this respect as free as himself, and calls it a special gift of God.
He does not encourage a man to desire a mutual soul intimately to
share griefs and joys; one in whom the confiding heart can repose,
whose smile shall reward and soften toil, whose voice shall beguile
sorrow. He does not seem aware that the fascinations of woman refine
and chasten society; that virtuous attachment has in it an element of
respect, which abashes and purifies, and which shields the soul, even
when marriage is deferred; nor yet, that the union of two persons
who have no previous affection can seldom yield the highest fruits of
matrimony, but often leads to the severest temptations. How _should_
he have known all this? Courtship before marriage did not exist in the
society open to him: hence he treats the propriety of giving away a
maiden, as one in which _her_ conscience, _her_ likes and dislikes,
are not concerned: 1 Cor. vii. 37, 38. If the law leaves the parent
"power over his own will" and imposes no "necessity" to give her away,
Paul decidedly advises to keep her unmarried.

The author of the Apocalypse, a writer of the first century, who
was received in the second as John the apostle, holds up a yet more
degrading view of the matrimonial relation. In one of his visions he
exhibits 144,000 chosen saints, perpetual attendants of "the Lamb,"
and places the cardinal point of their sanctity in the fact, that
"they were not defiled with women, but were virgins." Marriage,
therefore, is defilement! Protestant writers struggle in vain against
this obvious meaning of the passage. Against all analogy of Scriptural
metaphor, they gratuitously pretend that _women_ mean _idolatrous
religions_: namely, because in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is
personified as a virgin betrothed to God, and an idol is spoken of as
her paramour.

As a result of the apostolic doctrines, in the second, third, and
following centuries, very gross views concerning the relation of the
sexes prevailed, and have been everywhere transmitted where men's
morality is exclusively[14] formed from the New Testament. The
marriage service of the Church of England, which incorporates the
Pauline doctrine is felt by English brides and bridegrooms to contain
what is so offensive and degrading, that many clergymen mercifully
make unlawful omissions. Paul had indeed expressly denounced
_prohibitions_ of marriage. In merely _dissuading_ it, he gave advice,
which, from his limited