mself quite well able to avoid the
sinfulness of sex by practising celibacy; but he recognizes, rather
contemptuously, that in this respect he is not as other men are, and
says that they had better marry than burn, thus admitting that though
marriage may lead to placing the desire to please wife or husband before
the desire to please God, yet preoccupation with unsatisfied desire may
be even more ungodly than preoccupation with domestic affection. This
view of the case inevitably led him to insist that a wife should be
rather a slave than a partner, her real function being, not to engage a
man's love and loyalty, but on the contrary to release them for God by
relieving the man of all preoccupation with sex just as in her capacity
of a housekeeper and cook she relieves his preoccupation with hunger
by the simple expedient of satisfying his appetite. This slavery also
justifies itself pragmatically by working effectively; but it has made
Paul the eternal enemy of Woman. Incidentally it has led to many foolish
surmises about Paul's personal character and circumstance, by people so
enslaved by sex that a celibate appears to them a sort of monster. They
forget that not only whole priesthoods, official and unofficial, from
Paul to Carlyle and Ruskin, have defied the tyranny of sex, but immense
numbers of ordinary citizens of both sexes have, either voluntarily
or under pressure of circumstances easily surmountable, saved their
energies for less primitive activities.

Howbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for
the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the
natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable
only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had
Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on
its legs again in the name of Jesus.

THE CONFUSION OF CHRISTENDOM.

Now it is evident that two religions having such contrary effects on
mankind should not be confused as they are under a common name. There is
not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of
Jesus. When Saul watched the clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, he
was not acting upon beliefs which Paul renounced. There is no record of
Christ's having ever said to any man: "Go and sin as much as you like:
you can put it all on me." He said "Sin no more," and insisted that he
was putting up the standard of conduct, not de