on is an almost awful revelation in itself to a young man
of the true nature of sensual sin. He would gladly die for the woman he
loves. And we look, therefore, to you mothers to bring into the world
that Christian ideal of marriage which at present is practically shut up
between the covers of our Bibles, that the man is to love the woman, the
husband the wife,[27] "as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for
it"; not our ideal of the self-sacrificing woman--our patient Griseldas
and Enids and all the rest of it--but the self-sacrificing man, who is
but poorly represented in our literature at all,--the man who loves the
woman and gives himself for her, holding all the strongest forces and
passions of his nature for her good, to crown her with perfect wifehood
and perfect motherhood.

This Christian ideal was doubtless intended to fulfil those restrictions
of the Levitical Law which were to safeguard the health of the wife and
secure the best conditions for the unborn child; laws and regulations to
the observance of which the Jew doubtless owes his splendid physique and
his still more splendid mental endowments, which, though he is the
fewest of all peoples, bring him everywhere to the forefront,--in
finance, in literature, in music, in general capacity,--and to which, I
should be inclined to add, he owes his comparatively slow rate of
increase, else it is difficult to understand the small numerical
strength of this extraordinary race; but I know that this is a disputed
point. No jot or tittle of these laws and regulations can pass away
until they are fulfilled in some larger truth; for ignore them or not,
they are founded on physiological laws; and it is on mothers'
recognizing this larger truth in the advice they give, and on their
bringing in the Christian ideal, that the future of marriage mainly
depends, and its being made more consonant with the higher and more
independent position of women than it at present is.

Whilst the sight is so familiar of wives with health broken down and
life made a burden, possibly even premature death incurred, by their
being given no rest from the sacred duties of motherhood, to say nothing
of the health of the hapless child born under such circumstances, can we
wonder that the modern woman often shows a marked distaste to marriage
and looks upon it as something low and sensual? Or can we wonder that
married men, with so sensual an ideal of so holy a state, should, alas!
so large