y call it
a betrayal--into a contract of such infinite importance, and positively
desire that they shall be ignorant of its nature?

It really seems sometimes as if pains were positively taken to mislead
those who are going to be married. One of the most amazing statements on
this subject, for instance, is contained in the marriage service of the
Church of England, where the bride and bridegroom are told that marriage
was ordained that "such persons as have not the gift of continency might
marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body." That there
should be anyone in the twentieth century who does not know that a man or
a woman who has not the gift of continency is totally unfit for marriage is
really rather startling. What such a person requires is both a divine and a
physician; but that he should be told that he is fit for marriage and
that marriage was expressly designed for him is not only misleading, it is
absolutely horrifying. It explains the tragic wreck which so many marriages
become after a comparatively short time.

I would urge, then, for the future, that we should not concentrate all
our moral, ethical, religious, and social force on perpetuating the tragic
failure of an empty marriage, but, rather, should concentrate our efforts
on trying to make people understand what marriage is; what their own
natures are; what marriage is going to demand from them; what they need in
order to make it noble. I urge, moreover, that the same principle should
apply to those who do not marry--that they also should learn in the
light what their difficulties are going to be; how to face their
own temperaments; how to deal with their own minds and bodies. Your
temperament, men and women, does not decide your destiny; it does decide
your trials. To know how to deal with it and how to make it your servant,
how so to enthrone spiritual power in your nature that it shall dominate
all that is physical, not as something base, but as a sacred and a
consecrated thing--it is on this that the teachers of to-day should
concentrate with all their power. It is true that when we have learnt
all that is possible from teaching, there is still something to learn. In
marriage is it possible to know finally until the final step is taken?
No, I do not think so. But when you consider how we have struggled against
ignorance, how many pitfalls have been put in the path of those who
desired knowledge, how we have, as it seems, done our