George Bullen and Rose were married within the week of their landing in England. The ceremony took place in a little company of believers, who gathered on Sunday (old-count of time) and once on a week-night, in a little hall that had been used for a Sunday School in the old days. Sunday Schools, like many of the other religious institutions, of the old days before the "Rapture," were quite a thing of the past.
Marriage was one of the things of the past. Some years before the "Rapture," a booklet entitled "We-ism" had been published, in which the author had unblushingly declared: "Women, absolved from shame, servitude, and inequality, shall be enfranchised, owners of themselves * * * We believe in the sacredness of the family and the home, the legitimacy of every child, and the inalienable right of every woman to the absolute possession of herself."
The doctrines and practice of "affinity," the "problem" plays, and "sex" novels, of the first decade of the twentieth century, had all materially helped to make the unregenerate mind and heart ready to receive "free love" in its widest, grossest forms. While a certain teaching of "Christian Science" had had an overwhelming power in the same direction.[1]
All these forces had helped to make the doctrine of illicit love acceptable in these early days of the Anti-christ reign, so that it was only among the little gatherings of true Believers, that marriage was sanctified into the sacrament it had been in the good, true old days.
[1] We prefer, in a book of this character, to keep back the actual terms of the filthy statement. Author.
CHAPTER XIII.
"THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION."
The three-and-a-half years since the Covenant with Lucien Apleon, on the night before the opening at the Temple in Jerusalem, had been signed, had practically expired.