should be restrained by law, than why eating and
drinking should be; and there is as little occasion for shame in the one
case as in the other.... The guests of the marriage supper may have each
his favourite dish, each a dish of his own procuring, and that without
the jealousy of exclusiveness. I call a certain woman my wife; she is
yours; she is Christ's; and in Him she is the bride of all saints. She
is dear in the hands of a stranger, and according to my promise to her I
rejoice."[135]

In a letter to Mr. Hepworth Dixon, J. H. Noyes claims the "right of
religious inspiration to shape society and dictate the form of family
life," and with probable accuracy says that the origin of these American
sects is to be found in revivals:--

"The philosophy of the matter seems to be this: Revivals are theocratic
in their very nature; they introduce God into human affairs.... In the
conservative theory of revivals, this power is restricted to the
conversion of souls; but in actual experience it goes, or tends to go,
into all the affairs of life.... Religious love is very near neighbour
to sexual love, and they always get mixed in the intimacies and social
excitements of revivals. The next thing a man wants, after he has found
the salvation of his soul, is to find his Eve and his Paradise.... The
course of things may be restated thus: Revivals lead to religious love;
religious love excites the passions; the converts, finding themselves
in theocratic liberty, begin to look about for their mates and their
liberty."[136]

With regard to the beginnings of these modern movements of "Spiritual
Wifehood," all involving the abrogation of the normal relations of the
sexes, Hepworth Dixon writes:--

"It has not, I think, been noticed by any writer that three of the most
singular movements in the churches of our generation seem to have been
connected, more or less closely, with the state of mind produced by
revivals; one in Germany, one in England, and one in the United States;
movements which resulted, among other things, in the establishment of
three singular societies--the congregation of Pietists, vulgarly called
the Mucker, at Koenigsberg; the brotherhood of Princeites at Spaxton; and
the Bible Communists at Oneida Creek.... They had these chief things in
common: they began in colleges, they affected the form of family life,
and they were carried on by clergymen; each movement in a place of
learning and of theological study: that