those from whom they differed merely on some metaphysical
point. We have even begun to be restless under man's cruel domination
over the animal creation. But we have made far less advance in our
conceptions on sexual matters; and we are content here with ideas
which were current in Elizabethan days. But for this, no passion for
conservatism, no reverence for a liturgy endeared by centuries of use,
could induce us to tell every bride as she stands before God's altar
that it is one of her functions to provide an outlet for her
husband's passion and a safeguard against fornication. Lust is at
least as degrading in married life as it is outside it. No legal
contract, no religious ceremony, can purify, much less sanctify, what
is essentially impure.

Those who desire to assist in the uplifting of humanity cannot afford
to be silent and to allow judgment to go against them by default.
Courage they will need; for a charge of indecency is sure to be
levelled against them by the indecent, and they may be misjudged even
by the pure.

This is not the place in which so delicate a matter can be fully
discussed, nor does space permit; but if the movement towards sex
instruction is not to be stultified by the very ideas which evidence
the need for it, the subject cannot be wholly ignored here, and I
venture to throw out a few suggestions.

Are we indeed to believe that the noblest and most spiritual of men
will compromise themselves in the eyes of the woman they love best,
and whose respect they most desire, by committing in her presence and
making her the instrument of an indelicate act? A great poet, who
remained an ardent lover and a devoted companion until his wife died
in his arms--blissfully happy that she might die so--has written:

"Let us not always say,
'Spite of the flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole.'
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry, 'All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul.'"

Again: are we, who believe in a Divine government of the world, able
to imagine that God has made the perpetuation of the race dependent
upon acts of sin or of indelicacy? Did He who graced with His presence
the marriage at Cana in Galilee really countenance a ceremony which
was a prelude to sin? Did He who took the little children in His arms
and blessed them know, as He said "for of such is the kingdom of
heaven," that not one of them could