children and patiently cares for them with her own hands - nursing them from her own bosom - simply gives proof that her love toward her husband is genuine, while the wife who shuns motherhood shows that her love is at least very weak. She prefers her own pleasure rather than pain and care and labor and confinement at home - little caring to consider the trae order of her being and the true happiness that comes only in finding and following this order.

Avoiding this one main object of marriage (though there are other important uses also), sexual unions must always become degraded, and so love itself withers away and vanishes, when it was intended to grow stronger and purer and sweeter in fruitage every day and year. While I do not think children are a necessity to pure marriage love, I do think they must be desired, for this desire of itself means a readiness to serve, to serve husband or wife, to serve society by more than paying our debt to the land or community that protected our infancy and making good its loss at our death, to serve the tender babes, whose great needs for so many years are no doubt a part of God's plan for perfecting us in self-sacrifice by such steady service. Children mean service, and service means love - except with such as selfishly groan under the burden because they are "drafted" recruits rather than "volunteers." (Self-sacrifice is not the only thing the blessed little ones teach us, for in various ways they render us far more benefit than we ever bestow on them.) Then if this great element in love, this desire to serve which is proof of love, becomes controlling in husband and wife, all physical unions will be fruitful of increase in love and wisdom of life whether children are born or not. Husband and wife will thereby learn how more and more to become fused into "one flesh," one mind and one heart, making one great purpose full of noble helpful doing for humanity.

When they have thus become "one flesh," there will no longer be any coldness or reserve between them. I used never to allow my husband to see me unclothed, but now I am getting vain from feeding upon his homage for my form - a "human form divine" all his own, as he calls it. We both used to feel that the union of the flesh was something carnal and impure - and it was as we then knew it - a kind of necessary evil that we must shut our eyes and submit to and feel ashamed of for days afterward. But now we are agreed that the act is as pure as the drinking of a glass of milk, that it is as pleasing to our angelic companions, the "great cloud of witnesses" by whom we are always "compassed about," as is the act of prayer itself. Certainly this view of it does at least tend to elevate marriage into such a high position.

And in our minds and practice even the organs of sex are themselves elevated from the old thought of their low and vile position and uses (as properly excrementitious merely) to the honor of chief agency in putting forth the real life of the brain. My husband said it was a revelation to him to see how they are really the extension of the brain down upon this very lowest plane of the body - for the microscopic product of each is scarcely more at first than a tiny brain - and that these organs must therefore be classed not only with the brain as to their true position, but as the very projector or ultimator into the great creation of the choicest life of the brain and soul. Hence while too sacred for idle conversation, while linking us most closely to the Creator as co-laborers with Him, they are never to be hidden away through neglect or shame, but must receive the greatest care and always be thought about as the holiest and most precious organs of the body - to be kept the purest and guarded against the slightest abuse. You will by and by I am sure however give up your belief that the sex embrace is pure and proper only for the purpose of procreation, for it will soon be generally understood and admitted that the wife who does not regularly hunger to receive the prolific principle of the husband is sexually a dyspeptic, whether by disease, wrong teaching, imperfect development of the organs, or wrong treatment from the husband.

Because the swine wash their faces in mud, it does not follow that we must wash our faces as seldom as possible. Yet this has been the mistaken reasoning of most religious people concerning the sex passion. If the marriage bed is indeed very carnal, we shall not escape that carnality by merely putting a limit upon the frequency of indulgence. We must rather reform the quality and then the frequency will take care of itself. Think of the act as pure and that will help to make and keep it pure. Approach it from the mental, fraternal, spiritual side and the very flesh may at last be surcharged with heaven.

Paul says "the woman hath not power over her own body, but the husband." I take it he means by this that wives should not resist even though the husband's approaches are unwelcome - that the marriage vow transfers authority over the wife's body from herself to her husband, and vice versa. It is this resistance - very common because of the universal ignorance which permits it - which stimulates passion of the animal sort, while yearning receptiveness cools or regulates it in the long run if not at first. When the wife shows a love which is "easy to be entreated," she can then in turn use such a tactful persuasive appeal as will grant her exemption from excesses and full freedom whenever really necessary. (Of course no wife should permit conception when the husband is even slightly under the influence of alcohol, even though she has to flee from the house - but this does not concern you.)

The mind as well as the body should be held always in this receptive even yearning attitude and will secure freedom soonest thereby. When a woman's mind is on the defensive all the time, then her body acquires a set habit of equal antipathy from which it is impossible to relax for the single occasion when physical union is permitted. Mind and body are then inverted or reversed or turned away from the husband with so much of aversion - perhaps hatred, scorn, murder in the heart - that no true and satisfactory union is possible unless it is preceded by a long period of soul-fusion or true courtship. Such antagonism - caused by abnormal fear and feeble affections - destroys health of both husband and wife, whether coition is frequent or rare or prudishly scorned entirely, because the antipathy first kills out all love, and couples who feel it probably never have known anything about true marriage - certainly could never in that state give its heaven-ordained pleasures any expression. And as there can be no full physical enjoyment, so there can be no possibility of procreating children that are well balanced and inclined toward obedience and righteousness. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."

"Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." The man's sin may be lust, but the woman's sin is hatred (murder in the heart), a protest suppressed perhaps through fear, but all the more surely transmitted to the offspring with fearful effect, in a despondent and headstrong disposition if nothing worse - lasting not merely through all the life of the child but through generations following.

Only by a trustful, affectionate, eager, clinging union can we wives live out our true destiny and attain the high privilege and blessings intended for us, only so can we avoid having the sins of the fathers visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. And this pure and hearty union - not merely consenting but yearning and blissful to the wife - can alone enable the noblest man to beget superb children. And such perfect physical conjunction is possible only as union of mind is constantly cultivated and so tender that any harsh criticism would be impossible.

I have heard you rebuff your husband so sharply that it was cruel - and none the less so because it was put in joking words. Joking should never be indulged between married partners. If it is sharp enough to have any point, it is sharp enough to sting, if not to rankle and smart for a long time. Ridicule and sarcasm are savage weapons, and should no more be used by a wife than a stick by a husband upon his wife. When you ridicule him for his ideas and pet schemes, telling him that he "don't know anything about what he is talking about," as I have heard you exclaim, you are asserting more concerning a business you have never studied than you could possibly know. You are also discouraging him and wounding him (until you render him callous toward your opinions and perhaps toward your very self!), and worst of all you are, by such unloving thoughtlessness, damming up more and more the stream of your own love and turning it back upon your heart to cause devastation and decay.

I know you say your husband is a dreamer, a mere theorist, always wasting time and money to invent something which is doomed to failure from the start. Suppose now you encouraged him instead of despising this eager pursuit of ideals, or at least showed the polite interest that even a stranger would show. That is his nature, his very life, and if you could stop him it would be his death. It is for you in true wifely sympathy to help, possibly to modify and guide, but never to repress. Many grand deeds or great inventions have grown out of just such wifely encouragement, and surely you would thus realize that "one flesh" which marriage means - one useful purpose in life. Loyalty to him, some belief in him, a degree of hope and confidence in him while handling things beyond your range of knowledge, would spur him on to make the success you are now preventing in your unwise fear and conservatism and dissatisfied desire to rule. It will seem to you unkind in me to say these things - until you can think it over calmly - but it is a fact that you have been a clog upon his best endeavors, have in fact prevented his becoming the very man you really want.

Especially ought you to respect his wisdom and allow his plans to prevail (except as you can modify them in private by gentle womanly suggestions) as regards the control of your children. They can never be trained to full obedience unless husband and wife are agreed - at least in their presence - as to the wise course to command.

Indeed you ought when alone to teach each child the most perfect respect for him and eager obedience to his will - as the best rule for their welfare - pointing out his good qualities often and in emphatic praise, to quicken their affection for him and make it easier to follow his counsels - always defending him from any criticism which may arise. Only by such a loyal course can the channels of your own affections be kept open. Any word that strikes at him you should feel strikes at your very heart.

Every question should be settled, even in his absence, with full reference to "what father would say." You may some day discover that all along he has been much more worthy of respect and appreciation and even gratitude than you could imagine during the frequent clash of wills. You must know that he feels that you do not appreciate him. And I know some women who do! - and men as well. Surely no woman can love a man that she cannot respect, but the lack of respect may not be due so much to his weakness or bad habits as to her own self-love which, like colored eye-glasses, paints and distorts all conduct and character.

Did you ever think on what you might have been with a husband less thoughtful and upright - for instance with a coarse and drunken brute laughing at your frailty and your tears? Read what one woman thinks of the moulding influence of a good husband:

ANGEL OR DEMON.

You call me an angel of love and of light,
A being of goodness and heavenly fire.
Sent out from God's kingdom to guide you aright.
In paths where your spirits may mount and aspire.
You say that I glow like a star on its course,
Like a ray from the altar, a spark from the source.

Now list to my answer; let all the world hear it,
I speak unafraid what I know to be true;
A pure, faithful love is the creative spirit
Which makes women angels! I live but in you.
We are bound soul to soul by life's holiest laws;
If I am an angel - why you are the cause.

As my ship skims the sea, I look up from the deck,
Fair, firm at the wheel shines Love's beautiful form,
And shall I curse the barque that last night went to wreck
By the Pilot abandoned to darkness and storm?
My craft is no stancher, she too had been lost -
Had the wheelman deserted or slept at his post.

I laid down the wealth of my soul at your feet
(Some woman does this for some man every day).
No desperate creature who walks in the street,
Has a wickeder heart than I might have, I say,
Had you wantonly misused the treasures you won,
- As so many men with heart riches have done.

This fire from God's altar, this holy love flame,
That burns like sweet incense forever for you,
Might now be a wild conflagration of shame,
Had you tortured my heart, or been base or untrue.
For angels and devils are cast in one mold.
Till love guides them upward, or downward, I hold.

I tell you the women who make fervent wives
And sweet, tender mothers, had Fate been less fair,
Are the women who might have abandoned their lives
To the madness that springs from and ends in despair.
As the fire on the hearth which sheds brightness around,
Neglected, may level the walls to the ground.

The world makes grave errors in judging these things,
Great good and great evil are born in one breast.
Love horns us and hoofs us - or gives us our wings,
And the best could be worst, or the worst could be best.
You must thank your own worth for what I grew to be.
For the demon lurked under the angel in me.

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in "Examiner."

Above all, my sister, revise your whole idea of modesty, for it is really shame and not true modesty at all.

Once my husband and I were criminally sinful - obtaining mercy we trust because ignorant - but now we should not blush if all heaven and earth suddenly gazed upon our conjugal unions, for we feel always lifted thereby into true communion with heaven and full sympathy with mankind. My motto, "He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts" refers not merely to my earthly husband but to "Jesus, lover of my soul," and in this high sense it is my husband's motto as well as mine. I commend it to you, and may the joys of soul and body that it has introduced to me become yours most speedily. But they cannot so long as your lack of confidence, lack of self-control, lack of husband-control make you feel it necessary to be always on the defensive, even to the extent of requiring a separate chamber - retreating to a "lonesome old-maid bed." You can never enter this conjugal Eden till you can be together like frank, hopeful, innocent babes, so that it can be said of you "they were naked and not ashamed" - no shame, no fear, no concealment, because love has attained its freedom through growing purity and strength.

Consider these things, my dear sister, test their truth by putting them into practice, and write me, if I have not offended you and if you think I can help you in any way.

Chapter 9 - The Bible: A Practical Guide

In our struggle to know and walk in the true conjugal pathway, we made much use of the Bible, studying it together, and clipping from an old copy the texts that were of help to us. These we pasted to the head of sheets of paper and preserved with comments from the city preacher who first roused me from the bondage of passion. From these notes I will recall as much as possible of the conversation we had with him upon a special visit for the purpose.

1. The Differences in Sex

Husband: Does it not seem rather trifling for the Word of God to descend to the regulation of the dress of men and women? Back in Deut. 22:5 we found these strong words: "There shall not be the garment of a man on a woman, nor the garment of a woman on a man, because this is an abomination."

Pastor: At first glance this sweeping prohibition might seem trivial, but upon moral grounds alone needs to be emphasized even in our enlightened day. Then when we consider the question of sex a little deeper, we see that by making the dress of each entirely different, an object lesson is put before even the youngest and most ignorant that must not only preclaim differences in body and mind but such differences as require the other sex to perfect the social unit. Any tendency on the part of woman to adopt a dress or part of a costume similar to male attire is not as some suppose a sort of gentle hint to the men that they wish to marry, but is rather proof of an undercurrent in society tending to throw off all dependence upon the men - though of course many young women who so ape the men never have a thought about it except that it looks smart. The essential differences between men and women need to be kept before the mind as much now as ever. Those differences are intended by the Creator to make it forever clear that neither is a whole being without the other, that neither can be regarded singly as a unit, that the two - the man half a unit and the woman half a unit - properly united become the true unital basis of reckoning on earth as in heaven. The question, which is superior? ought never to be asked or answer attempted, for each surpasses the other in some things without any credit to the one or discredit to the other. The aim of each should rather be to study the generic nature of his or her being, and then develop along that line of true order toward the greatest possible perfection. No unseemly effort of the husband to prove himself a better cook, or the wife to prove herself a better carpenter would then disgust us. The duties of each meet on common planes in many cases, but the untutored sense of all declares that some things are not proper for women to do, some equally improper for men. Let not this line be obliterated in society, on peril of the loss of marriage or its perversion into an infernal promiscuity.

Wife: I can remember when my respect for my husband received some severe shocks, simply because he proved to me his superior skill in some feminine household matters.

2. Marriage vs. Religion.

Husband: Some striking passages deter the very religious from marriage, and make thousands who are married regard the union as a concession to the flesh, and at its best somewhat carnal and impure. "He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord." "He that giveth her not in marriage doeth better." (1 Cor. 7:32, 38) "It is not good to marry." "There be eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." (Mat. 19:10, 12) "These are they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins." (Rev. 14:4)

Pastor: Yes, I know that these passages have led many of the most devout to refuse marriage or if married to live as though an apology were required for their weakness - some indeed calling the husband "brother" and the wife "sister" as if to prove themselves above the base relation of husband and wife. And it is no wonder, for the true spiritual character of marriage has been almost unknown for ages, and as now known can only make conscientious and sensitive souls blush and groan in secret. Nevertheless it is the best and purest institution we have on earth aside from the church (which really rises or falls with the home), and must not be abolished but reformed. Now as to these texts, in the first place remember that Paul distinctly declares that this advice to the Corinthian christians was not from God, but from himself, and that he gave it merely because of the distressful times in which they then dwelt. These two facts rule out that passage entirely from any general discussion of marriage. This was a special recommendation for an exceptional and horrible state of society, and it was not an inspired utterance at all - merely personal advice given upon request in the absence of any revelation. In the second place, the apostles declared it "not good to marry," simply because they must live with the one chosen wife whether they loved her or not - except for "the one cause." Then Jesus takes up their despair and in words highly symbolic and not yet fully explained makes that declaration concerning the eunuchs. If we were to understand him literally we should act as many did act in the dark ages and emasculate ourselves - provided we were really in earnest to win heaven. No doubt the supposed greater sanctity of nuns and priests in the Catholic church is based on this principle, but they do not continue to actually castrate I presume. It is perhaps enough to merely assert that this mutilation of men must be entirely abhorrent to Him who best knew how to create them, for no reasoning man will now argue otherwise. Perhaps we had best leave it with the further statement that it also as little teaches the superior holiness of the unmarried. I feel certain that all the Lord intended here was to rebuke lasciviousness, and He could do this with such a gross and sensual people as the Jews only by seeming to urge the cutting off of the offending member in order to prepare for heaven. Herein He was speaking in parable exactly as He was when He was bidding them cut off foot or hand or pluck out their eyes rather than permit those members to land them in hell. The mere physical disfigurement could of course never purify the man, but the energy of self-control needed is set forth under these startling figures of speech. Your third text is similarly explained, standing as it does in the Revelation which is acknowledged by all to be purely figurative and symbolic. "Virgin" everywhere stands for the church and therefore includes all who follow the Lord whether male or female, young or old. "Not defiled with women" is the same as not adulterous or fornicators, and refers to spiritual adultery or infidelity toward the true Bridegroom. There is not here a word for any basis of the notion of the comparative impurity of marriage, for it is speaking of defilement that would come by breaking the vows of espousal, not by taking and keeping these vows. It is simply a contrast between the pollution those have escaped who have refused the seductions of all kinds of sin in order to become the pure virgin bride of Jesus. The whole spirit of it is an exaltation of marriage. Thus you see that any Scripture which apparently casts a doubt upon the state of wedlock will rather praise that state when properly understood.

Wife: And then there are some praises of a positive character in the Bible. Even Paul in that same chapter where he advises some delay in marrying because of the turbulence of the times, also explicitly commands as from the Lord: "Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." He further shows that he is opposed to the single state as a rule: "I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house." (1 Tim. 5:14) Again we read in Heb. 13:4: "Marriage is honorable in all." The Proverbs have many praises for chaste women, and the Song of Solomon is simply a poem of love and courtship, a dialogue of sweetness which would serve as a model for the lovers of today if it were not for the overmodest modesty which prevails. "A prudent wife is from the Lord." "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor of the Lord." (Prov. 19:14 and 18:22) Then the very law of creation shows that no temporary and uninspired suspension of this law can be intended for more than the passing conditions. This law our Lord expresses very strongly: "Have ye not read that He who made them from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh." "Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh, what therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder." (Mat. 19:4, 6)

Pastor: And the man will "cleave to his wife" just so tenaciously as he enters into the spiritual union with the Bridegroom of his soul, or as there is in his character and life a mating of knowledge and action, of truth and love. It is only by this interior marriage that another text - often quoted to degrade marriage - can become true: "There is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:28) Here the Apostle apparently means the same as when he says in the chapter we have been considering that they who have wives must be as they who have none. He desired to so stimulate their faith and love toward the "One altogether lovely" that earthly affairs should dwindle and fade till at least all carnal ambition should vanish away - especially in view of the (mistaken) expectation of the immediate "end of the world." But as to the whole question we are safe in resting the argument with these considerations: "The state of marriage is to be preferred (1) because it is the state ordained from creation; (2) because its origin is the marriage of good and truth; (3) because its correspondence is with the marriage of the Lord and the Church; (4) because the Church and marriage love are constant companions; (5) because its use is more excellent than the uses of all other things of creation for thence according to order is the propagation of the human race and also of the angelic heaven, for this is from the human race; and (6) because marriage is the fullness of man, for by means of it man becomes a full man."

3. Women's Rights and Wrongs

Husband: I find many women do not love Paul very much because he seems to deny their equality with men - and Peter has as little comfort for the aggressive woman. "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived..." (1 Tim. 2:12) "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church..." (Eph. 5:22) "...be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home..." (1 Cor. 14:34) "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands ... Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose daughters ye are." (1 Pet. 3:1) Will the present tendency to revolt against this authority of the husband lead to the extinction of husbands altogether? Is this obedience now binding upon the woman?

Pastor: Yes and no. Whoever loves will obey, whether man or woman, not because commanded but because true love must serve. Tyranny of husband or wife may need to be resisted until the tyrant is taught his or her limitations, but generally the larger soul will obey the wish of the other even when expressed in so offensive a manner as to seem cruel - provided absolute wrong is not required. Love always serves, and waits patiently for the domineering spirit to be put away. Yet a petulant wife or pompous husband must not be too quickly classed as tyrannical. As the cock crows, struts and speaks authoritatively to any interfering fowl, so the man must be permitted to bluster a little even toward his own family. His wife understands that it "don't mean anything" - at least anything more than "letting off steam," the pent up energy and combativeness which might be quite desirable to have in full supply if enemies were about - and she knows that he does not really command her to do anything if she has serious objections. By eager and smiling compliance even when contrary to her plan, the tactful wife soonest secures her real freedom, and then proceeds to so conquer the man in detail that he will at last fume out commands only in line with what he knows she wants. When there is anything of true manhood there is always a delight to recognize the wife as the queen of heart and home and fortune. But she must rule as queen, not as king. Her sway must not be with rod of iron, not with argument, not with anything which suggests force or determination. Most men will grant all that is in their power to bestow on the mere asking of the wife, provided only that all requests come with sweet, womanly persuasiveness. Woman must be gentle and refined as well as loving. As marriage progresses, the blustering and the persuasion will both be laid aside, because each tries more and more eagerly and delightedly to study the desires of the other, and to supply those desires so far as possible even before they can be expressed. The command of authority no true, enlightened man or woman will consent make ase of toward his or her partner. The obedience of love both will render unasked just in proportion as love exists.

Wife: But how about this headship? this priority of Adam's creation? this fall of Eve alone? If the wife for these reasons must not "usurp authority," is it not implied that the man may rightfully exercise authority over the woman - since he was created first, is the "head" of the wife, and did not voluntarily transgress?

Husband: That certainly is the argument, but it seems to me fully answered in what the preacher has just said.

Pastor: Paul's reasons are good and conclusive against the wife exercising authority. I merely go a little further and declare that no authority should be exercised by the man either. A domineering wife might be silenced by Paul's reasons, but more likely she would practically reject Paul as any "authority" on marriage, as many are beginning to do. But his appeal is to the old law, and however true in its eternal principle, cannot influence as must the appeal to the new gospel of love and liberty. We are only now coming to read the Old Testament rightly. Even God himself does not so command as to force bad or good. He respects man's freedom more than anything, and will receive no obedience that does not come spontaneously when His desires for our good are declared. When a man or the world is far from God, he or it may read the "thou shalt not" as the prohibition of a wrath that only waits to smite, but when the world or the Christian outgrows the childhood state it or he comes to see more of persuasion and pity and encouragement than of stem authority in all the Lord's commands. "If ye love me ye will keep my commandments," is the test which the loved one must always apply, but the tone in which these words are uttered tests in turn the worth of the loved one. The worthiest will seldom or never dare openly apply such a test, and even when shallow pretensions make it necessary to point out the lover's hypocrisy, such words will be uttered in tender grief - as Jesus must have spoken them.

Wife: But I am not quite satisfied that I am doing right in refusing to call my husband "lord" as Sarah did!

Pastor: You ought to do so in spirit, but you ought not to do so in the spirit of Sarah. You ought to respect your husband so deeply as to defer to his judgment and calm reason in all things, so deeply as to really reverence him, but you ought not to cringe before him like a slave, as most women of old did before their husbands. Though omitting the title "lord" you probably do reverence your husband more truly than even Sarah could Abraham, because yours is an entirely free and unconventional respect. Without this deepest respect (even homage) of the woman there can be no true love manifested from him to her, for she will not lean on him and cling to him to inspire him with love. No wife who loves her husband ever sits "in the seat of the scornful." Ridicule for his opinions or inattention toward them proves love dead or dying.

Wife: This clinging then is no mere poetic figure, but you hold that man is really an oak and woman a vine?

Pastor: Yes, man is always an oak, and woman is always a vine. No amount of indignant but short-sighted denial can change the divine law by which each is inevitably so created. Though there are differences of opinion as to what constitutes true masculinity and femininity - legitimate differences of opinion - yet there are some unquestionably mannish women and womanish men. Then too, man is often a fallen and decayed oak. In such cases the wife is often more than a sturdy vine - ashamed to cling and running up rankly toward the position the oak ought to have filled. This abnormal and independent growth is frequently seen where there never was any oak to provide support, but it is also a tangled growth and brings tears of sympathy alike from good men and women on earth and in heaven. Some who never marry are however really married in spirit, usually to a mate who has "gone on before," yet sometimes to one still in the flesh but as good as dead because circumstances forbid outward contact or communication. In such cases the oak and vine really grow together, and we admire the manly and womanly character as they develop, wondering the while - since the union is sacredly invisible - why they do not grow dwarfed and useless like many who have refused marriage.

Husband: Then you would hardly give the ballot to woman?

Pastor: Yes, I would consent to their helping us clean the house we men alone find ourselves incapable of cleaning. And I am not so sure that woman ought not always to sit by the side of man in all his counsels, law-making and enforcing included. Yet I would prefer that their voice and influence should be heard and felt as a rule in private. And I am sure that this will always be the ease, even though every profession and calling should be freely opened to women, for the vast majority will feel no impulse to act in any public position, being quite content with the humbler duties of home and the pleasant publicity of social life. I would not refuse women the ballot nor any privilege or duty she seriously demands, for we can safely, trust the law which God has written in her very constitution to bring her right quicker than masculine repression - if it is really true that she is going wrong. She may lack wisdom in her demands, may be unsexing herself by aping the manners of men, may even make the men worse by thrusting them aside as incompetent and base, while she may fail as badly as they to correct the evils of Church and State; but let her alone! give her all she asks, and she will the quicker discover methods of showing her power that are at once more womanly and a thousand times more effective. Her will is a better will than man's will, but she cannot be long content to execute that will herself.

Wife: What does the account mean in Gen. 2:23 of the cutting a rib out of Adam to make it into a woman?

Pastor: Probably we shall never fully fathom the deep spiritual meanings here upon earth, but we can at least believe that something more is involved than a mere physical transaction. The common expression, "He has found his rib" shows that it is recognized as an epitome of a universal principle. Every man would sleep the sleep of ossification, if his self-consciousness were not cut out of him, and built into another form in which he could love self without injury. Conceit is their skeleton which crushes in upon the heart of bachelors and prevents their marrying - even upon the affections of some who do form legal alliances but who never part with half a rib of their own vanity by letting a wife do their boasting and bragging for them. The devotion of a loyal wife is in itself sufficient testimony to the worth of the husband's character, so that he has no longer any need to speak or meditate upon his achievements or abilities. Thus he is free to settle down to actual accomplishment in some line of service. Contrast the "steady-going" husband with the vacillating youth, the one faithfulness personified, the other more bent on pleasure or proving his "smartness" than on rendering service to employer or society. But the man is not the only one to be benefited. The process of husband-making is a long one, and that of wife-making is equally slow. Without a basis of true love the process becomes tedious, and is soon abandoned, for it was not entered into intelligently nor perhaps with a single thought about marriage as a development requiring time and patience as well as the hot blood of youth. The bride is at first only a "rib," and must be builded into a wife by steady application to the ambitions and ideals of the husband, in order to become that "other self" which "help-meet" means. This is the reason for insisting on deep respect for the man at the start, some hearty sympathy with his hopes and plans for life-work, and above all an appreciation of his moral worth or true wisdom. Lacking this there can be no true love or lasting union. Therefore it is that vital religion - not always formal or creedal - goes hand in hand with marriage whenever that marriage is of the soul, spiritual as well as fleshly.

4. No Union of Sex Outside Wedlock

Husband: The Bible is very explicit upon loose unions. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." "Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's wife." (Ex. 20:14, 17) "Drink water out of thine own cistern... Rejoice with the wife of thy youth... Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou always ravished with her love." (Prov. 5:15) "Every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Mat. 5:28)

Pastor: In your quotations there are many principles as yet little understood - but a few words may be desired upon the more external teachings. You put Proverbs between the commandment and the comment by which Jesus shows its penetrating scope - a demand for clean thoughts and desires, a pure imagination, as well as correct outward conduct - and you so place the text well, because the mind can be kept pure best of all by filling it so full of pure love that no impurity can find a lurking place. If husbands could learn how to be always ravished with love for their wives there would be no adultery to preach against. Lovers are above temptation so long as they are magnetized and thrilled with the love of their sweethearts. If now husbands and wives would learn how to be always courting, temptation would be powerless. The difficulty is to make the world believe the relation of lovers between old married people either possible or proper. Most people think "loverish" actions too silly to continue long after marriage, and so love dies for lack of expression - smothered in the dungeon of a selfish heart. That man who would impulsively caress his wife, but finds that conscience or shame or bashfulness chokes back the old-time exclamation, "my dove, my undefiled!" may well seek out the root of carnality and destroy it - so beginning courtship and marriage over again.

Husband: Then you would probably say that "the bed undefiled" (Heb. 13:4) does not refer wholly to adultery, but to sensuality as well between husband and wife?

Pastor: Certainly. There is perhaps more of this sort of defilement than of any other. A man may "look on a woman to lust after her," when he looks only upon his own wife, as truly as when he looks upon some other woman. Many marriages are in the eye of heaven little better than adultery, though of course society is protected to some extent even in such cases. When the marriage bed is truly "undefiled," I believe that coition is as pure an act as prayer, that indeed such ultimate union of body preceded by union of soul sends up an incense which delights all heaven, thrilling even the highest angels with joy. "Earth is his footstool," and pure living, joyfully pure loving, really kisses the Lord's feet, as that human part of him still touches our daily home life.

5. Polygamy Versus Monogamy

Husband: Is the argument for polygamy or concubinage admissible and sound when drawn from the custom of the patriarchs? Solomon, "the wisest of men," had a thousand wives, and many others who were men "after God's own heart" had more than one.

Pastor: Jesus answers all that appeal to their customs, briefly but conclusively to all calm and pure minds, by saying that, "from the beginning it was not so" (Mat. 19:8), and that any looseness which came in afterwards was simply tolerated because of the hardness of their hearts. Those hearts were so very hard - i. e. so sensual, so gross, so materialistic - that even the mild regulations of Moses were not obeyed. How foolish then to have attempted absolute prohibition of polygamy? But having originally created mankind in pairs, God has thereby declared (beyond effect from any later failures to obey it) that the grand law of creation is monogamy, one woman for one man, and that all other procedures are simply lawlessness - whether polygamy, easy divorce or what not. Some materialists are beginning to assert that monogamic marriage is selfish because exclusive and hence opposed to the broad liberal spirit of fraternity and love of the neighbor. Tribes have even existed who loaned their wives to every guest as the absolute essential of hospitality. It is enough to reply to such mistaken reformers that love is a giving not a getting. Any passion which demands variety is lust not love. Even among some animals monogamy exists, and the higher man cultivates his heart along with his intellect the more he abhors roaming passion and puts carnality under his heel. The present great evils of marriage ought not to lead the world to commit the most insane of all blunders by exchanging it for the rule and riot of free-lust - misnamed "free-love."

Wife: Solomon declares in his wise utterances: "One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found." (Eccl. 7:28) I always thought he might have found one woman if he had paid a hundredth part as much attention to one as he did to his thousand. Wise he may have been, but the maxim "quality not quantity" seems never to have been written among his many good proverbs.

Pastor: He did indeed write many excellent counsels, especially to young men on this very subject, but a king was at that time supposed to be an exception to all law - almost obliged to disregard it in order to prove his superiority. We must also remember the typical character even of his sensual alliances - God making man's wrath and passions to praise him - and the fact that Solomon writes at last over all the pleasures of the senses this epitaph: "all is vanity and vexation of spirit!"

Wife: Phrenologists tell us that this generation is half-idiotic on the subject of conjugal love - most people, especially men, having a hollow in the back of their heads where the organ of conjugality (or love for one and only one mate) ought to round out the skull.

Pastor: This should stimulate us all to try to remedy this "arrested development" by advocating, practising and - so far as laws can do it - compelling the practice of that virtue in which the race is so shockingly deficient; so that some future generation may attain once more to the original normal standard of righteousness and happiness.

6. Losing Must Be Taught

A. To wives

Husband: It seems a little strange at first thought that an apostle should consider it necessary to urge the training of young wives in the duty of loving. "That the aged women ... may teach the young women ... to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home." (Tit. 2:3)

Pastor: Yet in these few practical hints there are principles of such value that society now would be greatly purified by their application to life. In this age of easy travel it is more than ever necessary to urge the absolute virtue of being a "keeper at home." Countless temptations come to those who acquire a roving restless spirit by continually "going somewhere" which those never dream of who contentedly abide at home. The "keepers at home" have their minds powerfully concentrated upon all that a true home means, and it thereby grows to be all that it ought to be. If the wife loves the home and leaves it reluctantly only to return as soon as possible, the husband will love it also; together they will adorn it as they have means and taste; music, the sister of love, will ring through its rooms; there they will both experience their highest joys; and however humble, it will become so sacred a spot that the mere thought of wandering desire will seem its instant desecration. Selfish and exclusive this keeping at home may seem to some, but no true generous impulse need be sacrificed by such home content. On the other hand, our noblest and most truly successful men have been born of just these domestic mothers, and have always looked back with utmost reverence to the homes of love and peace made by those quiet "keepers at home."

Wife: But as to their loving their children and husbands, does not any woman know enough to do this without any teaching?

Pastor: No. Most women love their children very much as the cow loves her young - just as selfishly yet sometimes not as strongly. The mother's love for children, so lauded by poets as the purest and strongest love on earth, is in fact exemplified by the cow just as beautifully after its kind, and it is therefore only an animal love as generally manifested - or at best a purely natural love. To love the child so as to train it for heaven, for an eternal development, so as to hold it as a gift or better as a loan from God (whose child alone it really is) - this is another thing, and cannot be done without teaching. "When the time arrives for the boy's life-work to begin, then this heaven-taught love hears with thankfulness (in spite of the pang) the old question, "woman what have I to do with thee?" for she has long been eager to discover proof of manly independence for heroic action beyond her range of knowledge. So with regard to love of the husband. Any young woman can respond to the impetuous choice, to the passion of the young suitor, but few learn to find within the husband the germ of true nobility, to cherish this, and to thereby lift both on toward grander intellectual, moral and spiritual attainments. This love is far higher as a rule than love of children, because there is less expectation or thought of any return even of honor or gratitude. Wives love deeply but often unwisely, becoming for example mere servants or slaves to children and husbands, rather than true wives and mothers to them, because the love manifests itself chiefly in performance of drudgery, sufficient to drive away two or three servants. The customs of society and traditions of necessity in housekeeping have set up impossible standards which must be worshipped even though the wife's health be destroyed, or at least her time be so fully occupied that she has none left for companionship and loving counsel, for quiet talks and walks and recreation, for reading and music and education. The mother ought to be the only teacher of young children in the rudiments of education. Nor should any Sunday-school take the religious instruction of the child out of the home. To love child or husband there must be contact on the plane of mind and soul. Many a wife has dropped "tired out" into her grave leaving as proof of her love only the fact that her children had been better clad than others, or that she slaved away and denied herself everything to help her husband "lift the mortgage on the place." The second wife may enjoy it! On the other hand, of course there are wives who are "lazy and slack" and who "want everything done for them." But the true wife will give all she has and is, only with discrimination, on the spiritual plane first of all and with most delight. While never ignoring the material comforts and interests of her household, she will hold these as secondary because fluctuating and wholly temporary, and will not consent to gravitate into the position of an unloved and unthanked drudge - simply because husband and children, misunderstanding her motives, suppose she loves neatness, a comfortable home and "what people will say" more than she does those for whom she toils and sacrifices.

B. To husbands also

Wife: The men also seem to need instruction and exhortation to love. "Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest." (Eccl. 9:9) "Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times." (Prov. 5:19) "Husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it." (Eph. 5:25) "Husbands love your wives and be not bitter against them." (Col. 3:19) But now is it possible for them to love their wives except as the wives are lovable, except as they draw out that love?

Pastor: No and yes. We are commanded to love our enemies, and to love one another as Jesus loved us. Surely His love was one of compassion and not because of any great spiritual beauty when the world was going on in rebellion and sin. Paul says it will make no difference in his sacrifice for the Church though the more abundantly he loved the less he were loved in return. If a man loves his wife only as he loves a meal of victuals, because hunger is thereby satisfied, of course his "love" depends wholly upon the amount of satisfaction he secures. So then it depends upon the man, whether he can love except as compelled by the qualities of the wife. Yet a true love will lead the husband to aid in the development of wifely charms that bind him to her more and more, and upon successively higher planes. If you had asked whether the man will love any but a loving wife, I should have answered no at once. For his is really only a second-hand love, a mere response to her love, a completion of the circle, a return of her own love. There is a difference between a lovable wife and a loving wife. People often wonder why an able young man, "who might have done better," marries a homely and unattractive girl. Generally it will be found that such a girl has learned how to throw her whole soul into self-forgetful love for that one man. She may never show to anybody by the least outward act that she cares for him, may even refuse to admit to herself that she has so dared, but nevertheless there goes forth from her a stream of love so resistless that the man soon discovers himself to be swimming in it as in a "sea of glory." This auroral atmosphere he may blindly believe is his own radiance - for has he not "fallen in love?" - and it is perhaps as well that he never knows how he was captured. Such a magnetic stream all true wives do pour forth in greater or less power, and the husband cannot long love the wife who permits this native element of the husband to freeze at its only fountain head in her bosom.

Wife: But can the wife be always loving, never lose her temper?

Pastor: She can be always loving even when she loses her temper. Wives are sometimes quick to take offense, but are also far quicker than men to forgive, and seldom keep in anger long. Pride may prevent the first admission of wrong, but most women long to "make up" very soon after a quarrel, and cannot understand how a man can "hold out" in indifference and obstinacy. The reason for this fundamental difference of character is to be found in the fact that "women are loves while men are only recipients of love." It is a woman's life to love, and when she is long refused the privilege of loving, she can but pine away or at best drag out a miserable existence. Most quarrels could be quickly settled, if the men would remember that their wives love them uninterruptedly even when the surface indications seem to prove otherwise. Before the spiteful words are half out of their lips our wives wish them back, long to pull out the thorns we men - martyrs because ignorant and cowardly - permit to remain, even compel to remain, to rankle and fret and goad to desperation. If the husband can be strong enough to kiss the lips that are scolding him, he may be sure that his kiss will be more welcome and effective than at any other time and that the next ebullition will be considerably postponed.

Wife: I can endorse all that, but once I would have felt it an unwomanly thing to admit our love so unlimited and so forgiving.

Pastor: That reticence is only a natural safe-guard placed within the wife to prevent her cooling the ardor of the husband by continually talking about love herself, but your present greater freedom of speech can be attributed only to the progress you and your husband are making from the natural into the spiritual sphere of life. You do not find your husband cools towards you now because of such talk on your part?

Husband: On the contrary it is a great pleasure to me, and I even delight to have her tell me just how her love for me can be increased by rooting out of my character and conduct the obstacles which prevented full respect and love during our early married life. But I want to ask cannot a man be permitted to lose his temper as well as his wife?

Pastor: No, he cannot do it and have the wife understand that he loves her all through the trouble. His anger means a complete spurning of her love for the time being, while hers as I have said is merely a ripple upon the surface of the stream that knows no interruption - except that which the husband himself insists on making out of that ripple. Woman is canstant, man inconstant. "Wives are continually meditating upon the inclination of their husbands toward them, and how they can bind them closer." Husbands only occasionally let such thoughts enter the mind during the hours of business - or even of pleasure unless long separated. This apparent fickleness of husbands need not mean any roving passion, but it will mean it if they find the stream of the wife's love stanched or embittered when they turn back to her. When I say that woman is constant in her sex affections of course I mean the true woman, for there are some who carry their flirtations over into wedlock, and never concentrate their life upon one. The inconstancy of man is like the waxing and waning of the moon, and if the wife only understands that he is by nature less responsive at certain times than at others she will not let go of him in despair, but will rather exert her powerful attractive influence with the utmost patience and with assurance of complete control of the situation. In due time he must turn to her for warmth, for she is all the life he has so long as she can hold him - even in an eclipse.

Husband: Ah! it is this eclipse in which men forget their patient wives and fly off into the "blackness of darkness forever."

Pastor: Most sadly true. Here is the need of learning to be so "ravished" with love for the one true wife that no strange breasts can ever infatuate. Why! the surpassing joys of wedded bliss are so little known that no poet or novelist has yet arisen to picture them. The joys of the courtship previous to marriage are only "green apples" compared with the joys of marriage and courtship combined in one. Only as men come to abhor the very thought of any love that breaks wedlock, only so can they enter into this exquisite bliss of heaven. Only as the eye is put under the lens can we penetrate the "milky way" and discover worlds upon worlds. Only as we accept conjugality and its limitations in all eagerness and with full belief in its concentrative power, only so can we know heaven, and feel the glory of heaven burning down into our souls to fire them with zeal and sympathy, with grandeur and self-sacrifice. Any least turning away from this heavenly atmosphere of true devotion to one wife plunges the soul back into murky night, even into the life of groveling in the mire. Lust may express itself outwardly in the same manner as love, but any person who can rise above his passions a little will discover the two to be exact opposites. Lust is self-love. Self-love is hate. Hence lust is hate. The Bible shows us the black as well as the white in order to make us fully understand and choose the path of life. In 2 Sam. 13 we have the reason for the unhappiness of so many marriages - false love unmasked as intense hate. This most important branch of education, the training of the affections, being almost wholly ignored, what wonder that our youth should grow up to know only the animal variety of love. When this comes to be exercised without the restraints which instruction would have made easy and agreeable, the results can be only disastrous. This "love" may do in the animals, but in man it is only hate from the beginning (when viewed interiorly), and of course will very soon reveal its hellish character.

7. Separation and Divorce

Husband: If the wife finds that the husband holds toward her only this sort of love which is really hate, is she entitled to divorce?

Pastor: He is really an adulterer, it is true, but only when his lust has declared itself not merely toward his wife but in actual crime can there be justification for legal divorce. Separation without divorce is however another thing, and may be a benefit temporarily by giving the husband a chance to begin over again. Of course this should be resorted to only when the husband refuses to yield to any persuasion or entreaty the wife may offer, and will almost never be necessary, if the wife will use womanly tact and fearlessness in applying her enormous influence to develop a man out of the brute to whom she finds herself married. "Let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband." (1 Cor. 7:11) This separation need not be final, but should be for the purpose of reuniting with a better understanding. Hence of course it does not look to divorce. If however the husband has no regard for his wife or for virtue either, he will during this separation, commit actual adultery and thereby make divorce itself proper.

Husband: Is it ever proper to forgive adultery?

Pastor: Yes, and those who are really spiritual will do this without difficulty - the divine Husband does it constantly toward his wandering wife, the Church - but of course it presupposes true repentance and abhorrence of the crime. Some believe that even adultery is not a proper cause for divorce. Mark 10:2 leaves out the "except it be for fornication" of Mat. 19:9, and so reads as an absolute and sweeping prohibition of all divorce, viz: "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, commiteth adultery. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery." While it would be better for society to construe the clause in Mat. as merely permissive, and so frown upon all divorce, it is yet well to remember that adultery is itself the real rupture and dissolution of marriage. So that if the permission were not given, common sense would teach that a wife could not be compelled to remain with a husband who steadily broke the covenant he had made with her. Again divorce is often decreed upon the charge of drunkenness or cruelty or lack of support, when there is moral certainty in the minds of wife and judge and friends that adultery is the real though unprovable wrong. But when it comes to the divorcing man and wife for "incompatibility of temper," with no gross evil even suspected, then it is time for society as well as the pulpit to demand a halt - in the name at least of the outraged children. "Incompatibility of temper" could be found in most of the homes of the land if it were desired, and little differences were allowed to grow into that ugly harvest. Wherever there is selfishness there is incompatibility. This means that all are more or less incompatible with everybody. The business of marriage is to make us less selfish and thereby more compatible with everybody. This is its grandest use and mission. The question should not then be asked, "who is the most compatible wife or husband for me?" For this really means, "who will do everything to please me and let me do as I please?" Upon the apparently favorable answer to this unwise question hinges many an unhappy marriage. But the question sensible young people will ask is, "with whom can I most rapidly put away my infernal selfishenss so as to come into full compatibility and conjugal blessedness?" Very often it will be with a partner less attractive in form, feature and behavior than the favored one who is sought with little success. When the choice is at last made and ratified by acceptance of the suit, then by all means there should be the most earnest effort to believe that our mate - however uncomfortable or unreasonable - affords us the very best opportunities for discovering our sinful propensities and conquering them. What if he or she is domineering, petty, bickering, harsh, cold, selfish in a thousand ways? Will not his (or her) excessive demands tend to curb my excessive demands in the same direction? or in other matters? Perhaps in childhood I never sufficiently learned the lesson of obedience, and this is the good Lord's last resort to save me from the steady rebellion which would shut Him far away from my soul forever. This incompatibility may mean conflict and quarrel at first, but the apparently conquered party is often the real conqueror over self - even permitting this usurpation of authority because the chastening is seen to be working out in the character a "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Yet on the other hand, true unselfish love will so seek the spiritual growth of the partner that tyranny will be resisted, provided that resistance promises better for the tyrant than quiet submission. For even a tyrant has the possibilities of an angel, and the worse he is the more he needs an angelic wife to lift him out of his present pit to those heights angels have attained. Heaven has simply ordained such patient wives to a more difficult and hence more honorable mission than others. The only question the truly loving will consider concerning such a mate is, "What course will do my husband (or wife) most good?" That course which will do most good to the "incompatible" mate will be sure to do the most also toward developing the character of the one who so deliberates and adopts the wise and loving methods. This is only the effort at adaptation and self-effacement that makes the period of courtship so blissful, and if seriously and steadily adhered to in the worst of marriages will put thoughts of divorce far away - if it does not soon restore the full joys of Eden.

"O Life is not perfect with Love's first kiss:
Who would win the blessing must wrestle;
And the deeper the sorrow the dearer the bliss,
That in its rich core may nestle!

Our angels oft greet us in tearful guise,
And our saviors come in sorrow,
While the murkiest midnight that frowns from the skies,
Is at heart a radiant morrow!

We laugh and we cry, we sing and we sigh,
And life will have wintry weather!
So we'll hope and love on, since you Love and I
Are Husband and Wife together!"

Husband: But some now argue that divorce is the lesser of two evils, that it is a greater sin for two to remain in the galling chains of wedlock when they have drifted apart until they cannot help quarreling than it is to separate - law or no law - that such a union is indeed the worst adultery possible, that a loveless marriage adds hypocrisy to this legalized adultery making all life a lie as well as a hell upon earth, that for children it is worse to live in such an atmosphere of hatred than to suffer from the breaking up of such a home to be thrown among strangers.

Pastor: This argument seems a strong one, but those who can sit in the seat of the judge, instead of pleading at the bar for their own self interest, will be able to consider some objections. Here are several unwarranted assumptions. First, it is not certain that those who have drifted apart could not have drawn closer and closer together if they had known and obeyed the true laws of marriage. Nor is it certain that those who seem hopelessly estranged cannot yet learn and practice those laws with the happy result of full forgiveness and confidence and tender affection in place of the old suspicion and selfishness which drove them asunder.

Then it is assumed that wrong mating is the cause of all the trouble, and that another mate would bring happiness. Now it is only "the devil" in a man that makes hatred possible even for a wrong mate, or indeed for one who is "contrary" and domineering. Until that demon is driven out the man will be incompatible with any woman. How many divorcings and remarryings would be required to secure genuine and lasting happiness for two devils? Happiness is measured by virtue, unselfish love, sacrificing service for the happiness of others. But in this age of the gambling craze to "get something for nothing" it is not strange that matrimony is put upon the same commercial basis of greed and ambition for "success" and triumph over rivals and even over the partner in marriage. All idea of forming a one out of two supplemental characters - the "one flesh" - seems to be lost sight of in the desire to be that one alone and reduce the other to a mere servant's non-entity. So long as such selfish ambition is held, even unconsciously, and to the extent it is held, marriage must prove a failure, no matter how many new attempts are made.

It is also assumed that children will go out of that "hell" into a far better state, but is there not plenty of hatred all about? Is it not quite as likely that they will step "out of the frying pan into the fire?" No, no, divorce is not the only cure for unhappy marriages. It is a worse cure than the disease. Ignorance as much as selfishness makes marriage a failure. Selfishness may be deep-rooted and so perverse that no amount of instruction can eradicate it, but much of it would at least slink away and hide, if the blazing sunshine of knowledge could be made to flood every home - the full science of sexology (including adaptation in marriage, sexual ethics, physiology and hygiene, eugenics or stirpiculture, etc.) so taught that none could excuse their wrongdoing under the cloak of ignorance.

8. Marriage of the Lord and the Church

Husband: The number of passages in which the union between the Church and her Lord is called a marriage are very numerous, and we have copied a few of them.

Pastor: Before you read them let me emphasize the fact that this marriage is not between the Lord and the great body of believers called the Church so truly as between Him and the individual soul that looks to Him in His Word with humility and earnest effort to do His will. The visible church or the organized body called the Church includes many adherents who are no vital part of the true Bride of Christ, sometimes called the invisible Church. Hence we may consider each text to be a setting forth of the tender relationship which our Lord bears to our individual souls, if we are in any ardent desire toward Him, for we are then each of us a church in the smallest form of it - and this too even though we feel ourselves excluded from the organized Church.

Husband: "For thy Maker is thy husband ... the Lord hath called thee as ... a wife of youth." (Is. 54:5) "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee" (Is. 62:5) "I am married unto you." (Jer. 3:14) "At that day saith the Lord, thou shalt call me Ishi [my Husband], and shalt call me no more Baali [my Master]." (Hos. 2:16)

Pastor: Familiar with such vivid and fervid presentation of the relation of Jehovah to His people, it is no wonder that John the Baptist seized upon this tender and familiar union as the only fit symbol for God's coming "unto His own" embodied in Jesus, and therefore called Him the Bridegroom at his first public appearance (John 3:29) - for Jehovah and Jesus are one Being, identically the same only under different names and forms, or manifestations.

Husband: And Jesus at once accepts this title as appropriately His, declaring in answer to the Jewish formalists that His disciples cannot fast so long as the "Bridegroom is with them." (Mat. 9:15) Paul also exclaims: "I have espoused you to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin unto Christ" (2 Cor. 11:2) - evidently regarding even a long religious life on earth as only rounding out the full period of the Divine wooing.

Pastor: But there has been some time between the espousal of the Church and its marriage to her absent Lord. The fasting which he predicted was long and bitter. The dark ages mourned because of his long tarrying, but at midnight the cry was made, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh! Go ye out to meet Him!" (Mat. 25:6) This cry is still re-echoing, and some are starting up, even out of their graves of dead formalism and materialism, to go out in yearning and welcome for His spiritual appearance and power. We live in a new day because He comes again, all material and intellectual progress of the past century and a half being the new scientific John Baptist to prepare the way before Him. Next comes the social revival, bone coming unto bone in the endeavor to so adjust all members of the body politic to the great whole as to make all work together harmoniously because with mutual love and common purpose. Pain and confusion must accompany this readjustment of the dead selfishness, the stiff individualism of the past to the new system of co-operation, but the outcome will make amends for all such tumult. Our present system of competition - the child of the devii - is doomed, but will die hard. After this comes the millennial age, the kingdom of heaven upon earth that shall never end, the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Husband: The figure of marriage is much used in the Revelation of John to describe this union of the Lord and His Church. At the end of the book (21:2, 9, etc.) the Bride is set forth in beautiful array, but strangely mixed is the figure with the golden city, New Jerusalem.

Pastor: And that is seen "descending from God out of heaven." This shows first that it is not a representation of a far away and distant heaven, but a heavenly condition coming down to earth, at some day to be the state of society on earth. The description of the Bride as a city also leads us to the same conclusion. For a city always symbolizes a body of doctrine, and it is the doctrine of the new age that will be all golden or all love. When the Church, the age, the dispensation, the era of the world, becomes really married to Jehovah-Jesus, then love must rule in creed, in worship, in brotherhoods, in statecraft, in commercial and all business enterprises. But this perfect marriage cannot take place until the full preparations are completed. Hence the churches may be conservative and opposed to many innovations and reforms which are nevertheless a necessary part of this return of the Bridegroom to consummate the espousal of His first coming by actual marriage in this "fulness of the ages." All the more powerful, complete and soul-penetrating will this marriage prove, because it is wholly spiritual - without bodily manifestation - thereby compelling the soul to grasp Him by means of truth and love alone, without any distraction and doubt caused by mere questions of personal appearance. Shall He find faith on earth? Let the soul refuse this spiritual union with her returning Bridegroom, and there can be no true union with husband or wife in the flesh. Only as our interior natures long for and delight to eagerly go out in welcome to the highest Truth we can discover, only so can we be in the proper frame of mind for unselfish union with one of the opposite sex.

Husband: Then you hold that this vision of "Jerusalem the golden" means the second coming of the Lord, and His marriage supper here upon earth?

Pastor: Yes, and I dwell upon the matter because of its immense practical value. All who read history admit that the world is now entering upon an era of the reign of love, albeit there is much intense selfishness left in the hearts and institutions of men and likely to die hard. Now then we must be abreast of the times, and if possible ahead of them. "Go ye out to meet Him!" means just this. If we welcome the truth and love that this dawning age is revealing on all subjects, we shall be prepared thereby to apply all new light and impulses to the betterment of our relationships in all directions - first of all in marriage of course. If we reject this new light, "this star in the east," this sunrise of the new era - call we it science or Jesus - then we prove that we "love darkness rather than light because our deeds are evil." Such darkness, stich love of evil, of course cares nothing for reform, nothing for the happiness of others nothing for knowledge of proper treatment of the wife or husband.

Husband: Have you not thus arrived at a doctrine of holiness or perfection? - or at least a very clear illustration of one?

Pastor: Yes, and one that has occasionally been made use of very effectively. The prophets themselves draw it out with considerable length, and show that as religion is faithfulness to marriage vows with the Lord, so irreligion is adultery or the breaking of these vows. The backsliding of the Church can be regarded as nothing else. If a Christian grows cold and backslides he as an individual commits spiritual adultery. What wonder that often at such times the adultery is not only religious but legal, not only against the marriage with God but against the marriage with an earthly husband or wife! Our spiritual state very closely corresponds to our natural, or vice versa, and though no crime against the home may break forth in our conduct, yet it is only for lack of favorable opportunity, if we are not at one with God. Few outwardly moral men suspect the power of evil tendencies within them, because society imposes many outward restraints. Remove all law, and all possibility of our deeds being known (or all regard for the opinion of those who might know), and then would appear the true character of ourselves and our neighbors. Only such as are closely knit unto the highest and holiest they know in genuine love for that personified ideal, only such would be safe from all imaginable temptation. This is the same as saying that only such as love God with the intensity that a true wife loves a noble husband can be regarded as incorruptible. And this "loving God" must mean a loving of what He loves, and an instant, constant effort to carry forward as we come to understand them His vast and loving plans - in our lives and for the lives of all we can touch with our influence.

Wife: Surely none who at all understand God can refuse to love Him, "for God is love," and "every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." (1 John 4:7)

Pastor: Yes, "knoweth God" as the Virgin Mary "knew" the Holy Spirit and conceived thereby that "Holy Thing" who became "God manifest in the flesh," in order to show us how God loves and how our loving Him will make us act - a lifetime of self sacrificing labor for enemy and friend alike. To love God is to be joined to Him (as intimately as wife and husband), to carry out every purpose of God for mankind.

Husband: This explains then Paul's longing to see "Christ formed within" the Galatians (Gal. 4:19), and Peter's assertion that Christians are "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever." (1 Pet. 1:23)

Pastor: And John's statement of true holiness, "His seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin" (1 John 3:9). "The seed is the Word," and we therefore have here the same figure as in Ps. 119:11: "Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee." Just as the wife who is "great with child" - the purest and most beautiful sight on earth! - is rendered incapable of impregnation by any seducer, so the soul that really hides or treasures the Word of God in the heart becomes impregnable to any assault of the tempter because "full of good works" - twins and triplets of benevolence and sympathy and helpful service, ready to burst forth daily, and in every feature to proclaim God their Father, and God therefore the Husband of such a prolific mother soul - whether man or woman. With a husband of such holiness no wife can quarrel. With such a saintly wife no man can long fight against religion. It is only when religion becomes formal and pietistic, or mere "goodishness" unmixed with practical wisdom, that men of hard sense scorn its "professors" - as they call them. Indeed for the attainment of any religion worthy the name there must be not merely the reception of truth from the Word into the inmost recesses of the soul, but each principle must there so mature and develop by meditation as to be the death of us if it cannot soon leap forth in vigorous, determined efforts for the benefit of all around. And if sin of any kind is brought forth, there must be the clear recognition and quick confession of David, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned." (Ps. 51:4) Every sin in act proves sin in thought and desire long before, proves that the soul has long been turning away from its true Husband to dally with "other lovers." Our sins may do much harm to those about us, but until we come to see that the sin is against God, against the great plan of God for us and for those we injure, against the great current of Love - in which all mankind delight as fish sport in their stream, though ignorant of their own element - until we come to thus admit the enormity of sin and abhor it as adultery against God our divine Husband, we cannot resist the temptations which come "as an angel of light" to lure us away from this only possible life of true holiness and practical service in our respective spheres.

9. Marriage in Heaven

Husband: You speak of the eternal purposes in marriage, but what would you say to the preacher I lately heard of who declared that there is no proof in the Bible of the existence of woman in heaven? He argued that as woman was made out of man, so she must return into man, losing her individual identity because she was created to meet a merely temporary necessity.

Pastor: I should answer that heaven is a woman - and the lesser is always included in the greater - that there we shall all be female toward God, that the use of woman to symbolize the Church as the Bride is something more than a mere figure of speech, and states the exact and glorious spiritual fact that heaven as a whole and as to its each individual member is married to the divine Bridegroom. If he could see this, I would then go on to declare that this marriage with Jehovah did not in the least shut out the marriage there between man and wife, but the rather (as here on earth) promoted it and in fact required it in order to perfectly preserve the "image and likeness of God" and make possible the divine marriage with him. This might lead to a discussion of the nature of God - his essence, love, his manifestation, wisdom - "the Word made flesh" - and of the reason for two sexes, in order to properly image his dual nature (the woman reflecting his love, the man his wisdom), and by the union of these two elements in "one flesh" to more nearly approach the perfection, or at least give some hint of the perfection of his infinite character.

Wife: But can you harmonize with your belief in the eternity of marriage the Lord's plain declaration that "in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage?"

Pastor: For my own complete satisfaction, yes, but not for the modern Sadducees called materialists, for I should think it best to leave them with the plain statement of the Savior. What have such licentious people to do with the kingdom of heaven? The only marriage they know can of course not continue in heaven, for neither party will ever see heaven - unless they come out of their sensual state. Hence the Lord left them in the dark by His answer though it appears plain, so plain that it has been quoted ever since to prove that marriage cannot be known in heaven. But let us hear the whole text, for you have quoted only the negative side - as is usually done, the positive assertion being entirely ignored as beyond our knowledge and of no account to the supposed main statement.

Wife: "When they shall rise from the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels which are in heaven." (Mark 12:25)

Pastor: In the first place please notice that our Lord did not say that marriage entered into on earth would not continue, only that there would be no more marrying or giving in marriage. Here is a most important consideration. The woman in question was to find seven husbands awaiting her in the world of spirits. Now what? Must heaven permit polyandry, or must one have her and all the rest go forlorn to eternity! Of course no resurrection can be thought of in face of such stupendous difficulties! Such was the "poser" of these infidel materialists. These Sadducees cared nothing for light on the subject of marriage, nor for that matter on the resurrection. They merely wished to show the absurdity of any hope of immortality. The answer is wisely framed to set aside their main difficulty without any attempt to explain the full conditions of the hereafter. For had this been attempted it would have been a case of "pearls before swine" who would have turned again to "rend" their benefactor. He merely declares to them that such a woman will not begin her rounds over again, that the marrying for ceremonial reasons as required by the law of Moses, without any thought of love, but with the sole object of offspring who should belong to the dead brother, that this cold and carnal marrying and giving in marriage would end with this life. He did not deny that the first husband, who presumably chose the woman with some sort of love (and not because compelled by a temporary law), would dwell with her as her eternal consort. It is this iteration in marriage, this choosing and trying and rejecting, this "consecutive polygamy," this adulterons love which longs for connection with one after another - whether secured by the death of one partner, or by divorce, or by utter disregard of the marriage tie - that Jesus says can have no place in heaven.

Husband: I see the distinction. Marriage may be eternal though marrying or choosing partners cannot go on forever.

Wife: But is there any encouragement here for the hope that true marriage will continue beyond the grave?

Pastor: That depends upon whether we admit any knowledge of angels to be possible. Most people, following Milton rather than the Bible, or putting too great emphasis upon one or two texts, believe that angels are a separate creation from men, and that demons are simply fallen angels, thrust down because of their revolt and war against heaven. Time is insufficient for us now and together to study the subject of angels, therefore I will simply state what I believe. Angels are only good men and women who have put off their bodies of flesh. Demons or devils are merely bad men and women who have put off their bodies of flesh. And there is no such thing as an angel or devil who has not once been in a fleshly body on earth. This heaven and this hell are not away "up" beyond the stars, away "down" beneath the earth, but are right at our side, all about us - "we are encompassed about with a great cloud of witnesses," "the angel of the Lord [all His host of the redeemed] encampeth round about them that fear Him" - about us all the time, influencing us most powerfully for good on the one hand and for bad on the other, but angels and devils always so balanced in power as to leave us in perfect equilibrium, so that we can choose, and always know that we can choose, to do better or to do worse - no matter how holy or how wicked we may become. Now if this view of heaven seems reasonable, it will help us understand what Jesus meant when He said, "they are as the angels who are in heaven," or by a better translation, "they are as angels in heaven." Only by gaining something of this clearer view of the nature of angels can we at all imagine what they may be as regards sex and marriage. Now grant that angels are men and women still in the human form but devoid of all merely fleshly passion, and you will be able to imagine them continuing in all the sweetness of marriage union, yet happily lacking the selfishness and carnality which on earth bring the only bitterness into this relationship. There love may be more like "Platonic love" as we call it here, but that it will be genuine sex love there is no doubt in my mind, however spiritual it may prove - prolific only of holier living, of purer loving, and wiser thinking. Do we not see something of this in venerable couples on earth? Their love for each other is sometimes very tender, yet devoid of all thought of physical excitement. None however think it anything but sex love, or expect to find it between two old men or two old women. Their purified character gives to the "golden wedding" a beauty and fragrance never possible at the first. Thus do they ripen together for the eternal summerland just outside our range of vision. For in heaven there can be no "sere and yellow leaf." To grow old there must be to grow young and beautiful and lovable. Heaven can be only an eternal spring-time of love.

Wife: Then you think that the words "they are as angels in heaven" mean that everybody there will be married?

Pastor: I do most assuredly. I do not believe anybody can "go to heaven" till he or she has made heaven for somebody on earth. Heaven is love, and love is giving and serving. There will be no "old maids" or "old bachelors" in heaven. He or she then who refuses marriage because unwilling to love and give and serve, thereby proves himself or herself too selfish for heavenly society. Of course those who have desired marriage but could secure no worthy mate are really married in spirit, and all such, though doomed to a long life of loneliness on earth, will find awaiting them a suitable mate in heaven - who may also have sought vainly for his other self through our tangled maze of civilization and its obstructive conventionalities. If all things from atom to angel and even Jehovah himself are and ought to be married, then it follows that no man was ever made that a woman was not made to match him - and no two women were so intended or made. On earth he may or may not find that true complement of his soul, but if married at all he must wisely strive to act as if she were the mate God made for him. Earth's wrongs will be righted in heaven. What men have "joined together" must there fall asunder of themselves. Yet if in any case husband and wife have made the best of the bad conditions imposed upon them by friends or their own mistakes and passions, they will be the gainers for compelling defeat to yield a victory. They may have all the better disciplined their selfish propensities till now at last they are prepared "through much tribulation" for full union with that long undiscovered mate, who before this would have been tortured perhaps by a marriage with so untamed a companion. "Are as angels in heaven" means, to my mind, that such as "attain unto the resurrection" will have grown so meet for heaven by self-sacrificing service that, even though cut off from earthly marriage, their souls have become exquisitely attuned to their true mate, and will enter the spirit world practically married and there immediately flow together and become one, like two streams in a meadow after long tossing over mountains far distant from each other. In fact I believe that the word "angel," like the word "family," includes a husband and a wife, and is the unit of heavenly societies - as in fact the family is frequently admitted to be the true unit of society here.

Husband: I have thought that if the reply of Jesus meant what has been generally supposed, it was almost a practical agreement with the Sadducees. If there is no marriage in heaven, then sex would be useless there, and if sex is gone, personal identity must be lost with it (for here sex is the first and fundamental element in character), and we then have no resurrection left, or at best one with conditions more inconceivable than those urged for its denial by the Jews. But Jesus is very clear in His statement, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," and goes on to show that if He is still the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," they must be alive unto him as individual characters and as men. (Mat. 22, Mark 12, Luke 20) Of course then all we call "dead" are really living still. Now if they are still "living" as men and women, I have not power of imagination great enough to think of them at all unless I allow them to be still possessed of sex, of all masculine (or feminine) qualities of mind and of body - for they must have the same human form in order to appear to men and be recognized, as were Moses and Elijah. Otherwise we have nothing but sexless, bodiless, formless, unthinkable, misty, vaporous beings - if beings they could be called - merged into a vast fog-bank of glory and peace, much like the nirvana of the heathen instead of a rational heaven such as our Bible is supposed to reveal.

Pastor: Your argument is well put and to my mind unanswerable, but I want now to appeal to consciousness a little further. For if marriage is to be made more spiritual in its character during time, it is most essential to understand that it is an institution for eternity as well as time - a merely temporal affair necessarily being unworthy of such infinite care. If we believe that death dissolves all soul union, even that soul union is likely to be made only a superficial mockery. Suppose now I attend your funeral service, and take for my text this passage we have been considering, or even quote it as proving that your widow must not expect to soon join you in the same tender relationship she has enjoyed with you while in the flesh. Shall I thus convey comfort to her bleeding heart? Can I picture to her any higher bliss to look forward unto than that of marriage purified of earth's grossness and progressing without further possibility of the misunderstandings of this sense life? Though I may not then venture to assert marriage as a certainty, must I not at least give the assurance of meeting the departed? of recognition? of companionship? And if that companionship must be divested of all the tender ties of marriage, what, pray, would be left?

Wife: If I could not now look forward with daily delight to a better union there than I am capable of here, I should be tortured with the present happiness. If I knew I must soon part from my husband forever, every joy would bring such a sting that I should prefer some degree of permanent coldness. If I cannot have my own husband in heaven I can have no heaven.

Pastor: This appeal to consciousness is legitimate and conclusive to every healthy mind upon the subject of immortality in general, and upon this subject of marriage in heaven I believe it equally unanswerable. The universal yearning for a heaven proves its existence. The universal yearning for a wedded heaven proves its existence in that purest and happiest imaginable form. As the stomach and its hunger prove food - not sawdust - to be required and provided, so this hunger of the best minds and hearts in their holiest hours proves the existence of a spiritual food and home exactly suited to meet these tenderest and intensest of human longings. To miss this satisfaction will be hell; to secure it will be heaven - and both are seen on earth in miniature mirrors. As to the universality of this yearning, even those who miss heaven and make for themselves instead a hell upon earth are as good proof to a generous and thoughtful mind as are those who learn how to enter here upon a foretaste of heaven. More to the point however is the fact that there can be found no happy married people who do not long to know that heaven - if they win it at all - shall contain this highest and holiest delight of which they have any experience or dreams or traditions.

Wife: Certainly the poets are all of them with us in this matter.

Husband: And are not they truer interpreters of God's law - written in nature and the human soul before types and texts were known - than are any dogmatic expounders of the sacred Word who stick in the mere "letter which killeth?"

Pastor: Well said! Would that all the world, taking a stand with these far-eyed poets, could penetrate beyond the clouds of sense to the very throne of God! There catching glimpses of the dual nature of the Eternal, of His love and His wisdom, glimpses of the method and order by which that All-creative nature, descending as love and wisdom, forms the married heavens, and through them in turn the human race married, the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms all married, then must the world - blessed with such vision - cry out: truly marriage is the fundamental law of nature and of spirit, of soul first and of body as a consequence, of heaven first and of earth because that vast world of causes controls this world and gives life in its only possible form, dual sexed and mating! Then if the world, after spiritual eyesight had been granted, could go back to mating wrongly, if any could willingly use this tremendous life of God, of heaven, of the soul as it descended into the body, in a manner contrary to the true order of its flowing from the Divine Source, this would display depravity indeed - yea, more, it would prove a preference for swine's instead of angel's food.

10. Hope for the Impure

Husband: All this high ideal is beautiful, but how can we make it practical? Such visions of the heavenly source of true marriage are certainly elevating to those who have some poetic power of vision, but what can be done for the great number of unspiritual and even clodish souls? - those in actual adultery, for example?

Pastor: Outbreaking sin does not prove incapacity for high spiritual truth. "Thieves and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before" the outwardly circumspect but inwardly corrupt. The adulterer, and even oftener the harlot, are sometimes endowed with deep rich full poetic and loving natures or temperaments, the depth of their fall simply measuring the height to which they might have attained. The great difficulty is to show them that those heights are still possible. He who is forgiven much will love much. (Luke 7:42) All of us have fallen, some deeper in outward mire than others, but to the searching eye of heaven how small is the difference! It would be a good lesson for some proud prudes, who have nothing but scorn for "fallen" women, to be kept for a month or year in the circumstances which their fallen sisters have endured all their lives. They might then discover that their own purity was no match for such temptations. Only a tested yet unstained virtue is virtue beyond a doubt. Only as the hell within us all comes to be recognized, either by honest self-examinations or by out-bursting proofs of the pent-up fires, can heaven be received from deliberate choice - through the spurning of its opposite. This is a grand reason for such a full study of this subject as you are making, and for the discussion which enables us to "discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not." (Mal. 3:18)

Wife: Then you would begin with such poor creatures by setting the heavenly character of love and marriage before them? I have supposed sin of this sort made the victims almost beyond hope.

Pastor: I would present the true order just sufficiently to make a proper contrast. This however needs to be done very seldom. Such people know they are in the wrong. The first thing then is to awaken hope, and the ideal should be presented with this end in view. It should be shown them first of all that our unchanging Lord is still saying, "Neither do I condemn thee." (John 8:11) Society does condemn and abhor, not the sin, but the sinner, and thereby pronounces its own condemnation. But the erring one must be shown that society, and often the church, entirely misrepresent our ever-merciful Father. He is always reaching out toward the returning prodigal, ready to clothe and banquet him, ready to cut short the first sincere confession with music and rejoicing. Nor does it require the intercession or sacrifice of the "elder brother" to move Him to such a merciful reception. (Luke 15) Jesus does condemn the sin, for He says: "Go and sin no more." But the circumstances, the horrible era, the corruption of the formal ecclesiastics who desire the woman stoned, are to his keen eye more blameworthy than this ignorant and therefore comparatively innocent woman. So would it be today if Jesus were again in person to apply the "whip of small cords." Not the petty gambling dens, but scheming Wall Street would have its "money tables overturned." Not the squalid brothel, but the great "charity ball" gotten up to relieve - or create! - the poverty of such squalid districts would come under His frown. Not the impotent infidel club, but the infiuential, aristocratic and prostituted pulpit and press would hear His "Woe unto you!" These costly churches, filled up largely with formality, self-deception and blundering theology from the Dark Ages, are the fountain head of all that is corrupt in our civilization. The church is the heart of humanity, and if stagnation, conflict or festering corruption be found in business life, civil life or domestic life, it is because that heart has ceased to purify the numerous functions within the body politic. "Not one stone shall be left upon another" must soon be declared of such subversive "traditions of men" and of every evil fostered within those protecting walls of falsity. Sectarian jealousy will then be swallowed up in eager search for "hidden wisdom" and its immediate application to private and public life. Political rivalry will in that prophetic day take the new form of faithful service to those citizens most in need. The Lord is making "all things new." In answer to the prayer He gave "Thy kingdom come" He will soon set up a new social order. Selfish and mercenary motives will yet slink out of sight in manufactures, commerce and all business dealings. Then he would appear a very fiend who should furnish men the liquid fire that burns out vitals and brain and moral responsibility. Without whiskey the brothel might be abolished, for it is drink that stimulates the inmates to fill out their few years of miserable existence, and it is drink that inflames men to visit them.

Husband: How can we help such men as do not drink, but who say they are so full of passion that they cannot control their minds - though they do master their bodies?

Pastor: No such men exist. If the mind is uncontrollable, the body is never kept in order by the man himself. Public opinion is about the same thing as a policeman, and these two forces together regulate such men, restraining many whose imagination and desires are continually running riot. Let such men bear the brand of adulterers stamped upon them by Jesus! And this class must include all who tell obscene stories, who use any language suggestive of evil, or who joke about love, purity and the marriage relation.

Husband: Some plead that such a brand is unjust inasmuch as it is impossible for a live man to look upon a beautiful woman and not "lust after her in his heart."

Pastor: This is equivalent to saying that according to the robustness of his body a man must desire to kill beautiful women.

Husband: How do you make lust parallel with murder?

Pastor: Lust, we agreed, is self-love, and self-love is hate, and hate is murder not yet developed. Indeed lust does often murder the woman who will not be debauched. And this hot passion is often honored with the sacred name of love. It would be as correct to call a prairie fire "genial warmth." If men would learn to call things by their true names half our evils would slink away and die of themselves. A man of any strength would be ashamed to admit that he was tempted to kill every beautiful woman he met, yet if he is filled with passion toward her, he would really be glad to snatch away her chastity, dearer than life to the true woman. Monsters in the form of men may exist who delight to despoil and destroy, but few even of these are beyond self-regulation, provided only they can see what their supposed "great appetite" really means, and will then make any effort to "put their body under and bring it into subjection." I repeat, then, that any selfish desire to get from woman what she does not delight to give is lust, and lust is hate, and hate is incipient murder. And I believe that any sane man can coerce himself sufficiently to remove all desire to murder. Then gradually will come in the opposite delight of giving, which alone is to be called love. Then will the nobility of the man appear, the real strength of manhood. Then he can look every woman in the eye and feel that she is his sister - to reverence if pure, to pity if degraded, to aid with all his strength if there should be proper opportunity. When the man of passion sees any woman approaching he should steadily and firmly repeat (only to himself, of course) such a sentiment as this: With all my heart I love you; I will love you purely, and do pledge yon my best aid and protection - even against my own baser self. One fed of such repetition will fill him with fraternal feeling, and enable him to look even a questionable character in the eye without the flash of passion, for real love casts out lust. Earnest discipline of this sort will enable him to live clean even in Potiphar's house (Gen. 39), but he must never presume upon his growing strength to resist temptation. Our perfect Exemplar did not shrink as the proud Pharisee thought he ought from the loving touch and kiss of the repentant harlot. (Luke 7) Indeed Jesus loved this woman - with the kind of love all men ought to feel toward every woman who is in distress - and thought only of how He might best help her out of her sin. Temptation cannot touch such a man, for every woman is his sister, and brotherly love as completely protects against lust as lust excludes true love. Each not so much shuts the door against the other when its approach is perceived as it transforms that other magically into like quality with its own intense and controlling character.

Husband: I am at last coming to understand how a man can not only not do wrong or desire wrong or think about wrong, but can even refuse with so much of abhorrence to let in the suggestions of possible delights that the evils thus spurned will be slow in making another appeal. "Get thee behind me Satan!" needs to be made in sex temptations into the stronger, "Get thee hence Satan!" It seems that such energetic spurning breaks the back of passion, so that when Satan again approaches to fill the imagination with tantalizing allurements, he cannot stand erect like the angel of light he once appeared (like a lovely woman, rather), but now is seen in the true character of a miserable hag. I am fully convinced that the mind is the real battle-field of conduct, and that any man who can prevent the outbreak of sinful propensities can with the same amount of effort root up and destroy the habits of thought which are the cause of such outbreaks. It is easier - if you will allow the coarse comparison, since it is really the dog in men that we are talking about - it is easier to cut off the dog's tail close behind his ears than to cut it off where many make vain attempts - finding it necessary then continually to face the brute in a merely exasperated state for a fierce life-combat.

11. Freedom in Love

Wife: What can you tell us to say to those who declare the Bible to be an indecent book? It certainly is very outspoken, and it contains many passages which no preacher could be induced to read in public, but I suppose it would be a terrible thing to even suggest the omission of some such texts.

Pastor: Nothing would be gained by such editing, and much would be lost. The very desire for cutting away any part is all of a piece with the making of eunuchs in the dark ages. There are many still who believe that there is something essentially sinful in all matters of sex, who are very sensitive about any reference to the special organs of sex, however poetical or even medical, and who, by allowing this squeamishness not only confirm themselves in a false modesty, but also stifle the very life of love resting in those organs. But now, the Bible gives special attention to this very citadel of morals and religion, without stopping to ask whether men will be pleased, shocked or ashamed. All the secrets now breathed into any ear we are told must be proclaimed eventually upon the housetops. Blessed is the man who so lives that his whole life might be rehearsed upon a housetop. Concealment and shame prove either ignorance in training or sin in living. That part of our lives which we would be glad to hide so deeply as to forget it ourselves, the Bible opens as a more ghastly spectacle than we had ever before considered it. A growing abhorrence for the "sins of youth" and a steady disowning of those sins as at all in accord with our present purpose and principles will put them far from us, will be a practical application of the cleansing truth of the Word, of the "blood of Jesus", to the very inmost of our souls; and it is only by this steady perusal of the Scriptures, especially of those passages that vividly picture our personal filthiness, only by this looking into the perfect law of liberty as into a mirror, that we can either learn our true condition or allow that limpid pool to flood away the accummulated decay in our souls. The Bible was written for the whole of man. It is like the good physician who refuses to prescribe for the tiny blotch upon the cheek when a cancer is concealed within.

Husband: This covers in general many passages I intended to read, but how will you explain the apparent grossness of such a passage as that in Solomon's Song (1:13), which, after calling the Beloved a bundle of myrrh, passionately declares "He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts"? This Song has been considered by many as the expression of Christ's love for his Bride, and her high response thereto - all of the deepest and most spiritual character.

Pastor: Is it then to be considered gross or impure for a husband to lie close-clasped between his wife's breasts? Those who regard that passage as impure are simply ignorant of true love. I pity the husband who does not know the joy of such a conjugal couch. And I pity the wife who has a husband of such character that she cannot feel just this longing. The true wife will dwell with delight all day long upon the supreme joy of welcoming to her bosom the noble husband, who in turn makes every stroke of his faithful toil a steady wooing for that privilege. All other joys of earth are to the truly mated as nothing compared with this felicity - to fall asleep night after night in each other's arms. Worn out they may be, disappointed and in great distress of mind or body or estate, but in each other they have heaven with all its security and confidence and peace and restfulness. Where real love is, there hope and courage and grand purpose can never die. Soothed by such calm and close embrace - be its hours many or few and broken - both rise refreshed to bravely face any difficulties, obstacles, adversities. When the world again comes to understand the marriage love which is heaven upon earth, then this text will be a song upon every wife's lips. Whatever the labor and pain and separation of the day, "all night he shall lie betwixt my breasts !" Some would render this text "it shall lie betwixt my breasts," but the bouquet is a mere name for the Bridegroom, and hence the sense would remain unchanged.

Husband: I suppose the nearer we approach to the purity of Eden the less we shall wish to conceal. But must we not wait for that purity before we discard all robes of shame?

Pastor: Nakedness now generally would mean licentiousness, but only as we keep ourselves in such frame as would "think no evil," even if accident should bring us into sudden contact with nudity, only so shall we ever become worthy to enter the better Eden which is slowly appearing on earth. As men and women grow strong and pure enough to discuss, even together, this whole question of sex, with all passion directed entirely after truth, as in other scientific and moral studies, we shall find the moral atmosphere clearing and the sun of a pure love bursting through to thaw out a frozen earth. The timid will cry "shame!" but this work will surely be done before the Lord can return to claim His Bride. And women will probably be foremost in the reform. In order to ever get back into Eden there must first be considerable discussion of Eden, of what we mean by that word, and what we expect to find or make. Nudity is the symbol of purity. One good proof that the world is preparing for that heaven-sent state will be a growing toleration of freedom in speech and manner between the sexes. The opposite kind of nakedness must however first appear, the nakedness of licentiousness - more flaunting and shameless than ever, I fear, since repression is followed by abuse before right use can be learned - but this need alarm none if they consider that final victory is so much the nearer. While lewdness may for a time fill street and theater and periodical, soon a counter stream will meet and precipitate all elements that can befoul and injure. The nude in art will by and by become recognized as a mighty power to counteract the grossness of the times. The beautiful figure of woman carved in pure marble can so fill the boor with awe and reverence as to lift him out of his beastliness and make even him almost angelic for the hour. So the wife has in her very radiant flesh - a radiance which no painter has yet transferred to his canvas - a charm more potent than all else physical the world contains, potent to conquer the husband and make him a delighted devotee. The story of Una and the lion is true - of Ariadne and the panther - but it is not half so often true today in actual life as it might and ought to be. All the animal strength and passion of man is ready to wait patiently on the permission of woman if she but knows how to step fearlessly into her true seat upon the lion's back. Concealment and resistance on the wife's part tend to increase man's passion even to extreme violence. Freedom and indeed absolute abandon on her part tend on the other hand to calm and cool and regulate and satisfy those passions - especially if it is understood that her confidence in his self-control makes such privileges possible. "There is no fear in love." (1 John 4:18) Thus if the wife love and dare, there may be a regular appeal to the noblest in the man, ever calling him as with angel voice and beauty to higher and higher planes of spiritual loving and living. And no true woman ever failed who did risk such a full surrender of her charms in mute appeal to the magnanimity of her husband.

12. Children Sanctify Marriage

Husband: This freedom of speech is nowhere more manifest than in the Bible references to child-bearing. "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward." (Ps. 127:3) "Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine." (Ps. 128:3) A common and devout salutation seems to have been, "the blessings of the breasts and of the womb!" (Gen. 49:25) Eve exclaimed upon the birth of her first child, "I have gotten the man from the Lord!" (Gen. 4:1) Mary, with better reason magnifies God, saying "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!" (Luke 1:48) And when her Child began to utter great words of wisdom woman's voice dared shout in public, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked!" (Luke 11:27) So Hannah prayed, "If Thou wilt give unto thine handmaid a man-child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life" (1 Sam. 1:11), and Rachel exclaimed, in true maternal yearning, "Give me children or I die!" (Gen. 30:1)

Wife: And the two children granted in answer to these prayers, Samuel and Joseph, are the two noblest men in all the Scriptures.

Pastor: And similar prayer for conception will be answered today, but not if the physical conditions are ignored. A separation of husband and wife for a few weeks and a coming together only at the time of month when procreation is possible will of itself often remove the curse of barrenness - especially if the husband can wait calmly till the wife's receptiveness is roused. But there must be full recognition that barrenness is a proper matter for prayer, a deep yearning for children as truly "an heritage of the Lord." Children are not only a gift from the Lord, a possession of immeasurable value, but they develop purity in marriage as nothing else can do. They complete the self-abnegation which real love for a mate begins, for both are compelled to sacrifice much for the well-being of their offspring. Then they put a check upon the continued gratification of sensual passion, which is a healthy restraint. And during the season of the mother's disability the "mute appeal" of which we have spoken lays hold most powerfully of all that is tender and noble in the man, fairly lifting him out of himself, and making a hero even of the husband who otherwise might have wandered into the haunts of the "strange woman." If a man can be untrue to a wife simply because she is helpless in the effort to bear him children - well, there is no name or punishment bad enough to fit him!

Wife: I lately saw a picture called "Sacred and Profane Love" which gives a good sermon on this subject. The lower part was devoted to a husband and wife clasped in each other's arms, but with heads somewhat lower than their feet, and floating gradually downward into the land of darkness, while their feet spurned away the helpless babe offered to their keeping. The upper part of the picture was occupied by a husband and wife of different mind. The woman is sitting, and at her feet is the man lifting their babe on high, while both are fondling him and delighted with his innocent glee. Above and behind them an angel pours down blessing and as it were opens the gate of heaven to their upturned eyes.

Pastor: In the presence of such a true picture of pure and procreative love, and in the presence also of the plain teaching of the Scriptures, it is perhaps unnecessary to say anything concerning the enormity of the refusal to accept these sweet gifts from God. The crime of abortion is so outrageous that its name ought to be sufficient to fill with horror all who hear it mentioned. And that pure day is coming. That joyful mother of children will yet be queen. But in this generation another picture may properly be taken as largely representative of the so-called "higher classes" of society. A fashionable woman sits in her richly furnished home, dog and parrot prominent as pets, yet listlessness and weariness from sheer idleness are shown in her face and attitude. An angel hovers down into the room offering her a beautiful babe in the daintiest of cradles; but the vision is received with a nerveless gesture of impatience and disgust, while a scowl rests upon the indolent face. Underneath the picture is written, "Suffer not little children to come unto me!"

Husband: And if the full truth were known as to our begetting we should probably nearly all have to be labeled mistakes! Very few children I imagine are earnestly desired and then begotten in the best states of body and mind of both father and mother. "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5) would be the proper statement of our heredity. Hence the necessity for great patience with our crooked neighbors. Mistakes in very conception, what can they continue to be all their lives but mistakes - at best only partly corrected?

13. Marriage and Simple Tastes

Wife: One of the main reasons why women refuse to become mothers is no doubt the inordinate desire for dress, this slavery of fashion. Along with this, as you have said, goes the passion for travel and entertainments - chiefly because affording opportunity for displaying adornments and personal charms.

Pastor: Does it seem hard to restrict these charms mostly to the home-circle after marriage?

Wife: I do not think any restriction will be needed with the wife and mother who has any proper appreciation of her true station in life. But many will not only regard it as hard and domineering, but as dwarfing to the mind of woman, and hence as an unnatural restraint against which rebellion is a virtue.

Pastor: The difficulty in getting society to see that home is woman's sphere, and that it is broad enough to tax the best energies of her mind and heart, arises partly from the methods of mating in vogue. If a young woman has been permitted to roam at will, and if she has been tacitly trained to attract the largest possible number of suitors, it does seem a sudden change to keep her at home after the wedding - almost like locking her up in a nunnery or harem. While I hold most positively that it is the woman who first loves the man, and hence that it is proper for her to put forth conscious effort to bring him to her side, yet I as positively hold, on the other hand, that such effort should be made toward only one at a time - seemingly the nearest possible to her ideal - and that his response ought to depend but little upon the question of her personal adornment.

Husband: Do you not admire a richly dressed lady?

Pastor: Yes, just as I admire any work of art, but the richer her dress the more I Would hesitate to seek her for a wife. A young woman who gives the greater part of her time to shopping and discussing fashions and decking herself out as proof of her abundant means and high station and "perfect taste," will make but a poor wife, for her vanity has been fed at the expense of any true development of the affections or any training in the duties of wifehood and motherhood. And lacking the ability to make a home, she will inevitably fail to make a husband out of the man she calls husband, and both finding themselves dissatisfied, become easy subjects for the great temptation. Dress, having been the principal occupation of the maiden, continues to be the delight of the wife, and - if she could read her own heart she would often be compelled to admit with shame - a delight not of binding the husband closer, but of still attracting the eyes of other men. The proverbial stinginess of a certain class of husbands may after all be a sort of impotent effort at self-defence. When the wife calls for sums to spend on dress which to him seem lavish, the husband's objections may prove no more than an instinct of self-preservation, a natural half unconscious protest against making his wife the immodest center of attraction. He is satisfied with her in any simple and inexpensive clothing. Why then should she want to spend money and time, required far more in other directions, to satisfy the demands of the dressmaker and milliner - or of other women, is it? or of other men? Of course there are plenty of miserly men, and a greater number of men who would selfishly spend on their own pleasures when they would grudge half as much to the wife fox any indulgence; but there are also good men who get a name for penuriousness when a closer view would show true wisdom in the restraint put upon finery - or if not wisdom in restraining, wisdom at least in disliking the show.

Husband: Peter and Paul are agreed on the simplicity of dress which ought to prevail. "I will ... that women adorn themselves in modest apparel ... not with broidered hair, or gold or pearls or costly array." (1 Tim. 2:9) "Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel, but let it be ... even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price." (1 Pet. 3:3) But would you apply this as an absolute prohibition for all time of the use of gold or any beautiful ornaments? Why did God make diamonds if they are not to be admired? And if admired, why not place them where we ought most to care for beauty? Even Paul did not despise woman's beauty, for he said, "If a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her." (1 Cor. 11:15)

Pastor: I would take those prohibitive texts in their spirit, but if the spirit of simplicity and true modesty is seen to suffer because of gold or gems, then at least the exhortation should come with all its literal force. There may however be a prouder spirit under plain calico than under a dazzling display of jewelry - pride of superiority to such follies. The "meek and quiet spirit" is what must be sought, not the mere absence of beautiful temptations to vanity. Yet it is quite a question to settle whether a beautiful woman has her beauty much enhanced by jewelry or fine clothes of any sort. This is a question for art rather than religion to discuss. As for me, my taste is for what would be called the "severely simple," for when there is beauty of face or figure all other beautiful things seem to detract. And when beauty of person is lacking much adornment seems a mockery, proclaiming the lack and the hopelessness of any remedy from artificial sources. Love for her husband will lead every woman to keep herself neat and attractive, but it will also make his taste - if he has any, and expresses it - of far more account than that of all the fashion-mongers in Paris. Still his taste, if he is sensible, will modify somewhat to keep his wife near enough to even senseless fashions to be at least recognizable as a woman! But most of the fashions are senseless, and it is a shame that Christian women permit so frequent changes when their dresses are scarcely at all worn - in order to prove themselves ruled by nonsense! Those who have large incomes could surely apply the wealth entrusted to their care as "stewards" - God is the only owner - to very many objects of more benefit to themselves and all around. But the greatest mischief comes into the lives of such as have only small incomes, and who are yet determined to "keep up appearances." Many women of wealth would reform their habits of dress if they could once see clearly how they fire the hearts of poor girls with desire to dress as richly and grandly, and see how that unholy ambition is the beginning of their ultimate ruin. Such girls are silly, and ought to know better, it is true, but will the women who "lead society" even themselves contend, in their better hours, that it is right or reasonable to spend so much money adorning their bodies? Certainly it is only fair to expect a greater show of wisdom from matron than from maiden, and if the matron obeys the tyrant fashion to prove and hold her high position in society, why condemn the weak girl for at least ardently longing to so dress that some man may lift her to that coveted station? It is this longing, more than anything else, which leads the city girl to supplement her meager earnings - so scant that a cry goes up to heaven for vengeance alike upon vile employer and upon viler commercial system - by gifts from male admirers that soon purchase and enslave them body and soul. "I shall be a lady forever!" (Is. 47:7) is practically the motto which turns their giddy heads, and thousands of them every year are sinking out of sight, drawn into that awful whirlpool whose brine flashes and swirls downward with sparkling decanters and sparkling diamonds, with the ruby wine, and with redder ribbons - and rouge!

Wife: And it seems to me that the simplicity you urge ought to extend to other things beside dress - as you suggest by this picture of the fearful vortex of ruin. Neat but unpretentious our homes ought to be, room enough but cosy, pretty but plain. So with our tables. Rich and highly seasoned dishes ought to be avoided as not only harmful but wasteful. If the art of doing without could be studied we should soon sift out much that is unnecessary and burdensome. Money and leisure could thus be secured for many excellent things now beyond our reach because of our serfdom under society's iron sway.

14. Potency by Purity

Husband: Simple living after this sort must lead, of course, to health if not to wealth, and if such habits are chosen without compulsion I am certain they will become so much preferred as to never be given up, all of which means a happy life because a contented life. But I want to know if my experience is the common experience of such as are learning to love rightly. My health and that of my wife is better, not so much because of plainer and more contented living, as because of better loving, because of the springing up of the first tender shoots of real love. Furthermore there is a wonderful increase both in my virility or potency and in her passion or receptiveness. If you are sure this is a law, and that our case cannot be the exception, then the world must lend a willing ear to its proclamation.

Pastor: I am fully prepared to maintain that it is a law. Love is life. The purer the love, the stronger the life. The stronger the life, the greater the pleasure in the performance of its highest function of unition and propagation. Sensual pleasure may seem to surpass the felicity of the true conjugal couch, but it does so only as gluttony might be said to afford more enjoyment than the abstemious meal of thoughtful people, or as the maudlin revelry of drunkards might be considered more satisfying than the peaceful hymns of the family circle. Hilarity is not happiness. It is only the counterfeit of real joy. They who get from married life only the coarse pleasures of the flesh have not yet learned the ABC of love. Not until each delights to see the other happy at some personal expense, some regular self-sacriflce, not till then can the union begin its existence and growth. Then will soul enter into the fleshly union. Then will true heavenly bliss be possible. Then will the blessed pair first begin to see the depths of the briny materialism whence they have been elevated - "caught" and transformed from cold-blooded fish into warm-blooded human kind. Then will they find the higher atmosphere of spirituality beyond denial, beyond any previous imagination, beyond any return to the moral turpitude and suffocation of the old sense-life. Yet the sense-life is not ignored or destroyed. Instead of this, it is immensely perfected, intensified, sensitized, filled out with its legitimate powers, privileges, pleasures. "That your joy may be full" was the farewell wish of Jesus. Not merely joy in prayer and singing hymns and reading His divine Word was in His view, but joy in everything of life. Even coarse, sensual pleasure He came "not to destroy but to fulfil" or better, to fill full. God made this delight of sexual intercourse to sum up and surpass all the other pleasores in the world. Why then should we not try to learn and teach the methods by which His purpose mayy be realized? It is only learning "the way of God" more perfectly, and is just as much a matter of religion as prayer and praise. The world has made the mistake of confusing things good, but abused, with things utterly bad, and many good people have therefore striven vainly and disastrously to crush out that part of their nature which merely required to be turned in the proper direction. To make a clean, respectable citizen out of a hog we must not forbid his eating, but only require that he shall cease to wallow in the trough and swallow everything whole. Jesus prayed - in that same farewell to his Bride (John 17) - "I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil." In our prudish purity we scorn the gross sensualist, when our Lord is longing to so open the eyes of both of us as to make us welcome that fullness of joy into which he patiently waits to initiate every man. We, in common with such grossly and criminally sensual people, have been picking up oranges that lay on the ground, undeveloped, sour or insipid, sun-baked and mouldy, when luscious golden fruit hung above, almost in our faces, and inviting to a perpetual feast. True marriage love is scarcely known in the world at the present day, and yet half the men you meet will agree with our spiritual philosophy of marriage and claim that they have long been living in its daily application. Where all feed on such chance or "wind-fall" fruit there can be no true conception of these higher ideals - except with here and there one who may be induced to taste and compare the heavenly sort - and yet it is not to be wondered at that such as pick up the baked and insipid fruit should childishly condemn those who prefer the green and sour, and imagine that they alone are feasting on the best this tree of wedlock has to bestow. I do, therefore, most emphatically agree with you that love of the spiritual kind redoubles physical pleasure in both sexes, while it prevents exhaustion, and so tones up the whole system as to make it largely proof against disease. This law is particularly manifest in invalid maidens who marry and become mothers of several children. Nature - or better say Providence - seems to hold in check even so dire disease as consumption as a reward to such as find and follow the "true order of nature," and often childbearing so renovates the whole body as to entirely cure the mother. Cultivation of a strong, passionate but continent sexuality is the quickest and most delightful method of regeneration for body as well as soul.

Husband: So then, now, as of old, natural rewards follow upon true living. "He will love thee and bless thee and multiply thee, he will also bless the fruit of thy womb." (Deut. 7:13) "Nor his natural force abated" (Deut. 34:7) could then be written of all old men. The highest boast of the sensualist, his great virility and potency, is really true only of those who learn how to love on a higher than animal plane. And this higher love so develops nobility in the husband as to make the wife always receptive toward her hero - even with youthful passion. Thus all suggestion of other delights is precluded with both, as heaven shuts out hell.

Wife: Thus it comes true that "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come" (1 Tim. 4:8) - more true of marriage than in any other line of life.

Chapter 10 - Drifting Apart: Its Causes

Because, said the old man, some may need this subject presented in a more formal manner in order to grasp it clearly, I should like now to have you crowd into your book two divisions of that plain lecture which arrested me in my descent toward hell: "Drifting Apart: Its Causes" and "Lost Love Restored." The lecturer said:

If we are to do any effective service in establishing marriage upon a more satisfactory basis, either in our own homes or for the world about us, we must not only know and bewail the present sad condition of the average family, compared with the Edenic bliss intended for all, but we must also calmly investigate, with something of the scientific method, the deeper as well as the more superficial causes of inharmony and disunion, to discover the evil forces that overcome the drawing power of love, and so soon after the wedding divorce two souls who at first seem ready to die if they cannot come together.

These centrifugal forces, or causes of the drifting apart, may be classified under three headings: internal, external and accessory.

Accessory or Incidental Causes

These are not unimportant, nor can they be ignored with much hope of happiness. First of these trivial causes of coldness in married life is effusiveness on the part of the wife or an unwise habit of talking about love and manifesting her own shallow love by caresses or endearing terms. No normal woman acts the lover - except when a bashful or hesitating man needs encouragement to declare himself. Though she is always the real lover, it is necessary for her to conceal her love for the very purpose of calling forward the man and inciting him to pursue and capture and appear to compel, at least in some measure, the adherence of the maiden - or of the wife in the earlier years of marriage. (When both have progressed to the higher spiritual plane of living and oneness is at least in sight, this necessity for reserve and tact is removed as a scaffolding from the completed building.)

This concealment and apparent retreat requires quick perception and nice judgment lest it be so overdone as to defeat its own purpose. For the exercise of this tact - amounting in sinful excess to downright lying - woman is endowed by the Creator with a special faculty, sometimes called the "sixth sense," by which she is able to discern intuitively the attitude of the man toward her, and at the same time to gently govern and control that affection without the man knowing that she is doing it. The man - the dullard! - is at the same time in the dark as to her attitude toward him.

This is all expressed in the brief but beautiful parable in Genesis under the symbol of the amputation of a "rib" from the man while in a "deep sleep," and the return of this rib to him later when "builded into a woman." This "sleep" means the man's profound ignorance of the wonderful transformation going on in his character by means of the wife's secret influence, or the transfer and transmutation of his egotistical self-love into a wife's devoted love for him - attachment and reverence for his wisdom. His conceited self-love is called a rib because so destitute of spiritual life - a mere bone, yet inclined to grow into a complete shell so rigid and heavy as to cramp the heart (affections) and even crush its vital beating.

The second incidental cause of drifting apart is rebellion against compulsory monogamy. Marriage laws are disregarded, at least in the heart, as too strict and cramping. Lack of training to perfect obedience in childhood wrecks many a home. If the child is not taught to obey promptly and fully, he grows up with an inner feeling of lawlessness in all that he does, even though apparently a law-abiding citizen and model of propriety. Here it the reason for the "fall" of many who have been trusted and honored. The child obeys chiefly through fear or from a sense of duty, but as he grows older the reason controls and the motive is higher, a love of truth and justice, and love for the neighbor becoming the mainspring of his character. If he goes on to complete evolution of character, love for God becomes the motive, a genuine spiritual marriage with Him for the furtherance of His grand plans for humanity.

Without some activity of these higher motives, marriage cannot exist in its completeness and transforming power. The irreligious man can never know the bliss of wedlock. Hence the parent or teacher who allows a child to grow up ignorant of faithfulness in labor, rude and disrespectful, lawless and proud of his defiance toward all authority - even boastful of a "versatility" which means discontent and fickleness and restlessness, the inability to hold the mind to any one place or mate or occupation - that parent or teacher is guilty of a crime against home and society, guilty of so dwarfing the child as to make him the destruction of any home he may attempt to make - a curse to wife and child if he is so unfortunate as to beget any and thus perpetuate those undesirable qualities. As some stunted plant that received no care in its earlier life may present some sorry blossoms or shriveled fruit, so his love and his children, the fruit of that love, must be but an apology, at least morally, compared with what they might have been with full normal training of the father's character at proper stages in his youth.

If then, the character has become one of steady antagonism or secret protest against all regulations, how can we expect the man to consent to the confinement of his attentions to one only of the opposite sex? To tell such a man he must "cleave unto his wife till death do them part" is to immediately arouse his combativeness. Though he may assent to this as a marriage vow, it is with "mental reservations" which make the promise hinge upon numerous undefined conditions. To most irreligious men marriage with one wife looks not only confined and narrow but arbitrary and unreasonable. Many arguments seem to them to prove such an order bigoted and contrary to nature and even to the best welfare of society, the wife and the unborn child.

I have heard a deacon in the church, an educated and very able man, argue that since polygamy was permitted to the patriarchs, the Bible does not condemn the practice for us today. How easy to make some selected portion of the Bible endorse our pet sin! Such men can never look upon or think about a woman of any beauty without desire, and are therefore in a continual adultery as to the inner life.

"They two shall become one flesh." What more could pages say than is declared in these few words? "One flesh" - or one goodness or helpful service in the world - is to be perfected out of two, and can never be from more than two, nor with a consecutive variety of mates - one male embodiment of wisdom and one female embodiment of love - perfected by cleaving to each other or adhering so patiently and tenaciously that no man should be able to separate them. The mere quibble that it is not improper to "put asunder" that which the devil has "joined together" is offered only by such as are drifting apart naturally because of these low views of the meaning of marriage.

Devilish passions may have drawn the two together, but the Lord's work of unifying souls may be said to begin the moment they do come together - no matter what their motives. And the high purpose and sacredness of this mating of the sexes should be so fully recognized that both would strive from the moment of its consummation to do all in their power to promote this life-long unifying process - develop a compatibility which means heaven here and hereafter. Only by teaching is this grand, educative, regenerative, unifying purpose of marriage to be recognized. All ought to feel appointed as teachers, therefore, who have been granted this "heavenly vision," and miss no opportunity to help others see it. Grander than the ambition to establish libraries, colleges or hospitals is this longing endeavor to lead every human being into this vestibule of heaven, blissful marriage.

Third and last in the list of incidental causes of gradual separation we must mention animalism, an excessive use of the sex function - with its enormous waste of power, time, health and wealth, as well as its death-blow at love. The wife herself may be too willing, and thereby keep the husband on the animal plane, instead of making the legitimate use of her beauty and winsomeness to elevate her husband from animality to angelhood - thus in her failure at last causing satiety, depletion, disgust for herself and perhaps an early paralysis, nervous prostration or consumption. Mutual understanding and agreement should regulate this intimate physical union, for there is a "controlled conjunction" which does not exhaust, and which is far more satisfying and unifying of soul.

The advice of King Lemuel's mother, "Give not thy strength unto women," might properly be urged upon every bridegroom before the wedding night, with reference to his own wife and the depleting excesses which impend. And he would listen, if the restraint were coupled with a description of this quiet substitute for calming the storms of passion.

Some reformers declare that all sex congress except for procreation is impure - thus putting a limit of "once in three years" upon physical union, and even prohibiting it entirely if the wife is unable or unwilling to bear children - yet I can find no warrant in Scripture or physiology for such an impossible standard, set up by an abnormal conscientiousness or a low opinion of the noble functions of sex - intended as much for the unifying of souls as for procreation. But in this controlled or passive union there is a means of satisifying and at the same time of cooling excessive passion. Still of course the wife should be free from unwelcome intrusion at all times, and especially during the period of gestation.

If there is some spiritual development, perfect frankness is possible, but if the man is upon the natural plane of life, the wife is generally silent about this matter, unless she feels compelled to protest. Yet then she is sometimes so lacking in tact, so fails to use her wonderful "sixth sense," that her protest results only in desertion or even in murder. The passions of some men are terrible when opposed at their heat, and every wife should be taught before marriage to so use her great influence as to draw lightning harmlessly from the very thundercloud. She should never use force or defiant words - or feel either spiteful or terror-stricken - but should remain self-possessed and quiet and affectionate and sympathetic and hopeful even when it is necessary to divert his unwelcome attentions. Conscious of the power of love, she must rely upon a submissive appeal to the magnanimity of the husband as her strongest means of defense.

External Differences Which Cause Coldness

First, inequality in age, position, wealth, education, etc. An old man persuades a maiden to come and enjoy his wealth. She consents but soon finds the price she pays is greater than appeared in the bill of her sale. He has aroused her love-nature but cannot satisfy it, and she discovers that her "love" for him was merely her love of herself and of fine clothes. What wonder that she becomes easy prey for some fascinating young villain who is quite willing to help her get rid of the old encumbrance?

A wealthy, educated, refined young lady becomes infatuated with her father's coachman - robust but coarse and ignorant. Elopement follows and then comes the sad disillusionment with the sudden cooling of such a "romantic love."

The only safety in any variety of unequal union is the exaltation of useful service. If both are eager in the pursuit of some common purpose in life, differences in age, position or wealth may be forgotten - as in the case of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was thirty years older than her husband, but who found in him a philanthropic companion for the distribution of her great wealth.

Second, incompatibility, such difference in disposition or habits as makes life intolerable to each other, an inability or refusal to harmonize or conform to the habits of each other. For example, one has so keen a sense of smell that any strong odor is very offensive and likely to cause headache, and the other is particularly fond of raw onions. Shall the onions be dropped or the sensitive nose subjugated and taught not to be "so foolish"? Tobacco is a worse affront to some sensitive wives than garlic and limburger combined. Real love does not stop long to consider the sacrifice, but gives up gladly anything which might offend or pain the beloved. "If meat make my brother to offend I will eat no more meat while the world standeth." But when this early romantic fleshly love is on the wane, the pet habit reasserts itself and is generally indulged - sometimes with the deliberate if secret desire to drive away the partner.

Differences of opinion, clashings of will in regard to food, clothing, house, furniture, heating, ventilation, hours for meals, sleep, etc., promptness or laxity in regard to these hours and all other matters - and in particular the method of child training - these are some of the things where differences must be harmonized or so arranged that each may enjoy as good degree of freedom ms possible without too great discomfort to the other. And if before marriage those points which seem most important can be canvassed together and settled satisfactorily, just so many snags will have been cleared out of the way of the matrimonial bark. Drunkenness may be listed here. Some who have never had any experience with this sin or insanity wonder how a wife can endure a husband who is habitually (or even once) steeped in alcohol. It may be partly because the patient wife suspects that a need in her own character is best met by this severe discipline.

Should this beastliness and all incompatibility entitle to divorce? It is often granted for trivial causes, in the legal statement, while the real cause, adultery, the only proper cause recognized by our Lord, is not mentioned merely because so difficult to prove. Hence to quarrel with the judges or with lax laws is to hit wide of the mark. We say that to grant divorce for these differences is to undermine society, that it is a suicidal procedure which is now growing alarmingly frequent - in fact becoming the insane policy of our decaying civilization. But should we not have the national skeleton in the closet brought more prominently into view if divorce were difficult to secure? Make it difficult - yes. But do not make buzzards your board of health. By education in all pulpits and all schools - as well as by occasional books and lectures of reformers - insist that every inhabitant of the country shall know and practise the fundamental principles of matrimony. Then we shall become truly great as a people, a blessing in the midst of the nations, a "world power" worth knowing and accepting as arbitrator and educator.

It is the main business of marriage to remove incompatibilities. They are the harmful characteristics, at least in their selfish manifestation, which every true man and woman is glad to get rid of, the bristles of the hedgehog in our natures which need to be severely pruned away. As well advise a gardener to pull up his tangled vines because their trailing limbs interfere with each other, as to allow divorce to uproot matrimony just when it has taken hold vigorously enough to cause some clashing of will. Prune the vines little or much as required and train them up if they need it on some proper support. Prune the habits of both husband and wife till they do not seriously hamper each other's freedom or happiness. This accomtnodtition to the interests of each other will do no harm - though it may seem at the time a grievous chastisement - but will do much good, for it means unselfishness, sacrifice, service to others, devotion to the general good, of community as well as family, of all humanity and heaven itself as well as the little sect or state in which one finds himself born.

The old argument from the dog and cat tied together that can never be made to agree is a pessimistic one. No two human beings are so hopelessly different and incompatible. And that other illustration of the oil and water that cannot be mixed is equally overdrawn. Oil and water can be mixed, though it may take the salt and heat of affection to make them stay mixed. In the worst of cases life may be made very tolerable, if even one of the consorts can be made to reason a little - especially if the wife can come to see that her responsibility for a happy and successful marriage is measured by the special faculty given her to regulate and perfect it, and by the fact that love, the life of marriage, can come through her alone.

She should become a positive force. Yet because she becomes something more than the mere negative shadow of her husband, she need not become his opposite in any respect, need not be any less womanly, gentle and refined. A positive force can be used persuasively just as well as commandingly, suggestively as well as in a domineering manner.

The trouble with the dog and cat tied together is that they are tied with too long a rope! Tie them still closer and they'd have to agree or die. An ancient judge of Zurich used to delay decision on divorce cases, and order the applicants shut up together in a room which contained only one bed, one table, one chair, one plate and one cup - no one to speak to them even when passing in their food. After a week of this enforced intimacy of the closest nature it was generally found that they would not accept a divorce. In almost all unions which are dissolved this lack is proven. There had never been any true marriage formed - only a loose relation, a soft of probationary or trial marriage, more suspicious than loving. Though there may be a rude familiarity that breeds contempt, it is not the full familiarity or perfect freedom of love.

The third external cause of drifting apart is love of ruling - considered now because so closely connected with incompatibility, though logically last in this series. To love a man into right doing persuasively while still respecting his freedom is very different from forcing into any course because of a delight in exercising authority.

If you are trying to influence the conduct of another, or of the community at large, you may know from an honest examination of your own daily living whether or not your effort springs from a genuine love of humanity and of righteousness. If you are actuated by selfish motives, you will be making little steady effort to shun any evil - except so far as your own interest or public opinion lead you to live a right life outwardly.

On the other hand, if you are striving to shun every evil as a sin against God, you will respect the freedom of others as the Lord does, and yet will strive to win them from evil courses for their own highest good. If in a position of authority your orders will never be arbitrary, or merely to show that people must obey you, but always for the general good and that also of the one who is commanded. Even your children you will strive to make understand that you are merely passing on the Lord's authority over all, and that they must obey you only because you know it is for their own highest welfare - the sole object of all the commands of the Lord.

Since the father is the head of the family, by nature and appointment, he cannot shirk the responsibility for its proper guidance. It therefore devolves upon him to make the final decisions, after listening to the opinions and wishes of all, and at times to stand alone in the enforcement of those decisions, even against the entreaties of his wife, who cannot for the moment see the necessity for such strictness or severity. If however it is apparent that such action was forced from no selfish interest on his part, any true wife will respect and love her husband more for his iron rule. But let it once appear that he is mainly seeking his own good or glory, and rebellion is at once aroused - sometimes even when he is quite free from such selfishness, because few children relish curbing even when done in the gentlest manner and from highest motives.

As already stated it is this perverse, "contrary," "mulish" disposition, rebelling against all authority, from habits formed in childhood and never broken, which plays the mischief in matrimony - making both husband and wife suspiciously on the lookout for the first word which can be pronounced tyranical or the first act which can be regarded as defiant or inconsiderate. This is a jealous disposition which selfishly magnifies every slight or criticism into a proof that love has vanished or is dying, and it can be cured only by cultivation of a calm faith in the Lord and a hope and trust in His overruling providence, that promises to bring blessing out of all life's experiences.

The elephant in us (the love of justice) is always ready to fly into a fury. It is this infernal will, never "broken," always on the defensive, which separates souls and bodies, sours love, spoils marriage. Humility is despised and feared as leading to slavery, whereas it really leads to a throne. Very few intelligently desire to "become one flesh," because they know not the joy of self-effacement. They have never tested and dare not test the promise of one hundred fold more of life by "losing life" entirely. All want to be independent, and have their own way, prefer to be two individuals and really never form a marriage in any full sense, but only a shrewd partnership with many conditions implied if not expressed. "Very sensitive" is the polite term under which we excuse this "touchy" tendency to fly into a rage - or into a fit of "the sulks" - this hedgehog bristling at first hint of danger to our self-interest, or when we cannot have our own way. Yet a man must have a mind of his own, or there is nothing for a woman to love. A fine woman once told me that her daughter, a beautiful young lady whose "head was being turned by the young men," should never marry if she could prevent. When urged to give any good reason for so unnatural an attitude, she admitted it was her own unhappiness. Yet she could find no fault with her husband except that he always did just what she asked him to do! She said she wanted a man who could sometimes tell her to mind her own business, that he should do as he pleased and would listen to none of her interference.

When he feels obliged to act or command contrary to the expressed wish of his wife, the true husband will make very sure that he is right, that the course is necessary and that there is no self-interest involved in the command. And if he ventures to command her in any course, it must be beyond question for her own benefit or for the highest interests of her children. Even then a request has all the force of a command unless the wife is mentally weak or love has vanished.

Only by constant watchfulness can the selfish love of ruling be kept out of the marriage relation. Yet it must be kept out, else marriage will prove a failure. For while external in its expression, this domineering spirit is not always an external habit, but may spring from deep-rooted devilishniess. Heaven is loving service. Hell is the unloving attempt to compel others to serve.

The fourth external eause of drifting apart is another form of this same selfishness - love of the world or love of money, making a fortune off from the labor of others. This shirking of service may produce a tramp or a millionaire, but the two are twins in their attitude toward useful unselfish service for the world. Both are lazy. The tramp begs rather thtn work. The millionaire may rack his brain and call that work, but it is only to develop new schemes for forcing others to work for him at a fraction of the wages he could afford to pay, or forcing others to pay him far more for any service or product he controls than would provide sufficient income for him and all his helpers - scheming to so capitalize and bond his business as to entail bondage upon the children's children of those he is now robbing, bondage to his children's children, by perpetual franchise and legalized monopolies. If this is labor, society could better affbrd to support such men in idleness as it does its tramps, and ask them never to do another stroke of "work"!

Any woman who is both spiritual and loving would have about as hard a task to honestly love such a fattened parasite - though enjoying his ill-gotten wealth, herself one of the possessions it has bought - as she would in loving an idler whom she supported by taking in washing! In neither case is there any man for her to love. The very idea of manhood is not so many pounds of bones and flesh or so much shrewdness that wins what the world calls "success," but character, usefulness, strength of brain or brawn that bears the burdens of the weak, application to a business whereby he feels that he is best fitted to serve the highest interests of the world - whether by pen or pick. And this noble conception of manhood will not allow a man to prostitute even a pick and shovel to any base or harmful service - at least without a protest against the social slavery which may compel him.

Useful industry is therefore a first element in a husband's composition to ensure a wife's affection. Without this honest toil the man has himself little capacity for responding to the wife's love. His mind is empty and wandering even though grasping, and his passions usually wander far more rapaciously - causing the destruction of his home or preventing his making any home.

Internal Causes of Drifting Apart

Some of those "external" causes seem quite internal as well, but there are other causes still more internal. All these are religious differences. There can be no true marriage without religion. The most perfect marriage is to be found where there is the most perfect religion. "The origin of marriage love and the origin of the church in man are in a continual embrace. As is the one so is the other."

Religion and church are however terms much abused. It does not follow that a man has religion because he prays, nor that he belongs to the true church because his name is upon the list of members of some sect. On the other hand it does not follow that a man who despises the churches may not be truly religious. Many a man is called an infidel who is honestly seeking some better standard than that upheld and practiced by most of the present very imperfect sects. Yet so long as these faulty sects honor the Word of God, proclaim its truths even under the cloud of their materialistic interpretation, and to some extent try to put those misunderstood truths into practice, they are branches of the one true and universal Church, which is the best thing the world knows, and which really includes all who are seeking the genuine truth with a sincere desire to apply it to life.

It is in this broad sense that it can be said the church and marriage love are twins in every man. He alone who is seeking the highest truths of life in order to practice them, he alone is in such frame of mind as to obey the high principles of sex ethics or even to care to search out the hidden wisdom of wedlock.

"Marry into your own religion" is an old maxim, but now largely ignored, and with greater impunity it would seem than formerly, because the fences between the sects have been leveled - let us hope as much by growth of brotherly love as by indifference to truth. Yet this removal of old landmarks often means loss of religion itself - except a sort of bastard goodishness married to an empty formalism - and we may be compelled now to merely say, find for your mate one who has deep religious convictions of some kind and a high standard of pure unselfish living before you venture to think of marrying at all.

At the same time it behooves all who hope for heaven hereafter or for an earthly heaven in the home to lay the foundations of that home on the bed-rock principles of a true religion. This means labor - labor to find and uncover that bed-rock, labor to conform daily habits to the solid facts of eternity thus chosen - but it will be labor well spent, labor that has ensured the safety of the home, even when the winds of passion blow and the floods beat upon that house in the form of false arguments against conjugal limitations, the exclusive love for one woman.

We must not now pause to consider the essential principles of a true religion, but the one "stone which became the headstone of the corner" must be mentioned, for its rejection by the master-builders is more Judas-like today than ever. Only such as have souls married to the Divine Bridegroom can hope to be so united to one of the opposite sex as to gain any full harmony and bliss from wedlock. In order to secure this full union with the Divine Husband there must be entire acceptance of His claim to be God - "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" - and an eager reception of His every word as the very life-blood of the soul, the "seed" which remains in the soul and excludes every sin. (If you want an electric light on religion, order some of the literature listed in back of this book.)

Chapter 11 - Lost Love Restored

If so many differences are at work to separate husband and wife, how can we hope for unity and happiness in wedlock? Why not cut down all legal and social barriers and allow men and women to associate according to the good pleasure of the hour? We may answer in brief because it would mean extinction of the race. Savages may so live, but never a people of large brain and largely developed nervous system - as the history of Greece, Rome, Babylon, etc., shows.

Some intelligent men argue very shrewdly for such "freedom" - and there is at least one "free-love" society which contains more women than men. Shrewd they may be, these philosophic libertines, but they represent a much larger number whose intellect is as deficient as their morals. And even these educated iconoclasts, who are ready to destroy church, state and family, while blessed with a certain shrewdness, are as much out of balance mentally as the rabble for which they apologize or plead. They are as idiotic on the subject of marriage love as the color-blind are on the shades of ribbons and flowers. A recent examination of the heads of a large society of these social anarchists showed every member greatly deficient in the faculty of "conjugality" - thus confirming the claims of phrenology as to the location of this organ, and proving them all most unreliable guides in such discussion.

They assume the philanthropic role of champions of children under the name "eugenics," the science of a good birth, and demand the right of every woman to choose the father for each of her children in turn, thus breaking down all legal restraint to adultery. A few of these people may be sincere, but the majority are without question simply seeking license for their insatiable passions - with no regard for the laws of heredity and with no desire whatever for children. To adopt their "morals of the very rabbits" would be to "revolutionize society" to the point of destruction.

Since very few are sufficiently endowed with this faculty of conjugality - which makes a man naturally reject all idea of more than one mate - why require the impossible? Why not let our affections regulate themselves, like the appetite for food? Well, the appetite for food is not allowed to regulate itself, except in very ignorant and lawless families. Children are taught even to take the breast - knowing less at birth than any beast - and then are taught what to feed on when weaned, taught all along what is good for them and to some extent required to eat wholesome and substantial food - not try to live on confections alone. If even that much of control were applied early to the sex appetite, there would be a different condition in the world today.

Then it is not true that a deficient faculty cannot be developed. Every organ of the brain can be enlarged by cultivation just as each muscle of the body can be strengthened by exercise. Let a man or woman learn to abhor all roving desire as the very breath of hell, holding the mind steadfastly to one mate, even before it is known who this is to be, and far more resolutely after marriage, no matter how great the incompatibility, and the organ will be greatly increased and with this balancing up of brain and mind will come a wonderful increase in happiness and ability to confer true happiness not only upon the wife and family but upon every woman. The sentiment Of this faenlty is expressed by one woman both beautifully and philosophically:

"Sweetly together, love,
Our lives are twined;
I am thy heart, my love,
Thou art my mind.
I can but see through thee,
Thou may'st but feel through me -
Perfect in one are we,
As God designed." - Annie L. Muzzey.

If a man has no comprehension of color, we can afford to give him a smile of pity and let him alone. If his musical faculty is so weak that the grandest harmony is only a noise to him, he can still find much in life to enjoy. But if he has no sense of the harmony between souls, his own soul is lost. If his desire is warm toward all attractive women, he is only a beast. Unless we can arouse him, train him out of this conjugal idiocy, teach him to so concentrate his sex desire upon one woman that he can hold true in the marriage relation, he could never appreciate heaven if he were to enter there, for heaven is conjugality itself, one eternal wedlock. This is the meaning "hidden" in the words, "In heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels of God." As no marrying and remarrying can be tolerated there, so none art fitted to enter upon that angelic bliss until they have "become one flesh" with a true mate, able to abide content to eternity with that one. If the mate proves unwilling to aid in the unifying process, we may safely leave to heaven itself any necessary readjustment of the conjugal relations, knowing that it is our part only to develop a strong conjugal faculty and perfect conjugal conduct even with a mate who cannot appreciate this high eternal purpose.

Few marriages are now contracted with much reference to a full internal agreement. Physical beauty, money, position, education - such external things settle the choice in mating for the most part. In that grander civilization, springing from the purer religion waiting to bless the earth, attention will no doubt be paid to the higher principles of mating, and then marriages can be formed that are far more perfect. But what can be done meantime? Well, a few young men, who have some reason and self-control as well as eager desires, would even now, if they could be instructed, strive to discover the soul of the woman they wish to wed, though even such would have a task to brush past the flimsy external - not merely of laces and fleshly charms, but of coquetry and affectation and shallow piety!

Hence it must be admitted that it comes to this with most couples, even after the most careful scrutiny of character now granted, that marriage is very much of a lottery, on account of the deceptive masks of modern society. Yet there are very few if any "blanks" to draw in this lottery. Every man gets something worth while even now, and so does every woman, though each prize may be very crude, only a raw soul material, so to speak, that needs the patient touch of a mate, and careful handling to work it up into a form fit for perfecting heaven's society.

So that after all marriage is not so much of a lottery as a trade, a science, an art, and he is a success who knows how to skilfully work up this raw material of human affection into a grand matrimonial prize - mold the maiden into an angel by being half an angel himself. The age of soul is coming! Men are already beginning to discover that there is a soul hidden within all things material - underneath the crude "letter" of Scripture, under the coarse shell of all nature, under the features and forms especially of all Mankind, whether plain and hideous or beautiful and graceful - admitting that the external is deceptive, contradictory and destructive when studied and loved for its own sake alike in theology, science and matrimony.

When it is once perceived that external attractions can never give full satisfaction and abiding peace in wedlock - no matter how great the beauty, magnetism, culture, wealth - if it be once admitted that matrimony is the union of two souls, then it will also be seen that only spiritual men and women can enjoy that genuine marriage love which is heaven upon earth. Hence of course it follows that if only one of the consorts is spiritual and the other still natural, there can be no deep harmony between the two, except as the higher birth or spiritual evolution comes to unite them.

Does it therefore follow that when natural charms fail, and both recognize that there is no internal spiritual bond to hold them together, they do well to separate? By no means. Though some argue superficially that it is a worse sin to remain in an unloving union than to break the letter of the law and look for more congenial mates - even though they must be divorced every year. Some even propose "trial marriage" as the only way out of these painful bonds, or of escape from a future bondage. What is this different from the old Jewish laxity, which made them so "hard-hearted" or licentious that our Lord denounced them over and over as hypocrites, murderers, whited sepulchers, generation of vipers, children of the devil, children of hell?

In the very face of these sensualists, Jesus declared that divorce should be granted for adultery only. He made no concession whatever to their prejudices or customs on this fundamental question of religion. Even His own apostles thought this high standard absurd and impossible in such an age, declaring that if a man must hold to his one wife so strictly as that, he had better never marry. The Lord would repeat the same today. Compromise in this vital matter is no more possible now than then. Outwardly they may look the same, but when viewed interiorly marriage is heaven and adultery is hell. Rich and poor, philosopher and ignoramus, would have this same law of heaven declared for their guidance - and that too from lips divine. Let those disregard it who dare, for they must suffer great spiritual loss. And let not those who keep this law outwardly, but continually break it in their hearts, or imaginations, think that they can escape eternal death.

Must the man then who thinks he has been "born again," who loves the spiritual commandments of God's Word, and has his "affections set on things above," never sigh, if he finds himself joined by too early and inconsiderate marriage, by her deception or his own ignorance, to a woman who cares only for worldly things - never wish he could have one more chance to select a mate suited to his present state? He need not deny his disappointment, though the less he says about it or manifests it the better. If he thinks any benefit would come from a frank admission, he may tell his wife honestly that he feels a lack of sympathy on her part for his highest and best aspirations, feels that while she is a good Martha "anxious and troubled" over his physical needs, he wishes she could become a Mary and choose that better part of his being and identify herself with that.

Then, if she has even a true natural love for him, and he is humble and really interested for her welfare and higher happiness in such an appeal, she is likely to strive after this spiritual re-birth for herself. But if this frank talk angers her, because she thinks him only boasting and condemning her as beneath himself, he must indulge her in this opinion - never urging her - nor must he relax one iota of his duty toward her, or of consideration for her physical comfort. And while he thus respects her freedom and strives for the highest union possible in her best states, he must give her no occasion to suspect that he is looking toward union with any other woman. For he is not a fully developed man - much less an obedient follower of Jesus - if he even allows his mind to wander away from her.

It is his sole business to think and act as if she were his true spiritual mate, so far as this is possible - let her do or say what she will. Such an imitation of true marriage love is not a counterfeit - for there is no intention to deceive, no hypocrisy about it - but is an honest effort to be as useful and helpful as possible to each other and to the community. They may agree to disagree on some things of highest importance, each respecting the other's freedom, especially holding the religious belief of the other sacred from, all intrusion by curiosity or discussion, defending it even from the joking of others. Such a friendship, as the best substitute for a true conjugal love which it seems possible to attain, is in itself commendable for many reasons, a few of which must now be considered.

1. Imitate true conjugal love, where it does not exist, because the separating differences may be more apparent than real. Loyalty to truth and a high standard of right living in all the affairs of life from eating to praying - "prove all things; hold fast that which is good!" - faithful, steadfast progress toward the highest planes of living will probably reveal the fact that less difference exists even on religion than was once supposed. Our conceptions of duty and of God, like our taste for literature, amusement or food, change as scenery changes on a ride through the mountains. We say I, he, she - but these pronouns represent a being very much modified and altered with every new day, with every kaleidoscopic readjustment of circumstances. All character is waxy in consistency, or can be brought into that state by a hand warm with love, and can be molded to our wish if patiently handled. It is only force, selfish compulsion, which causes petrifaction, turns the affections into hardness of heart. Act as if your mate were a saint - at least underneath the ugly exterior - and you may find it all true some day, find that you have entertained an angel unawares. Do you suppose that anybody wants to be a devil? Do you suppose that your consort, who acts so often like one, does not labor under the impression that you are the cause? If that is a false impression, it will not be difficult to remove it.

2. Imitate conjugal love therefore to create the real. Honest, patient copying will produce the ideal relation and its joys in time. Chisel a statue times enough and you may equal the sculptor's work at last. "Love one another, little children," and by and by you will come at once into a knowledge of true conjugal union and into the new and heavenly birth, the at-one-mind with the Divine Husband. Instead of seeking happiness by a change of wives, seek it by a change in your present wife; not by argument, but by the transforming power of a radical change in yourself. This is the Lord's way, the true order of your soul, far easier, and certain to bring satisfaction! Divorce is the devil's way, and can never satisfy anything except your animal nature, and that only for a brief period. Unless you learn true marriage love - entering upon the regenerate life at the same moment, since they go hand in hand - you will never be more, in the sight of heaven, than a grown up boy, large in body, perhaps large in brain, but a dwarf in soul - a ease of arrested development. If in earnest to enter upon this soul union, go kneel with your arms around each other and frankly tell the Lord wherein you think you have failed, and that you propose with His daily help to enter at least upon an imitation of conjugal love, and to hold on your way until you can realize the genuine.

Try my prescription and let me know if it fails. My word for it, you will enter upon a new honeymoon sweeter than the first and one that does not end in three weeks!

3. Imitate conjugal love - in its giving and serving manifestation - because it will improve one character even if by some incapacity or insanity it should fail to influence the other, and thus bring the two into their true Eden. To lay aside antagonism, suppress jealousy, conquer self and his base passions - all this is no small task and makes a man a hero in the eyes of his wife, even if she can stoutly resist the desire to unite herself with such a truly great man. None but the brave deserve the fair, or ever really get them in the fulness of their being. No normal woman can long resist a gentle man. He who has strong enough character to endure a bitter woman's sarcasm and return only gentle and humble answers, without any attempt at self-defense, will in time silence her batteries through sheer exhaustion and recover her love - provided of course he is not making demands upon her that exasperate or pursuing any other headstrong course, and provided also that he is not mute through fear, a mere hen-pecked weakling. At any rate the man who makes such a noble stand will increase his own nobility to fully compensate for all the effort, whether or not he wins her approval and affection.

4. Imitate conjugal love to avoid scandal, disruption of home and undermining of the nation. Stability of government depends upon the integrity of its homes. Love of home is the basis for patriotism. Men do not go into battle singing "Home, Sweet - Boarding House!" Abolish the order of bachelors. Let the fascinating young widows - who have learned how to win a husband - impart their secret to every old maid and coach them till not one is left! In short, multiply the homes where full conjugal love reigns and you need sustain no standing army. Every man would fight like a lion against any insolent invader.

If true, deep, increasing marriage love is not enjoyed in your home, imitate it - not in sickly sentimentalism, not in endearing names and effusive attentions in public merely, while impatience and angry looks and cruel words are common at home - act as if you were a lover again (minus the superfluous conventional etiquette) living for the loved one, happy only in her happiness, admiring and praising her good deeds, qualities and abilities at least as frankly as you would boast of her to another. Act thus long enough and patiently enough, and you will soon lose all thought of or desire for separation. Do not tear up even a cold hearth-stone! It can be made to glow again. Every family disbanded means another foundation stone of our republic torn out of its base. Stop it, ye men who love your country, stop this cruel, filthy divorce business - even if you do not now love your own wives!

5. Imitate conjugal love in order to teach and be taught, and thus to throw up a highway for love's tender feet. Honest purpose to improve, and frank admission that the ideal sought is not yet attained will enable each to accept the other as teacher. Each can teach the other much, if there is a willing mind to learn, and thus bring the diverging paths together once more. She must teach him to spiritualize marriage. He must teach her to materialize it. For love has a body as well as a soul. Both lessons are needed and both must proceed along right lines in the teaching - no dogmatism but persuasion, investigation, experiment, each testing without prejudice the better way proposed.

The circuit of love which starts in the Lord Himself - for God is love - and returns to Him, if not interrupted and perverted, must complete its earthly arc by descent through woman and ascent through man. Women are inclined to receive that inflow of love only in a romantic sort of cloud of sentimentalism - of poetry, novel-reading and castle-building - and it is the work of a true husband to so gently educate his wife as to bring her down willingly and gladly out of that dreamland into real life - to eagerly give full expression on the natural or physical plane to this mighty love which is entrancing her. He is a wise husband, a true educator, who can proceed so patiently as to cause her of herself to adopt the plan or method which he merely suggests. And she is a loving wife who can follow mere suggestions because they come from her husband, even though she cannot yet see their reasonableness.

Then in turn she must help him elevate the mind and desire above physical things, yet by means of them, so that while enjoying the physical ultimation of love increasingly, he finds "the blessing hid within," feeds no longer on husks, but learns in perfect wedlock to relish heaven's manna. She must do this in very self-defense, for if she fails of this mission, ordained for her by her Creator, marriage itself is a failure, the husband will remain on the animal plane and will treat her little better than an animal, a mere slave to gratify his unsanctified passion. She must not drive but beckon, not preach but entice, allure, bend him by means of his own desires toward a higher good and its pleasures.

She must not despise, shirk or refuse carnal union. True spiritual living is reached through the carnal not by crushing it. Much "pious nonsense" is repeated by goodish but unthinking people about "crucifying the flesh" which assumes that this means practical suicide, whereas it means just this consecration to God, elevation, purification through orderly, controlled use, not cowardly disuse. Heroic self-mastery is needed, not lawlessness or suppression - consecration in place of the old physical castration or the new mental struggle to live as neuters. Then as true purity comes in, all feelings of shame will vanish. There will be no desire to apologize for the Lord because He saw fit to make us with these overmastering passions, but instead a deep peace will pervade the soul; a reverence for sex and all its manifestations, a feeling of brotherhood for every woman instead of the old untamable desire.

6. Imitate conjugal love in order to accommodate yourself like a gentleman to the will of your wife in the duties of life common to both. If you are to stay together, you may as well be decent toward each other, and thus make life tolerable at the points where you must come in contact - even though it seems settled that there can never be any true harmony.

The care of children - especially weak children - has prevented many a drifting apart. In the care of the babes your wife has borne you, treat them as your own flesh, and treat her equally so by reason of this great service, if for no other reason. Then you will regain any lost respect and friendship. If this self-respecting course is pursued long, the wife's respect will deepen into a love far stronger than the first romantic fancy.

In any occupation where husband and wife co-operate, the same though perhaps slower restoration of love may be expected, if the wife is treated with a like deference and consideration. "Be not bitter against her," the apostle urges - even if she has shown herself weak and silly. Patiently show her how, and request the adoption of your better plan, but do not expect her to obey an arbitrary command, unless with deepening hatred for you as a penalty.

So in all plans and purposes and secrets of the home - even where genuine love is lacking - there may be a mutual understanding, and calm weighing of the opinions, wishes and even whims of the wife (or husband). Each knows much about the other which it were far better should not become topics of common conversation - at least till after events have shown whether the planning was wise - and hence each has in his or her keeping the private interests and happiness of the other to this extent. This makes each the custodian or unpaid guard of the other, and is a constant appeal to honor, friendship, even affection. To betray this confidence would be proof of hatred and cruelty. To magnanimously guard it against attempted intrusion is proof that all love is not dead, and that it may therefore be fanned into a flame once more by patient, high-minded endeavor. On the other hand any distinct consciousness of this individuality is proof that love is weak, because when oneness has been formed, then all interests are so common that either is rather pained than pleased with thanks. Then they say "we," not "you and I."

The very living under the same roof provides many an occasion for mutual helpfulness, and would in time lead a conceited old bachelor and sour old maid to some degree of accommodation and friendship, provided each adhered strictly to a high standard of courtesy and respect for the other's freedom. How much more then can the closer relation of legal marriage be utilized for drawing together again two people who have drifted apart, if they will resolve to rise above the petty meannesses of a love turned sour, and then act according to that high standard!

Questions of property, and the share of each in any great or little comfort or luxury or delicacy, are involved more intimately as the relations become strained and fault-finding takes the place of approval. If each will maintain a generous attitude toward the other, it will help to prove and even to create an unselfishness which is not possible without some love - generous if possible in that most difficult matter of appreciative words, commending rather than blaming at every turn.

The peacemaker has sometimes shrewdly made use of this magnanimity in restoring a lost love, by asking each privately to outline a plan for a division of the property in case of separation. If love is only wounded and still alive, there will generally be found a willingness to grant the other a larger share than he or she would be willing to accept. Many a man who is dissatisfied at home, and who thinks his wife no longer cares for him, would walk forth chivalrously and leave all his property to her, even though very large, if he could do it without the reproach of desertion and cruelty, which such an action would seem to prove. Suicide has seemed to some the only escape from this reproach and at the same time from a home no longer bearable. While suicide is murder, and while no man has any more right to take his own life than that of another, let not the world throw rocks or mud at the memory of such men, for we know not what was their disappointment or their blind struggle with goading, unsatisfied passion. Honor at least sealed their lips. And so it does often in men who flee their home and are branded libertines. Ignorance, all ignorance, on the part of both husband and wife! Proper instruction would save nearly all the wreckage of home.

Let then such as would restore a lost love, seek frequent opportunity to deny self for the happiness of the other, and the sacrifice will not long go unnoticed or fail to produce its effect. The lover lives only for his sweetheart. If the husband will assume once more that attitude toward the wife, and hold himself steadily there, the attitude of giving and serving instead of being served, he will soon forget that his wife had grown cold toward him.

Suspicion, jealousy, counsel from unwise friends, needless and unfounded alarm - the very old hen's cackle in our minds over nothing - arousing a keen sense of injured justice - the fury of the elephant let loose within - these are some of the things which trample down and crush love even at its beginnings, as the furious elephant crushes in his mad rush every tender plant and gentle fawn. Be very careful, disappointed husband, aggrieved wife, to keep this elephant of your mind well tied!

This abnormal conscientiousness, which sets up a Puritanic standard for other people to follow, does more perhaps than anything else to separate loving souls. Injured innocence may be a subject for mirth in grotesque cariciature, but this over-sensitiveness to injustice, tending to magnify the least slight into a serious and premeditated offense - this is no matter of laughter in the affairs of home life. ("Stepping Heavenward," by Mrs. Prentiss, gives a dramatic picture of this weakness which all wives should read.)

To sum up then in a word, the way to restore a dying love is simply to "serve one another," to "wash one another's feet" - or remove with loving touch the stain and bruise of earth's trouble and worry, ignorance and sinful habit. Let both husband and wife resolve to cast out every pettish thought of the failure of the other to show any love, and plan as many ways as possible to at least prove faithfulness to duty, genuine politeness, loyal friendship - yes, love of this nearest neighbor, if not of the conjugal consort. If such a course is pursued through all opposition and discouragement, it will not be long before true marriage love will be developed and in full measure. Then there will be rejoicing among the angels and among all true friends on earth!

Chapter 12 - Courtship and Temptation

I will burden you further only with two glimpses at the results of the new ideals of marriage in the training of our own children. They learned to put the fullest confidence in us as to all love affairs, and they were tested with temptation commensurate with their clearer instruction. They could have no motive for concealment, for we left them entirely free in making the choice, free indeed in all matters of courtship - treating cordially even those companions whom we could not approve. We gave much attention to making our home attractive and free to them, so that about all of the mating was done almost under our eye. Music, games, refreshments, and even the square dances were encouraged so long as home was made the center, and late hours and all excesses were avoided. We believe it the privilege and duty of all parents to provide as wide a circuit as possible from which life-partners may be chosen. But freedom without guidance is harmful, therefore we gave our children the fullest, most minute instruction as to the proper steps and ordering of courtship, and rejoiced with them at every successful move. Many of our conversations I could reproduce, but most of the principles have already been sufficiently discussed. I will mention one little grief:

Bertha, only eighteen - for we firmly believe in very early marriages - came to me one day with swollen eyes, but with heroic effort at self-control.

"Well, now, you've got the roses into the wrong place," said I.

Without heeding my banter, she began: "I fear I have done wrong and lost a good friend. Last night Harold treated me very coldly, and then went home without even saying 'good-bye.'"

"Well, where is your wrong?"

"All I can recall is my half-playful refusal to let him kiss me when he said 'good-bye' the last time he was here before, because he had previously been growing too demonstrative."

"Never fear, then. Cannot you afford to wait a bit as well as he! His pride was wounded by your refusal, and now yours is by his coolness. Your relations forbid any kissing beyond a gentle touch of the lips. If he is not content with this, it is because he has much of the carnal yet to subdue. And if he cannot control himself he must be content to let others help him."

"O, he is too noble and kind to ever need outside help, I am sure, and I would rather indulge his impetuosity a little than to endure his estrangement long."

"Do not flatter yourself that he nor any man is so self-contained as to need no help from woman. Your refusal may have been lacking in tact, and thus humiliated him possibly more than was necessary, but he will recover if you can only give him time."

"But this uncertain waiting is dreadful! I feel that I must write him a note."

"Do so, if you really can't bear the burden, but I think waiting will prove better for you as well as for him. It will calm you and help you read the quality and the strength of your mutual attachment. If he is as noble as you believe his nobility will soon forgive and ignore what he at first considered your cruelty, certainly will show him how petty and babyish is his retaliation in refusing any farewell when he cannot have the kind he wants. Meantime it is proper for you, while clearly viewing his fault, to love, the manhood which you feel sure is his real, and better self. Best assured that such outgoing of love in mute appeal will reach him by a route not yet understood, and will so lay hold on him as to render your letter needless. If he has begun to respond purely to your love, you may be sure that he is quite as miserable as you are. How soon do you expect him here again?"

"Not for a week, as he leaves tomorrow for a short visit in the country."

"Well, then, you may look for him here this evening, or his pride is greater than his nobility. If he is your proper mate (and I think very well of him myself), treat him with all the old cordiality, and when he leaves, if he does not ask a kiss himself, do not hesitate in this instance to offer him one. If you thus show your confidence in him you may be sure he will not show himself swinish, and the misunderstanding will be fully put away without any 'scene.' And O, how angelic he will vow you are as he walks home on air."

My advice was taken, my prophecy of his coming proved true, and the parting was just what I had pictured; for he had decided in all true humility not to ask a kiss again till he had proven himself worthy to receive the privilege. They married a year later, and now eight children are already calling her grandmother.

All our seven children married happily, and most of them at a very early age. All have been fruitful unions, though one son and one son-in-law sacrificed their young manhood in the terrible war of the Rebellion. Of course I declare that there never was a finer set of grandchildren, and all will agree that they are a vast improvement over their old grandfather. One of these, together with his young wife, you saw here for a few days after your arrival. He would have remained till now but was obliged to hasten away for the opening of the school of which he is the principal. But I will give you a brief chapter of his life, as a proper closing of mine.

This grandson's name is Joseph, and at that time he was twenty-two years old. He had just graduated at Harvard, and with a wealthier class-mate was making a trip through California. They had been comparatively little acquainted while studying, and it was only after travel and pleasure together had established familiarity that the friend began to show his real character. Outwardly he was very polite and cultured, but inwardly his heart and mind were most corrupt. Bitter toward all religion, he did not hesitate to argue also against marriage as an institution. Though urging the right of passion to be gratified, like the appetite for food, whenever and wherever the hunger might manifest itself, he was himself a cool even cold reasoner who had little occasion to put his vile theories into practice.

Joseph of course combatted such theories, but nevertheless was somewhat weakened in his own position - received, up to this time, chiefly as his father's opinions. The calm and cynical arguments had all the more effect because Joseph has a very warm blooded nature, and it was most pleasing to the flesh to be told that right was on the side of indulgence. For a time his mind was shrouded in this fog of sophistry, while leisure, plenty of money and distance from all who knew him conspired to urge the sowing of "wild oats." In this frame of mind he reached a new hotel in Southern California, which was just opening with few guests but many servants. His chamber-maid was a pretty Irish girl who came of good family, but one in which accident and mismanagement had reduced the circumstances to deep poverty. With plenty of leisure it was only natural that she should soon acquaint Joseph with her sad story. Manly and sympathetic, he was ready to offer her money at once, especially as her father had lain a cripple for years, but she resented his first hint in that direction. His sympathy led her on, and once when her trouble brought tears to her eyes and color into her cheeks, he stooped and kissed her.

Several days then passed during which he avoided her - for he felt he had done wrong in kissing her - but she was not as pure as she was proud. His kiss of sympathy had meant more to her than he had intended, in fact it had roused her whole warm nature to secure him for her own. She became the more desperate as the time for his stay shortened, yet her ignorance and mere blind passion could suggest no method of proving her devotion.

One night he wakened with a start to find her in the bed beside him. Doubt it as you may, I am relating the exact facts. What was he to do? Passion at first fired him so irresistibly that he dare not speak or move, but lay with muscles tense as steel. Seeing him start, she began to weep, and to tell him how her heart was breaking for the love he alone could give. Then she praised his generosity, his sympathy, and even his manly figure. At last she began to stroke his cheeks. At her first touch he won the mastery over himself. He sprang to the floor and quietly dressed himself, then, turning to leave the room, he said:

"Oh! I am very sorry for having encouraged you in this direction. I meant only to be kind and brotherly. But even if I had loved you and hoped to make you my wife, this would be a very wrong beginning. Your virtue is too precious to be thrown away on an hour's pleasure. I will walk in the garden and give you time to retire from the room. Never mention this night to any one. Preserve your purity as more valuable than life. God in His own time will give you a suitable husband."

She did as he directed, while he first took a cold plunge bath to cool his passion and calm his brain, and the next day Joseph and his schoolmate hastened their departure, so that he never saw her afterward. The friend could not find out why there should be such determined haste to move on, but he did discover very soon that a great coolness had somehow fallen upon their friendship. This terrible testing had shown Joseph how near he had come to accepting the gross sensualism of the supposed culture of his friend. It had compelled him in an instant to array himself either for or against that philosophic licentiousness, and had so revealed the character of the friend that he now seemed nothing but a devil. Under such changed conditions it was no wonder that very soon they separated, and that Joseph should first tell him what he at last saw clearly concerning the enormity of such loose notions.

I wish I could go on to describe the poetic wooing of the lovely bride he afterward met in that flowery realm, and the recent romantic wedding. It took place on a Sunday evening in a grove of immense sycamores which shaded a natural amphitheater. It was just on the outskirts of their small city, and had long been used for great meetings, being fitted up with seats in wide semi-circles. Japanese lanterns in large numbers hung from the branches, and together with a profusion of flowers of all sorts, and in many forms and festoons, made the scene very dazzling. Of course the fragrant orange blossoms were not wanting for the bride, nor rose leaves for pretty little girls to carpet the pathway just in advance of her coming. It was the bride's wish to have the wedding made thus public, for she had hosts of young friends, and there was a vast audience to enjoy it all. It was also her wish that a sermon on marriage should be delivered, and the lecture which I had so long preserved was forwarded, and was read by her pastor - slightly revised, and largely supplemented by poetic remarks of his own. The reception and banquet were on the following morning just before the departure to their new home - for neither cared for any tedious bridal trip.

I am done. But I feel a great sadness because my story has been so poorly presented. I hope your pen may be able to make up for my weak utterance. And I shall spend my latest breath in praying that all who have the opportunity to read the book may forgive my plain speaking, may take it all in the spirit in which it is offered, and may strive to mend their lives - if I have shown them need of change in any particular. If my name were to be known I should fear no criticism half so much as the claim that all these vast principles had always been followed; for that would mean that the book was a failure - that it had at least left one reader as blind to heaven's joys of sex-union as it found him. All I have said should be received as a cry from the grave - pleading with men and with women to flee from all that is in the least like hell in the relations of the sexes, and to call down and enter upon all that is like heaven in those relationships. "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!" So yearning and striving toward the highest ideal, the willing and obedient shall all be taught of the God of home and heaven to attain more and more perfectly unto true marriage love - the very life of heaven as of earth.

"Yea, come to me, my dearest,
Place thine hand in mine own.
Look in mine eyes and see how deep
My love for thee hath grown;
And I will press thee to mine heart.
Will call thee my dear wife.
And own that thou art all my joy
And happiness of life!"

To recapitulate and offer brief reply to some deadly falsities recently dressed up in robes almost angelic, a few words are here appended.

1. God made woman beautiful and fascinating for the very purpose of attracting man, influencing him, molding him, perfecting him.

2. God made man passionate for the very purpose of his being attracted by woman's beauty and yielding to her persuasive, molding power.

3. This desire on the part of woman to captivate man, and this desire on the part of man to propagate in conjunction with a receptive woman, is proof of life from the Creator in its dual form of love (female) and wisdom (male), by which He is always endeavoring with this double force to create from one man plus one woman that "one flesh" which means perfection of character, and physical bliss as its accompaniment.

4. Superb sexuality should be the glory of every man (virility alert), and of every woman (winsome affection), for it means, if under control, perfect health, happiness and holiness - an immense power for any service in the world. Hence it should be cultivated even down to old age by all proper methods, not depleted by excesses on the one hand, nor on the other hand emasculated by shame and the tragic martyrdom of suppression.

5. Cultivation can be most rapidly accomplished by the free expression of love on the physical plane in accordance with the true principles of sexology - revealed by unprejudiced study of the nature of man and woman - conforming to the true order of human beings in this unifying process of a conjugal relation so Edenic that no breath of wandering desire is possible.

6. That true human order for the physical expression of love cannot be determined from a study of animals, because man is far more than an animal, and no animal has the slightest comprehension of love as it is known to men - or should be known by them - even though the animal is so strictly monogamous that it pines and dies at loss of mate.

7. The proof that the world is still chiefly submerged in the brine of materialism is found in the fact that both sensualist and social purity reformer accept the beast for teacher - the first imitating the animal's fury and brevity in physical union, the second declaring such union prohibited except for procreation only. (Once in two or three years for man.)

8. It should be prohibited entirely, for that undignified and soulless sort of union was never intended for man, never can be satisfying - is the cause of shame, prudery, ill health, degenerate children, quarrels, divorce, suicide, murder - making marriage a failure even with the most who do stay together.

9. Controlled union, passive intercourse, the internal caress, should be substituted for that old beastly fury, and may be learned by any husband who has a desire to investigate the laws of love and enjoy its far higher and truly human pleasures. Once learned even this can be dispensed with if necessary, because bosom love is always ravishing to the lover not sated by lust, to the husband thus self-disciplined.

10. Yet the seminal fluid is not intended alone or even primarily for procreation. It has the higher function of being love's own vehicle - is not an excrementitious waste, not a mere animal secretion but - a vital essence, a real entity, a concentrated personality, the very soul of the husband in solution, ready to add itself to the soul of the wife (if allowed calm, loving, trustful, unashamed opportunity), whereby she becomes gradually transformed from a maiden into true conjugal womanhood, "builded into a wife."

11. Only by that strong yearning exclusively toward one husband (stimulating his equally exclusive response), which welcomes this pure stream from his very soul, can the wife transfer to herself the "rib" of a man's egotism and selfishness, and thus transform that self-love into an unselfish devotion to herself - preventing all roaming desire and thus making possible heaven's unifying process in monogamous wedlock.

12. Regulating his passion by her special faculty or "sixth sense" (not by opposition to that passion) through steady application to the desires of his wisdom, then (whether or not the blessing of children is granted) a steady increase of love in the wife and of wisdom in the husband will go forward in that unifying process, that development of full-rounded character for which marriage was instituted, even to the perfection of the "one flesh," one goodness, one affection - "two hearts that beat as one" - which is heaven on earth and heaven above the earth.

Once admit such a mighty and eternal purpose in marriage, and all ideas of polygamy, easy divorce, limited partnership, promiscuity, temporary lapse from the growing union with one, any form of lax morality, is clearly seen to be entirely contrary to this unifying purpose, an abuse of sex, a degradation of love into mere animalism, a perversion and partial destruction of life itself.

The orange tree is not easily transplanted when it has once taken root. The wise man does not allow it to be disturbed, but gives it tender care where it stands, varying according to its needs.

"The maiden goeth to the grove.
And of the flowers beneath
She takes the lily or the rose
To bind her midnight wreath.
But of one plant she gathers not.
Though fair its blossoms be:
Only the bride hath leave to wear
Buds from the orange tree."

Book List

• George Savory - Open Letter to Preachers
• George Savory - Man

• John Worcester - Lessons in Correspondences:
The Plants, The Minerals, and The Atmospheres
The Animals
Physiological Correspondences

• Louis Pendleton - The Wedding Garment

• Chauncey Giles - Our Children in the Other Life

• Clarence Lathbury - The Balanced Life

• Holcomb - End of the World, or Consummation of the Age

• James Spilling - Amid the Corn
• James Spilling - Among the Flowers
• James Spilling - Evening and Morning
• James Spilling - Me and Mine

• William Bruce's Commentaries:
Matthew
John
Revelation

• Emanuel Swedenborg - True Christian Religion
• Emanuel Swedenborg - Heaven and Hell
• Emanuel Swedenborg - Apocalypse Revealed
• Emanuel Swedenborg - Divine Providence
• Emanuel Swedenborg - The Four Doctrines