While retaining all the old Roman's disrespect for woman, the Church instituted and fostered celibacy, as a way out of the old profiligacy, but as though by a sort of spiritual irony, the Church has retained, from its "pagan" ancestors, the sex-worshippers, the idol of the Holy Virgin. And despite the bombardments of criticism from without and the inculcation of superstitious ignorance from within, the pure-hearted children of the Church have always gone to the "Holy Mother" for their comfort; and thus the eternal fires of Truth have smouldered beneath the ashes of perverted mysticism throughout the Dark Ages that are gone and the scarcely lighter Dawn that is here. Those who have eyes to see, realize that the one worth-while thing which the old, nearly-blind Church has been unwittingly doing all the time, has been to hold to this central truth of all Life—religious, social, national, and domestic—the truth that it is only by exalting the maternal function of human life, that we can hope to reach the saviour of mankind.
And, lest there be still some misconception of what we consider to be the true "saviour" of mankind, we will again state, even as the Church itself states it, "the babe of Bethlehem"—the pure Love between one man and one woman; the "twain made one," which is the only saviour that ever was or ever will be—the pure Christ-child that is born of conterpartal union.
Let those who would cling to the idea of an individual man, born in a city called "Bethlehem" as the saviour of the world, remember that even so, the city derived its name from the word, "bethel," meaning a pure white stone, rounded at the top, in exact imitation of the omphalos of Apollo, in the temple of Delphi. And when the shock of his discovery has somewhat subsided, and his prejudices have been swallowed up in a desire for the whole Truth, let him remember also that this central idea has been the foundation of all religious rites since time began; and instead of feeling that the whole fabric of Christianity has been rent by the light of scientific discovery, he will see that it has merely been revealed, and the revelation will prove to him that Truth is the most beautiful, the most spiritual and the most satisfying thing in life, because the Truth is that Perfect Love is the only passport to immortal bliss. No one can withhold Heaven from us, if we have this perfect love.
Thus the essentials of Christianity are the essentials of every other religious system; and the essentials are: Love is the One true and only God; and Sex is the form in which this Bi-une God appears; according to our individual and collective reverence for this bi-une God, will be our spiritual development.
We do not reverence sex when we cheapen it by dissipation; or when we abandon it as unclean and unworthy and unholy; both attitudes are abnormal, and unbalanced.
Spiritual consciousness aims at equilibrium. The perfectly balanced person is equally developed on all planes; the perfectly balanced individual, in sufficient numbers, will produce a balanced and therefore a healthy social organization; and a balanced and healthy-minded race of beings will result in a balanced sphere; this fact is foreshadowed by the postulate which Science is now considering, to wit: the earth's axis may be straightened, and, if so, a uniform temperature will prevail on this globe.
Returning to a consideration of the subjects which head this chapter, we find it necessary to clear the ground a little, in regard to a definition of words.
The word continence should apply to the act of self-restraint in the matter of the emotions, desires, and passions, whether of the sex-passion or the passion of anger, avarice, or gluttony. The word has come to mean, in many cases, the total abstinence from the sex-relation, because of the general idea which has prevailed, that any indulgence of sex-love was a confession of weakness. In fact, our modern ideas regarding this subject are so chaotic and so manifestly paradoxical that they are absurd.
On the one hand we have a tradition that motherhood is a beautiful and holy thing; on the other, we regard the sex-relation, per se, as an indecent thing, or at best as a weakness of the flesh.
We have the obvious demonstration that creation is possible only because of the conjunction of the two sexes, and yet we are taught that sex-love is something which is permitted to us in this lower state of our being, and denied in heaven, and at the same time we are told that God creates everything, and God dwells in Heaven, where there is no such "polluting sin" as sex-love.