6. All passions are bom of thought and are sustained by it. But no passion is sustained and nourished by thought so much as lust. Do not dwell on lustful thoughts, but repel them.
7. Even as in eating man must learn abstinence from animals, who eat only when hungry, and stop when satisfied, so men must learn from animals in sexual matters: to refrain from sexual intercourse until attaining full maturity as the animals do, to engage in it only when irresistibly drawn, and to abstain as soon as the foetus is formed.
8. One of the surest signs that a man truly means to
lead an upright life is a man's austerity with himself in sexual life.
VI.
Matrimony
1. It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Nevertheless to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
/. Cor., vii, 1-2.
2. The Qiristian doctrine does not set down hard and fast rules for all. It merely points to that perfection after which we must strive. It is the same in sexual matters. Perfection is absolute chastity. And every degree of striving by personal effort, to approach perfection is a greater or lesser degree of obeying the doctrine.
3. Marriage is the promise of two persons, a man and a woman, to have children only one from the other. Either of the two failing to carry out this promise, commits a sin which falls back most harshly upon the sinning one.
4. In order to attain a goal one must aim beyond it. And to make a marriage indissoluble, to have both partners remain faithful one to the other, it is necessary for both to aim at chastity.
5. It is a grievous error to think that the marriage ceremony performed on two persons releases the contracting parties from the necessity of sexual abstinence with the object of attaining even in the marriage union an ever increasing degree of chastity.
6. If man, as is the custom with us, sees in sexual intercourse, though it be sanctioned by marriage, a means of gratification, he will inevitably lapse into vice.
7. The essence of a true and valid marriage is to live together, so that children may be brought into the world.
External ceremonies, declarations or agreements do not constitute marriage, but are used by many in order to recognize as marriage only one out of many forms of living together.
8. The true Chiistian doctrine having no basis for the institution of matrimony, the people of our Christian world feel that this institution is not founded on any Christian doctrine, and remaining blind to Christ's ideal of absolute chastity (which the prevailing teachings ignore), they are absolutely without any guidance on the subject of matrimony. This accounts for the otherwise very strange phenomenon that races with religious beliefs on a far lower level than Christianity, having no exact external definitions of marriage, present family principles and marital fidelity of a much more stable order than the so-called Christian nations. Races with religious beliefs inferior to Christianity have well defined systems of concubinage or polygamy, and within certain bounds also polyandry, but they lack that utter dissoluteness manifesting itself in the concubinage, polygamy and polyandry which prevail among Christians and are hidden under the mask of a fictitious monogamy.
9. If a purpose of a meal is to feed the body, he who eats two meals at once, may attain more pleasure, but will fall short of his purpose, for the stomach will not digest both meals. If the purpose of marriage is the family, he who desires more than one wife, or she who desires more than one husband, may obtain more gratification, but will fall short of the principal pleasure justifying matrimony—^namely family life. To feed well and to purpose, man must not eat more than he can digest. A good marriage, if it is to attain its purpose, can only be when the man has no more wives, and the woman has no more hus-
bands than they need for the proper education of their children, which means only when the husband has one wife, and the wife one husband.
10. Christ was asked: Is it lawful for a man to leave one wife and take another? And he said that this ought not to be, that a man and a woman in marriage should be so joined that the twain be one body. And that this was the law of God, and that what God has joined together, no man should put asunder.
But the disciples asserted that it was hard thus to live with a wife. And Jesus told them that man need not marry, but if he did not marry he must live a pure life.
11. In order to make marriage rational and moral, the following is needfuclass="underline"
First, it must not be thought, as is done now, that every human being, male and female, must marry without fail, but on the contrary every human being, man and woman, must endeavor to preserve their purity to the best of their ability so that nothing should hinder them from giving all their powers to the service of God.
Second, to look upon sexual intercourse of one person with another of the opposite sex, no matter who they may be, as the entering upon indissoluble marriage relation.
(Matthew XIX, 4-7).
Thirdly, marriage must not be looked upon as now in the light of a license to satisfy sexual passions, but as a sin, the redemption from which consists in the fulfilment of family obligations.
12. The licensing of two persons of opposite sexes to live together sexually in marriage is not only out of accord with the Christian teaching, but is directly contrary to it.
Chastity according to the Christian doctrine is that perfection towards which a person leading the life of a
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 137
Christian should properly strive. Therefore all that hinders the approach to chastity, such as licensing of sexual relations in marriage, is opposed to the demands of the Christian doctrine.
13. If marriage is looked upon as releasing us with the moment of its conclusion from the necessity of striving after chastity, then marriage instead of curtailing lust encourages it. Unfortunately this is the attitude of the majority of people to marriage.
14. Think ten, twenty, a hundred times before you marry. To bind your life with that of another person in a sexual relation is a matter of great import.
VII.
Children are the Ransom of Sexual Sin
1. If man attained perfection and lived in chastity, mankind would cease to exist, and why, indeed, should it then live on earth, for they would become like angels who neither marry nor are given in marriage, as is told in the New Testament. But as long as men have not attained perfection, they must produce after their kind, so that their descendants, in their striving after perfection, may attain that perfection which men are destined to attain.
2. Marriage, the genuine marriage consisting in the bearing and rearing of children, is an intermediate service of God, serving God through your children. "If I have left undone the things which I ought to have done, here are my children in my place, they will do them."
This is why people who enter married life, the genuine married life having for its object the bearing of children, always experience a feeling of a certain relief and peace. They feel that they transmit a certain part of their obligations to the children that are to come. But this feeling
is lawful only when the parents joined in matrimony endeavor so to rear their children that they become the servants of God and not a hindrance to the work of God. The consciousness that if I have fallen short in yielding myself entirely to the service of God, I can do everything in my power to enable my children to do what I failed to do,—^this consciousness lends a spiritual significance both to married life and to the bringing up of children.
3. Blessed is the childhood, which amid the cruelties of earth, gives us a little glimpse of Heaven. These eighty thousand daily births of which the statistics speak are like currents of innocence and freshness which fight not only against the destruction of the species, but also against human corruption and the general infection with sin. All the good feelings evoked by the sight of the cradle and by childhood are one of the mysteries of Providence; remove this refreshing dew and the whirlwind of selfish passions will sear human society as though with fire.