ecclesiastical, but that is a misunderstanding. The word
"sacrament" is the ancient Roman name of a soldier's oath of military
allegiance, and the idea, in the deeper sense, existed long before
Christianity, and has ever been regarded as the physical sign of the
closest possible union with some great spiritual reality. From our modern
standpoint we may say, with James Hinton, that the sexual embrace,
worthily understood, can only be compared with music and with prayer.
"Every true lover," it has been well said by a woman, "knows this, and the
worth of any and every relationship can be judged by its success in
reaching, or failing to reach, this standpoint."[10]

[8] Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton: A Sketch_, Ch. IV.

[9] Olive Schreiner in a personal letter.

[10] Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton_, p. 180.

I have mentioned how the Church--in part influenced by that clinging to
primitive conceptions which always marks religions and in part by its
ancient traditions of asceticism--tended to insist mainly, if not
exclusively, on the animal object of marriage. It sought to reduce sex to
a minimum because the pagans magnified sex; it banned pleasure because the
Christian's path on earth was the way of the Cross; and even if
theologians accepted the idea of a "Sacrament of Nature" they could only
allow it to operate when the active interference of the priest was
impossible, though it must in justice be said that, before the Council of
Trent, the Western Church recognised that the sacrament of marriage was
effected entirely by the act of the two celebrants themselves and not by
the priest. Gradually, however, a more reasonable and humane opinion crept
into the Church. Intercourse outside the animal end of marriage was indeed
a sin, but it became merely a venial sin. The great influence of St.
Augustine was on the side of allowing much freedom to intercourse outside
the aim of procreation. At the Reformation, John a Lasco, a Catholic
Bishop who became a Protestant and settled in England, laid it down,
following various earlier theologians, that the object of marriage,
besides offspring, was to serve as a "sacrament of consolation" to the
united couple, and that view was more or less accepted by the founders of
the Protestant churches. It is the generally accepted Protestant view
to-day.[11] The importance of the spiritual end of intercourse in
marriage, alike for the higher development of each member of the couple
an