FORGETTING THE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND
I have implied in this book that the very best in sexual experience is only for those who keep themselves unspotted in early life, and who come to the sacrament of marriage with no previous and lower experience of sex intimacy. I am even sure that the very best is spoilt a little by all previous unworthy thinking, and by all perverse practices.
I know that that will sound a hard saying to very many, for there are few who have fulfilled these conditions for knowing the best. It must seem to them that I am practically saying to them, "You can never now enter into the holy of holies." Yet I cannot alter what I have said, however acute may be my sympathy with those who have stumbled. I believe it is true, and no good ever came of hiding the truth. It is because it is true that I have such confident hope for mankind. Men and women do in their hearts want the very best, and when they come to know what are the only terms on which that very best can be had they will, I believe, accept those terms.
But this would be a cruel book, and a false book too, were I to imply that there is no way in which the past can be forgotten and forgiven, and no way into purity and joy even for those who have wandered. Were that so I could not write at all about this subject, for it would then be too tragic.
Perhaps the worst consequence of aberrations in thought and conduct is that they make it very very hard to be perfectly happy and unashamed when at last love calls them to enter into the inner chambers of marriage and romance. The shadows that rest at times on that part of marriage even for some very happy lovers are due to the fact that the man (or sometimes the woman) was once involved in something else before that was a little like it, and yet was haunted then by a sense of wrong-doing and so could not have a perfect experience. It is only to the pure that all things are pure.
But it is not true that the past need dog and spoil the future. It is not true that sin is irremediable, nor that its stains remain for ever. The essential and central thing in Christianity is the assertion that there is a remedy for the situation that sin creates.
I do not think there is any remedy to be found in simply trying to ignore the past—or in saying that our aberrations were only those of ninety per cent. of mankind, and were so natural as to be not worth bothering about. In such ways we may push the past out of sight, but we do not deal with it. It remains there though out of sight. For the fact is that such sayings do not quite convince us, and therefore they cannot kill the past.
Nor is there any remedy to be found merely in the forgiveness of man or of woman. Women are proverbially, and perhaps divinely, willing to forgive. But a woman's forgiveness does not necessarily make a man able to forgive himself. Nor does it always cleanse an unclean inner life. To many a man it has been just the fact that his fiancée or wife was so sublimely willing and able to forgive that has revealed to him his own unworthiness and made it sting the more.
No! there has got to be something much more drastic in our lives if we are to get free from shame and remorse. We have got to go down into that stony valley of humiliation where men and women face the naked facts before their God, and stop all attempt to hide or to deceive. We have got to stop the sophistries which are so dear to us, and through which we try to put the blame on others, or on circumstance, or on fate. We have got to face the fact that the evil things—whatever they were, either small or great—happened because we were weak—because we put pleasure before duty—because we gave in to lust, or evil suggestion, or a craven longing to please the flesh. Yes! They happened because we were weak, and that is a horrible thing to have to admit. Yet admitting it is the only way to regain contact with the truth. And what next? The next thing is that in that extremity we find God. It might seem that He would probably be the last one to be found through humiliation and the open admission of being impure. But in actual experience that is how He is found. That is His way—to meet the man who has discovered his own insufficiency—to intervene at the desperate minute—to reveal to incarnate weakness His eternal strength—to give a strange assurance that He Himself is about to enfold the man or woman in His power, and tale charge of the future. And when that has happened a man knows what to do with his past. He can leave it with God, and then it loses at once all power to haunt him or put him to shame. It was unclean, but the cleansing fires of the divine love have taken it in charge, and its power is broken. That is something very different from trying to hide it or trample upon it. That is really killing it, and after that a man both may and can forget.
"If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." That is literally true even in this connection. Spiritually a man ceases to be the same person as the one who was once so weak and unclean. He has entered a new spiritual country.
Experience has proved all this over and over again. Men who in early youth were wild have by the grace of God become so essentially pure as to become capable of true and blessed experiences of love and all that love leads to with a fine woman. But it does need the grace of God. Those who attempt simply to forget and make light of their early follies do not escape from them.
And why should I not boldly say the same thing—exactly the same thing— about a woman? It is certainly true. No one seriously believes that the redeeming grace of God, which is sufficient for all other sins, fails before this one. No one who has understood Christ doubts that He can make a new woman, and a pure and noble woman, out of one who has stumbled. And yet curiously society has never learnt to forgive women. A man is allowed to forget the things which are behind. Generally a woman is compelled to remember them till the very end. I shall never forget being once at a meeting of men in New York where a very great American woman spoke to us all on this subject. She pointed out to us that society had never learnt to control the evils of this part of life because it had never learnt to adopt the method of Jesus, which was frank and full forgiveness. We have been afraid. We have thought it would be socially disastrous. But Jesus had no hesitation in His voice when He said to a penitent Magdalene, "Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more." Of course she sinned no more. There is in all the universe no constraining force like that combination of forgiveness and trust.
I am sure we cannot make our standard too high. I am sure we need to guard against all compromise in thought with its august demands. But I am equally sure we need to learn to forgive generously if we are ever to help those who have stumbled. Forgiving sinners does not mean condoning sin, else could there never be any divine forgiveness. What it does mean is loving the persons concerned. Till we learn to exercise that divine art, we do but shut the doors of hope against sinners and push them farther down.
Of course this means that for a pagan society there is no choice between a sternly cold and cruel morality on the one hand, and license on the other. For pagans cannot forgive. They alternate between a moral indifference in which there is no hope for anybody, and a cold and callous condemnation of sinners which is both hypocritical and cruel. We have all seen both policies in action and know how hopeless they both are. But in exact proportion as we learn to think and feel with Christ we shall learn to forgive, and so doing shall begin to have mastery over the evils in sex life that spring from ignorance, waywardness, want of discipline, and the misunderstanding of love. History is one long record of how by the force of law and by alternate severity and carelessness the human race has tried to find for itself the right path through this special country. But the record is largely one of failure. There is no way of success for a society that depends upon such forces. Here as in a dozen other connections the only way to life is that Christian way which the world has so largely repudiated. Mankind want to make a success of their life in this world—want to make the most possible of it—but they want it apart from the leadership of Christ, and so they miss it. He can show us the way of life if we will but listen, but no other can.
And His way is always and altogether the way of love—love that can tame the brute in us and make it a servant—love that can transform passion into a holy fire—love that makes men patient and women generous—that takes the common things of life and makes them sacred— and above all love that can hate sin with fierce sincerity, and yet love and forgive sinners.
It is after this fashion that God loves us. We must so love one another if we are to make human life great.
There is another and a larger sense in which there is need that we should forget the things which are behind. We need as a race to escape from an evil past. Our greatest danger in this whole connection is the danger of moral skepticism. "Sex vice has always been common," men say with truth; and then with fatal unreason they add, "and always will be." That way lies sheer disaster. The whole situation calls for faith in man's future—faith in his capacity for purity—faith in love. And that faith is really but a part of any true faith in God.
In the past even Christian people have tried to evade the problem of sex. The truth about it has not been openly sought. Its challenge has not been bravely met. Its possibilities have not been realized. And therefore fears, sufferings, excesses, cruelties, and injustice to women have degraded our common life. The whole matter is central for our civilization. While we think and work for reconstruction we would do well to remember that there can be no happy and harmonious life for us till this whole problem has been solved—till we have learnt to enthrone pure love in our midst and by its passionate and cleansing power to subdue the brute and exercise our complete humanity to the glory of God. Love never faileth. It purifies passion and dominates the flesh. If we believe in God we needs must believe in the triumph of love; and that means a divine consummation at last to all our wanderings and struggles in connection with Sex.