The last few pages have been occupied with a statement of the Neo-Malthusian propaganda. I have been careful rather to understate than exaggerate the case. Much that I might have included, corroborative testimony from people who know, individual instances, letters, and so forth, has been rejected for the purposes of this essay. Were I writing another book upon the subject I should have used this material. In a collection of papers devoted to various subjects, and which will have a more general appeal than a work devoted entirely to vital statistics, it is impossible. But any one who has followed me thus far may be sure that I have been strictly temperate in statement.
We have seen what the Neo-Malthusians, avowed and secret, are doing. What is the Church doing to stem the evil? and what is the teaching of the Church upon the subject?
The teaching of the Church is perfectly clear; my contention is that it is so rarely taught as to be practically unknown to large masses of Christians.
No one ever goes to his parish priest and asks if adultery is wrong. Yet innumerable clergymen have told me that they are constantly asked by parishioners if there is “any harm” in the use of methods to limit families.
Such people are not, of course, of a very spiritual life, or very acute intelligence, or they would easily find the answer to such a question for themselves. But very few of us are either spiritually minded or of uncommon intelligence, and legislation must be for the average man. Voltaire said, “on dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons,” and what was spoken as a sneer contains the germ of a great truth. Let me say once more, and I am certain of what I say, that the “gros bataillons” are quite ignorant of their moral obligations in marriage in so far as they relate to the question under discussion.
Why?
The truth is, in the first instance, very difficult to convey from the pulpit and to a mixed audience, though, to take three great names at random, the President of the United States, and our own Bishops of Ripon and London have spoken out. In accusing the clergy and nonconformist ministers of shirking their duty we must remember the enormous difficulty of their task. I have no responsibility but that of my own conviction, and no one is compelled to buy this book who does not wish to do so. It is therefore quite easy for me to sit in my study and write as I am doing. But the preacher, great as his opportunity and influence are, must by the nature of the case, be in a very different position. He is an official and recognized leader of his flock in spiritual affairs, a hundred considerations weigh with him; he is constrained on all sides by prejudice and convention which might do incalculable harm in other directions if the one was outraged and the other ignored. The position of the priest is admirably summed up in a pamphlet which Father Black has sent me. In it he explains that it is impossible for a preacher when addressing a general congregation to speak in other than general terms, or to say all that he may feel it is, in some cases, very desirable or even necessary to convey. He cannot but be aware that with sins of impurity especially, the very persons who commit them are generally of too delicate ears to endure to hear them called by their right names. This sentimental purity is not incompatible with corruption of life. He wishes to warn the innocent without enlightening their innocence, to lift the veil sufficiently to show their sin to the guilty, and yet to teach them by delicacy and not bring a railing accusation which would probably only harden instead of converting.
It is gravely necessary to realize how difficult the priest’s task is, but at the same time it is extraordinary how little organized condemnation of the evil exists. No one can accurately measure or gauge the influence exercised by clergy in private conversations and admonitions, and this is doubtless considerable. But it is sporadic and not systematic, there is too much timidity and hesitation, and while the enemy is well organized and equipped we are without a plan of campaign and have no regular army in the field.
The Prayer-book, in the Marriage Service, tells us explicitly, “First it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of His Holy Name.” Here we have the voice of the Church speaking plainly enough, and both it and the authority of Scripture are unanimous in clear expression or unmistakable implication. The Christian attitude has been admirably summed up in Father Black’s pamphlet, to which I acknowledged my indebtedness in the preface of my book First it was Ordained, and from which strong, lucid, and outspoken statement I quote a few sentences:—
“Of this systematic wickedness, unfaithfulness is the natural consequence in many cases. Logically there is nothing but a sense of commercial honesty to keep a woman who has lost the reverence of marriage to one man. The obligation has no hold on her higher nature, and when passion or convenience press the balance there is no sufficient reason why she should be very scrupulous.
“If women treat themselves, and are treated by their husbands as mere animals, all idea of chivalry is at an end; and this, no doubt, is in a measure the ground for a license of speech and action in even our public amusements, contrary not only to the ethos of Christianity, but to the principles of a civilization worthy of the name.
“Women who interfere with the natural end of marriage—the bearing of children—are wives in name, in reality prostitutes. Men who require or encourage such acts are corrupters, not husbands. When I said in my sermon that trifling with God’s laws of marriage was a horrible sin, I was thinking chiefly of the woman’s side of the matter.
“True manliness is, however, no less to be desired than true womanliness. In the words of Lord Tennyson—
“‘Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,’ the man should find in himself and display to his wife. Philosophy and religion are in accord here. St. John writes to young men, ‘because ye are strong and have overcome the wicked one.’ Professor Huxley, ‘that man has had a liberal education who has been so trained that his body is the ready servant of his will; whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will the servant of a tender conscience, who has learned to love all beauty and to hate all vileness, to respect others as himself.’ To me that judgment seems a manly one which pronounces the corruption of a wife by a husband a viler thing than the gratification of lust in the common stews. This latter less deeply degrading to society or injurious to the nation at large.
“But you and I, my dear sir, are Christians; and our concern is with Christian marriage. Here, as in everything else, the truth of Christ will deliver men from mistakes. Christian marriage in common with all other Christian things has in it the law of self-denial and self-conquest. Such is the Apostolic view of it; thus it is to be ‘in the Lord,’ and only ‘in the Lord’ is it permitted to the Christian.
“Holy Scripture is of course everywhere clear as to the end of marriage, and God’s condemnation express against the perversion of it, ‘the Lord slew him.’ St. Paul wills ‘that women marry and bear children.’”