own wife,
and let every woman have her own husband.

3. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence; and likewise
also the wife unto the husband.

4. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and
likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.

5. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time,
that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together
again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

6. But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment.

7. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man has his
proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.

8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to
abide even as I.

9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry
than to burn.

These precepts furnish an example of the harm that can be done when man
follows the absurd and unsocial decrees of an ascetic individual written
in a barbaric age and maintained as law in a more advanced period. The
enlightened physician holds that it is not good for a man not to touch a
woman; and one wonders what would have become of our race if all women
had carried St. Paul's teaching, "It is good for them if they abide even
as I," into practice. Bertrand Russell, in his "Marriage and Morals,"
has gone to the root of the matter when he states, "He does not suggest
for a moment that there may be any positive good in marriage, or that
affection between husband and wife may be a beautiful and desirable
thing, nor does he take the slightest interest in the family;
fornication holds the center of the stage in his thoughts, and the whole
of his sexual ethics is arranged with reference to it. It is just as if
one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent
people from stealing cake." But then it is too much to expect of a man
living nearly two thousand years ago to have known the psychology of the
emotions, but we do know the great harm that his ascetic principles have
done. St. Paul took the standpoint that sexual intercourse, even in
marriage, is regrettable. This view is utterly contrary to biological
facts, and has caused in its adherents a great deal of mental disorder.
St. Paul's views were emphasized and exaggerated by the early Church and
celibacy was considered holy. Men retired into the desert to wrestle
with Satan, and when the