Even though the bonds should actually mean pain, it is still good that they should be allowed to bind, though it be only for the sake of the children. Passionate lovers do not think of children, but society must needs put their claims before all others. Probably the historical reason why society came to insist on monogamy and to condemn all irregular unions lay in the fact that it is the inalienable right of a child to be brought up by a father and a mother, and that no society can be strong and finely ordered unless its foundations are laid in family life, wherein men and women co-operate to give the rising generation every possible chance.

I assume that I am addressing honest minds that wish to handle the issues of life sincerely and wisely, and to them I am sure it must be worth pointing out that it can never be right for individuals to order their lives on principles which could not be given a universal application. I can well understand a passionate couple being quite sure that they will hold to one another throughout life, though they be in no way legally tied. I can imagine that many such couples would resent as a profanity the mere suggestion that they could ever want to part. But imagine what society would become if legal ties were abolished. You and your man or woman may be quite sure that you would never part, but you know that thousands would. Couples would set out on the joint life with little thought, and allow the first painful misunderstanding to part them. Many men would shake off their obligations almost as soon as they found they were becoming heavy. Both men and women would pass from one temporary union to another, mutilating their better natures in the process. Thousands of women would be left in helpless loneliness. Tens of thousands of children would go uncared for and neglected. The picture becomes more horrible the more carefully you look into its details. And as you look you begin to see the real value of our moral standard. It is not an instance of the fussiness of Mrs. Grundy. It is not an instance of slave morality imposed upon free people. It is not one of the arbitrary dicta of a tyrannical Church. It is rather the embodiment of the wisdom learnt through ages of varied and often tragic experience. It is an attempt to conserve for each rising generation the possibility of the best in the field of sexual experience. It does point out the way of happy, healthy, and complete life.

I have left to the end a thought about the marriage ceremony which will only appeal to some, but which I feel ought to have a place in this chapter. Many fine and sensitive lovers shrink from the publicity of ordinary weddings. Their love is to them so sacred and so personal a thing that they do not want to make any parade of themselves before a great gathering of relations and friends. Well! I know of no binding reason why such sensitive couples should call in the relations and friends. Those relations and friends like to rejoice with those who rejoice, because of a very human and kindly interest. And many couples, and especially many brides, greatly enjoy their friends on their marriage day. If, however, a couple prefer a private wedding that is their affair. But about the place and value of a religious ceremony I do want to add a word. If a man and a woman realize that their love is a sacred thing, I believe they will find they actually want to make the great step into final intimacy in the presence of God, and to stop for a moment ere they go up into that mysterious country to ask His blessing and guidance. I have said that at a certain point love itself demands intimacy, and that it is an entirely natural thing for us to desire it. But none the less it is a momentous hour in the life of any couple when they pass behind the last barriers and enter on a sacramental oneness of body. It is a wonderful hour—the hour of all others when the romance of life is most splendid. But just because it is that, and because the issues of that hour are so far-reaching, what could be more seemly than that they should pause for a moment on the threshold and ask the Giver of all love to bless and guide them! To kneel first together before Him, and then to pass on—to acknowledge His goodness as the author of love, and then to go up on to love's high places, what could be more just to the real facts! I know not with what solemnities those who do not believe in God are going to dignify that hour in life, but to all young men and women who do believe in God, I would like to say with all possible urgency: Be sure you do not take that great step until you can ask God's blessing on the taking of it. Be sure you pause a while to be quiet before Him ere you allow your love to have its final sway over you.

NOTE.—It will be said at once at this point by some, "That means the law is wrong in allowing the remarriage of divorced persons, because in that case there is a definite contradiction between the legal and the Christian standards."

I have deliberately excluded a discussion of the problem of divorce from this book because I am concerned with the unalterable truths about sex rather than with the social question of how best unhappy situations arising from sin can be remedied.

But at this point I must say a word. I conceive the Christian position to be "Marriage cannot be broken without sin." And that position the law endorses. It requires proof that in fact a marriage has been broken by sin, before it will sever the legal bonds.

I cannot, however, believe it to be a Christian interest to maintain the mock appearance of a marriage when (if ever) all moral content has disappeared from it. Christianity calls for an unlimited forgiveness. But when forgiveness and patience have failed and either husband or wife has found another connection or has even ceased to have any vital relation to his or her partner in marriage, then I feel that that marriage is morally dead. And dead things should be buried if possible.

There remains the question of remarriage.

If the law allows this and if Christianity says "There is a higher way to which God calls you," I do not think there is here an indefensible contradiction. It is a case of a higher and a lower way.

The law says "I will not compel you to remain unmarried." Christianity says "I will not compel you at all, but I call you in love's name."

That is exactly the situation we must accept in connection with many of Christ's precepts. Giving alms. Loving enemies. Refusing to judge. Refusing to swear, etc., etc. These are all clear Christian duties. But law cannot deal with them. All this seems to me quite plain. In common honesty, however, I must confess that it is not clear to me that the spirit of Christ does forbid the remarriage of a divorced person in all cases. Christian marriage always has love in it. It is not always there in actual marriage. We must think the whole matter out afresh in terms of love before we can understand the Christian way. Some things the world calls marriages are not really marriages at all to the Christian mind.



CHAPTER VI

A MAN'S STRUGGLE

A great many men are secretly ashamed of the very fact that they have to struggle with temptation in the matter of purity. In an inner chamber of their lives they contend with impure thoughts and impure suggestions, but they try to keep the doors of that chamber shut, and would blush if others knew what goes on there. Yet all healthy and normal men are so tempted. Those who seem to have escaped have generally taken the course of repressing the whole sexual side of their natures, and of shutting their eyes to the sexual facts of life, which is not a wise course. And so, firstly, in view of the task of facing temptation it would be well for us all to realize that temptation itself is not sin. We may expose ourselves to quite unnecessary temptation. We may play with fire. We may be fools, if we will. But some element of temptation is part of our normal lot in life, and we need not blush about it. To the average young man it can truly be said, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." In this respect we are all brothers in arms, and I believe the first step towards victory lies in an honest facing of the fact. Let us admit that we are tempted and get openly to the business of understanding how temptation can be conquered.

Let me attempt first of all to clear away certain mischievous delusions about the subject. It is actually believed in many quarters, and half believed in many more, that continence is bad for a man. It is only "natural," men often say, for an adult man to satisfy his desires, and if he does not he suffers in health. It is a point on which we must let the doctors speak, even although plenty of individual men could testify from experience that the idea is nonsense. And what do the doctors say! Sir Dyce Ductworth, Sir James Paget, Sir Andrew Clark, Sir Clifford Allbutt, and scores of others have all expressed themselves with the clearest emphasis. Sir James Paget, for instance, says, "Chastity or purity of life does no harm to mind or body. Its discipline is excellent. Marriage can safely be waited for." Further, in the noble little book on "Sex" by Thomson and Geddes, I find this sentence: "Fr, a leading authority on sex pathology and hygiene, denies categorically that a man is ever hurt by continence, and affirms that he is always the stronger." What probably is true is that if a man lives in thought an impure life, and submits himself to exciting suggestions and imaginations, the secretions of his body will be increased, so that he may become subject to very severe strain. And that, if continued, may work nervous damage. But this only means that a continent life requires thought and proper direction. There need be no evil effects from continence. We must be quite clear about this point, for so long as we toy in mind with the suggestion that there is any natural necessity for incontinence, we are fatally weakened for our struggle. It is a man's glory to be master of himself, and to maintain his virginity through the years before marriage. And he may quite well achieve it, if he will but go the right way about it. No doubt the struggle is much harder for some than for others. No doubt there are reasons in plenty for charity to those who fail. But there is no real reason why any man should not hope and expect to succeed, and a right expectation is the very foundation of success.

Then, secondly, a man would do well to realize one simple physiological truth about his body. That body naturally and regularly secretes semen. But it is not necessary that that semen should be discharged by sexual activity. On the contrary, a large part of it can be reabsorbed by the body and used up in mental and physical activities to the great benefit of the body and the enrichment of life. That is why the ancients taught that Diana is the natural born enemy of Venus. The man who takes plenty of regular exercise employs his vital forces in a way that lessens the strain of his moral conflict. And though it is true that this re-absorption of semen does not completely remove it, Nature has her own method during sleep of readjusting things in a quite harmless way.

From this it follows of course that the real secret of a successful struggle for purity lies in living a life full of wholesome and varied activities. Our artistic sensibilities are intimately related to our sexual natures, and by some self-expression through art, or by the sympathetic appreciation of the art of others, we provide an enriching outlet for our natural energies. Social activities and wholesome social intercourse, too, are of the very greatest importance. The sedentary and lonely life is often found quite fatal, and a life in which only male companionships are available is very undesirable. Indeed it may truly be said that the best way of avoiding undesirable relations with women lies in the cultivation of right and happy relations with them. I suppose more men have been brought through this difficult period owing to the fact that association with women of refined natures made the thought of sexual irregularity seem repulsive, than by any other single force.

But at all costs let us be sure that we live full lives. I heard lately of a man who was so constantly assailed by sexual cravings, and so convinced that in him they were abnormally strong, that he went to consult a psychotherapist. When he had been fully examined it was found that in him sexual cravings were really rather weaker than in the average man, but that in the house of his life they had no rivals, so that he imagined them to be almost all-powerful.

It is when a man allows himself to sit in idleness and indoors that the fumes of lust are apt to rise up and make the windows dim, till in that stuffy air he lives evilly at least in thought, and is weakened for the problem of defense. But the man who will get out into the bracing open air of life will find his noxious fancies blown away and his mind restored to health.

Then, thirdly, there are certain fairly obvious points in relation to the right management of the body about which doctors are agreed. They really amount in general to the suggestion that we should live a simple and bracing life, and keep brother body in his proper place of subjection all round. Keep your body clean, and do not funk your cold bath in the morning. Avoid luxurious foods, and overeating of any sort. Get up when you wake up in the morning, and avoid lying in bed half awake. Take plenty of fresh air and exercise every day. And finally, and at all costs, keep absolutely sober. Probably the last of these pieces of advice is by far the most important. It is the unvarnished truth that the vast majority of men who have gone wrong did so for the first time, not when they were drunk, but when liquor had made them reckless and forgetful. The plain truth about alcohol is that it has a twofold effect upon the human constitution. On the one hand it heightens desire, and on the other it lowers self-control. It is that fatal combination that has been the undoing of many a man. On one night of folly men have thrown away that which they may have guarded jealously for years, and not because they were vicious or gross in nature, but only because they allowed the edge to go off their sobriety. Often by the next night they would have given almost anything to be able to live that bit of life over again and live it differently. But it was too late. I know of no argument for temperance that has anything like the weight of this one.

Then, too, a word must be said about the broad jest and the undesirable story.

Many a broad jest is excused because it has in it some savor of real humor; but it would be well for us to ask ourselves deliberately what things we are going to allow ourselves to laugh at. We all laugh at some of the ways of lovers and no doubt we always will. They have beautiful ways, but beyond question some of them are amusing. There is no possible reaction to a girl's persuasion that her boy is pure hero and saint except a smile; and love itself will blend with such smiles.

But it is quite a different thing to bring laughter to bear on love itself, or on marriage, or on the sacramental intimacies that express love. I believe it is a profane thing to do. Our best instincts call on us to treat these things as sacred. And sacred things are easily spoiled by careless speech. No vulgarities are quite so vulgar as those which, in printed rags and ragged talk, are clustered round marriage. In the name of all that is beautiful and holy let us be done with them.

Further still, a great many broad stories have in them a minimum of humor and a maximum of dirt. By a strange perversity men who are scrupulously clean in body and who have both intellectual and artistic capacities will stoop to defile their tongues with such things. There are few colleges or offices where public opinion entirely forbids them. But they do a deadly work none the less. They cling about the mind with fatal tenacity. They surround the subject of sex with unclean associations. They defile the inner house of life. And it is in that inner house of thought and imagination that the real battle of purity is fought.

Our real task in this part of life is to see sex as a clean and beautiful thing, to be treated with reverence. Thousands of people never achieve this, even though they live respectable and decent lives. And the reason lies in the fact that in their early days vile stories and jokes defiled the whole subject for them.

A similar thing is true of pictures. Some day we shall as a race recover the sense that the form of a woman is one of the most beautiful things in all God's earth. We shall look at the great statues and pictures which do justice to that beauty with no other feelings than thankfulness and joy. But there are very few men who can do that today. What has made it impossible is the existence of pictures of a suggestive kind, which are handed round in furtive ways, and are literally drenched with unclean associations. For which reason it is a real point in connection with a man's struggle that he should have nothing to do with suggestive pictures. Many years ago I had a friend with great intellectual power. He held a position of great responsibility and was widely respected. He also had conspicuous literary gifts, and knew how to work hard and well. But he brought to me the greatest shock I have ever had in my life. When he was well on in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash, and had to fly the country. He was never able to show his face in England again, and died a diseased exile in a foreign land. And all because he had been overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind. The shock he gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being sold there was found in his study cupboard a great pile of indecent French plays and novels. That was what did it. In secret he had for years debauched his mind, and inevitably in the end his thoughts brought forth fruit. That experience taught me once for all how certain it is that the inner world of thoughts is the real place where a man attains or misses purity.

There is something grim and stern about this business. I confess to a certain wholesome fear in connection with it which I hope never to lose; though fear will never do as our predominating emotion in this respect. But I keep a place for fear—enough of it to drive me to my knees. I have seen boys go wrong at fifteen, and I have seen old men go wrong at sixty. I believe that no man is safe until he is dead. He was no coward, nor had he a licentious past behind him, who confessed that late on in life he had to beat his body and bring it into subjection lest having preached to others he should be a castaway. He knew; and was honest and wise enough to keep up precautions to the end. There is simply no way through this part of life for the man with slack habits and a self-indulgent attitude of spirit. The man who will not stand up and brace himself, who is not game for a fight, and will not endure hardness is never going to make anything fine out of the splendid but difficult enterprise we call human life. And all the time he will need to have his sentinels out. All the time he will need to make sure that he is master in his own house of life, and allows no interloping thoughts or imaginations to run riot there.

But what about religion! The conventional way in which to end a plain talk about any sort of temptation is to say that God can and will help a man in those straits where his own will is too weak, and that through prayer there is a way of escape for us all. I believe all that absolutely. With great gratitude I may say that I know it. Indeed I cannot understand how any man who has been saved from overthrow can fail to see as he looks back on his life that it was just the goodness of God that upheld him. But I have learnt to beware how I tell men and women that by prayer they can get through, though all other means fail. Men who were having to face a severe strain of temptation have come back to me and told me that they had tried the way of prayer and that it had not availed them. The fact is that something far greater than a mere attempt to use prayer as a special device for this special need is required.

We are so made that religion is a divine possibility for all of us. Indeed it is more than a possibility: it is a necessity if life is ever to seem complete. Without it all other things fail in the end to hold off attacks of disappointment and ennui. Because we were made with the capacity for it, we cannot be content without it. It may take many years for a man to discover that without religion life is going to be a failure; and it is that discovery that constitutes for many the tragedy of middle life. In early days the varied interests of life carry many through in some sort of satisfaction. And yet even with the young the life that is without religion is of necessity an unbalanced life. Parts of the man or woman concerned are inactive, and the other parts occupy too much of the stage. Till an interest in God—that greatest of all interests—has entered a man's life attention is too much concerned with other things. Till the spirit is awake the body obtrudes itself too much on consciousness. And thus a man fights the battle of purity on wrong terms. There is no interest so cleansing as an interest in God. Nothing so takes a man out of himself as the attempt to face His demands. Nothing is so certain to counterbalance all unruly thoughts as to know and worship Him. No discipline is so bracing and purifying as the discipline of seeking Him.

But this seeking of God means something much greater than the mere attempt to use prayer for a special purpose. It means getting our whole life rightly related to Him. It means subordinating our desires to His will, and seeing our whole life as something to be used for His glory. Religion cannot be made a mere appendage to life. It cannot be kept in an outhouse like a motor bike, to be used when occasion calls. When God comes into a life He comes to rule—and to rule everything. No doubt we are all tempted to resent the surrender of self which is thus asked of us. Instinctively we cry out for our own way. We want to manage our own lives and to plan out our futures in such ways as will please us. Because religion involves discipline and obedience, we are all apt to turn away from it. We may have liked some of the emotions which are associated with worship, and inspired by religious thoughts. But we want to call no one Master—not even God. So long as that state lasts no one will find religion a help in the battle with temptation. If we faced the truth about ourselves many of us would find that what we really want is to be allowed to live rather worldly and selfish lives and then to be able to bring God in on occasion to save us from certain particular sins which we loathe. But that cannot be.

In other words, the way of escape is to get one's whole life and one's whole nature rightly related to God. That means the profoundest of all possible readjustments, because it means that instead of putting himself in the center of every picture, a man puts God there. And when that readjustment has been completed the power of temptation is gone. I would not now say to a man merely that if he will pray he will get the help he needs. I would say that if he is willing for a real spiritual experience he may pass into a new state of being, in which he will fight with success where he used to fail. Religion will do all things for you if you give your whole self to it, but it will not fit into life as an occasional resource.

Let no one suppose, however, that consciousness of God has no relation to the sexual side of life. Far from it. What the man who submits to God will find is, firstly, that he is helped to clean and reverent living, and to mastery over his body. But he will also find that when at last real love calls him up into complete companionship of body and soul with a woman he loves, God Himself will enter into that life and become associated with all the emotions and activities which spring from the sex element in our beings. Such men will come to thank God that He made them with sexual powers in their natures. They will thank Him that passion is a fact. They will say with utter conviction that love with all it means both for the bodily and the spiritual life is the greatest of all God's gifts to man.

Only to have experience of that quality a man must come to marriage undefiled. That is the fact that makes the struggle worth while. That is what Browning meant when he said it was

"worth That a man should strive and agonize And taste a veriest hell on earth For the hope of such a prize."

God does not call us men to a meaningless struggle. The fierceness of temptation is not mere cruelty. The prizes in this part of life are great beyond all telling. If any man who reads these pages will but brace himself for the struggle and put forth all his manhood in order to win through, the day will come when he and a woman who is dear to him will thank God that he did fight, and will understand that it was abundantly worth while. She is waiting for you out there in the future. She hopes and prays that when you do find her, you will be such a man as can be honored and truly loved. She probably keeps herself for you, even though you have not yet met her, with some delicate and shy reserve. You will never really be worthy of all that she will give you, but you may at least prepare for her and yourself a great and holy experience. To know the full beauty of the thing that married life may be is nearly if not quite the greatest of human attainments. To spoil it beforehand is the most pitiful of all pities.

Wherefore get up and fight!



ADDENDUM,

ESPECIALLY FOR YOUNG MEN STRUGGLING WITH SELF-ABUSE

It is in this form that sexual temptation comes into the lives of a very great many men, including many able, high-minded men. All the general things already said in this chapter are relevant to your case, but I wish to add some direct words to you because I have acute sympathy with you in your trial.

You ought, of course, to have been warned when you were very young, and then you might have escaped the danger. Possibly you slipped into the habit without at first realizing that it was wrong; and probably now you hate the habit, and even sometimes hate yourselves because of it. It is quite likely, too, that false and exaggerated things have been said to you about it and made you miserably afraid.

Now it is a bad habit. It is bad because you feel it to be unworthy and rather unclean, and it creates unhappy associations in your mind in connection with sex, which is a very unfortunate thing for you. And it is a perversion. It is an unnatural way of satisfying sexual craving, and, as you know, it leaves psychic disturbance behind it. The one perfect way of satisfying sexual desire is complete union with a woman you truly and honorably love. That leaves behind it a feeling of complete satisfaction and rest. All other ways leave psychic disturbance. Further, this habit often leads to active homosexuality. I hear of men who talk as if homosexuality was quite a normal and right thing with men of a certain type. It is, in fact, always a regression (see quotation from Dr. Crichton Miller in chapter for girls, p. 107). Do get that fixed in your mind. It is an abnormal, unnatural thing which has definite and evil nervous results.

But let me get back to the problem of self-abuse.

The Student Christian Movement lately collected from a number of doctors, psychologists, and other experienced people, a body of valuable truths and suggestions about this matter, and I cannot do better than pass them on to you.

Firstly, what are the facts about its consequences? These have been exaggerated. Its effects are chiefly psychical. It does not affect the intelligence or weaken mental power. It takes long to weaken the body, and it is rarely, if ever, a cause of insanity.

On the other hand, it does destroy self-respect; it does leave men psychically disturbed, and for that reason it affects consciousness of the presence of God disproportionately quickly as compared with other sins, and produces the feeling of loss of spiritual power. There are, in fact, abundant reasons for desiring deliverance, though there is no reason for panic.

As has been said again and again in this book, our sexual nature is a gift from God, with glorious possibilities in it of enriching experience. That is why it is so very important not to misuse it.

Now if you really want deliverance, you have first to realize that the seat of the trouble and of the cure is in the mind. (Occasionally there is a slight abnormality that requires surgical treatment, but that is exceptional.)

The content of the mind in ordinary times is even more important than at the crisis. It may be too late then.

You must prepare the ground by resting on God even when you do not feel the need of Him. Fill your mind with clean, healthy things, and expel lustful thoughts, even though they may seem to have no special physical effects.

Give full play to your affections—love of family, of friends, of men and women, and children.

Devote your bodily strength, and the life force that is in you, to great positive ends—the service of God and man.

Keep healthy. Here are wise practical details. Take plenty of exercise, but not too much. Men often fail when tired out. Avoid heavy meals— especially late at night. Take cold baths daily. Do not lie in bed after waking. Avoid quacks like the plague. Beware of the reactions that follow emotional excitement. Work off your emotions in positive ways. Emotionalism has danger in it.

Learn to pray for the right thing, not for deliverance, but for strength for victory. Learn to trust God in all things—in this among others.

If you want to prevent the thing from obsessing you, you must not let your failures obsess you. Turn your back on them. The only way to drive out one thought is to put another in. An attempt merely to shut down is doomed to failure. Concentrate on active life and service. The truth is, you cannot have the help of Christ just for the cure of this evil. Give yourself wholly to Him, and you will find He has set you free. You cannot bring religion in just for a part of life. If your whole life is in God's hands this trouble will disappear.

Lastly, a word to the man who is down and out.

God is strong enough and near enough for this never to happen again if you will let Him have the whole of you—not body only, but mind and heart and life. But if you do fail again, do not despair, do not blame God, and do not say or think that He has finished with you.

God's love is such that He will never turn from you if you turn to Him. God is no farther from the failures than from the successful. He cares as much for those who fail.

The real and ultimate danger of this thing is not danger to your mind and body, but the danger that it may come between you and God. Wherefore come back to God every time.

Remember, whatever the past has held, there are still great possibilities of happiness and victory before you through the power of God.

Others are in as great difficulties, and others who were in them have won through to victory. There is reason for hope.

We are not meant always to stand alone. Two are more than twice as strong as one. Perhaps you should share your difficulty. Only do not make it an excuse for getting mawkish sympathy.



CHAPTER VII

PROSTITUTION

(A chapter for men)

There are some things so unthinkable that they only continue because people refuse to think of them. Sweating and slums are two such things, but the supreme example in the modern world is prostitution.

It is not the prostitute who is unthinkable. She is only the tragic figure in the center of a devil's drama. It is society's attitude to her that is unthinkable. By men she is used for their pleasure and then despised and scorned. By women she is held an outcast, and yet she is the main buttress of the immunity of ordinary women from danger and temptation. She is the creation of men who traffic in lust and yet is held shameless by her patrons. She is the product of the social sins for which we are all responsible, and yet is considered the most sinful of us all. Often she was beguiled into her first mistake by the pretence of love, and because to that pretence she made a natural and sincere response. Sometimes she was cajoled into her mistake by older fiends in the shape of women. Sometimes she suffered physical violence at the hands of male fiends. Often she plunged into sin in desperation because in the modern world she could not get a living wage in return for honest work. Sometimes she made a wild, reckless dash towards excitement because she could no longer endure the stifling, drab, and hideous monotony coupled with privation which we allow to become the lot of millions.

To her men show only their worst side, and women generally their hardest. If she often regards both alike as devils, who shall blame her! Those who share her sin leave her to face alone the suffering that follows. For them society has a place even when their habits are known. For her it has no place except a shameful one. Of real love, of motherhood, or of family life she may know nothing. Even of normal human relations she remains often ignorant.

He in whom we profess to have seen God was ready to forgive and willing to love such women. We hold it wrong to forgive and impossible to love.

For a few short years in early youth she may have money in plenty, and then slowly she begins to sink. Her health becomes sapped. Often loathsome disease makes her a victim. As the shadows begin to gather she will often turn to drink that for an hour she may recover the delusion of well-being. Slowly but certainly the morass drags her down. Often she does not reach thirty. If she lives it is to face a state in which, toothless, wrinkled, and obscene, she is seen only by those who visit the murkiest parts of our cities. She dies unmoored and unloved, and is hurried into an unknown grave.

And she exists because men say they must indulge their passions and women believe it. She is the incarnation not of her own but of society's shame. She is the scapegoat for thousands who live on in careless comfort. Every man who touches her pushes her farther down, and our hollow pretence of social morality is built upon her quivering body.

Will you men who read this please think about her! Think till you are horrified, disgusted, and ashamed. Think till you realize this unthinkable thing. And then remember that she exists only because of us. We as a sex have created this infamy. We as a sex still continue to condone it.

And there is only one cure for it. It is that we should stop uttering or believing the lie that we must indulge our passions and should act upon the truth that continence outside marriage is perfectly possible, and that we owe it to women, to ourselves, and to God to achieve it.



CHAPTER VIII



A GIRL'S EARLY DAYS



By early days I mean the years between sixteen and twenty-one or thereabouts, and I am sure there ought to be a chapter in this book on this subject, though I am not at all sure that I can write it. I only make the attempt because I have been urged to try, and because a book that did not recognize how distressing the "emotional muddles" of this period often are, would be a very unsympathetic production.

Most men very quickly become clearly conscious of desires springing from their sexual natures, but most girls only do so very slowly. What a girl is conscious of at this period is a new stress of emotion. She finds herself easily elated and easily depressed. She has moods she cannot understand or manage, and vague yearnings after she knows not what. Sometimes she will give way to outbreaks of temper, and afterwards feel acutely ashamed. Other people say of her that she is "difficult" or wayward, or trying; and she knows it herself better than any of them. Sometimes she is irritable. Sometimes she will hear herself saying things she never meant to say, and will wonder afterwards why she did it. In society she often feels shy, awkward, and self-conscious, and then will hate herself for being like that. She may try an assumed boldness of manner to hide her shyness, and yet that plan is not a great success. She has longings for the society of others, and then having found social intercourse difficult, is tempted to withdraw into herself. She is very easily wounded in her affections, and often suffers from the effect of little slights of which the authors are quite unconscious. On some days she will feel that the world is a wonderful and splendid place, and life a glorious delight. And then on others life will seem mysterious and puzzling, and the world cruel and hard. She understands with painful clearness what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when he talked about "the coiled perplexities of youth."

It is during these years that girls wake up to the attraction of men, and yet they find that relations with men are difficult things to manage. The conventions of society often seem quite senseless, and yet the policy of defying them does not turn out well. And so, as I have said, this is a difficult period for many girls.

It is true that many get through it very happily. They may have good health, happy homes, plenty of good friends, and many interests. For them it is a time of adventure, romance, and vivid joy. They correspond to the common conception of the fresh, happy, charming girl. But many others do not get through happily at all, and it is because their case is common that this chapter is called for.

I have already said as strongly as I can that it is of enormous importance for girls to know the facts of life, and to get to know them from some clean and natural source. By the beginning of this period they ought to have been told about the wonderful and beautiful ways in which God has ordained that new human lives should be produced, and therefore they ought to be in a position to understand themselves. And if girls are not possessed of this knowledge I can only say that the sooner they take steps to acquire it in a wholesome way the better for themselves. Only take care to whom you turn. Let it be a woman of a reverent and wise mind with a large and wholesome nature. There are others.

Those who do come to understand themselves in this way will realize that the cause of their emotional complications is partly physical and partly psychological. Both body and mind are awakening, with the inevitable result that new instincts, emotions, and desires have to be reckoned with. That is a universal experience for all of both sexes, and is just the price of entering on a larger world. Life is much more complex and mysterious than we at first imagined. It may be much more varied and splendid than we at first supposed. And therefore inevitably it is also more difficult and more confusing. But it does really help us to realize that our early complex troubles have a natural and normal cause and that they are related to great possible gains.

At this point in life, further, the instinct for independence becomes often exceedingly strong. All the conventions of society and the received rules for conduct are apt to appear mere tyrannous annoyances, cramping the free expression of personality. Society itself seems rather like a monster threatening to absorb and confine us. To be compelled to consider others, and even to bow to authority, is to many very bitter. "I will at all costs be myself" is the natural cry of a human being at this stage, and because the world makes it difficult to carry out that resolve life has a strain in it. Yet here also there is something good. If each generation in turn did not thus demand freedom and self-expression the world would drift into senile decay. We cannot be independent of society. We cannot have an untrammeled freedom. And we all learn that sooner or later. But because the urge towards newness of life does reappear with every generation we do move on, though slowly. And if the price of this pulse of life in adolescents is restlessness, irritation, and even occasional depression the gain is worth the price.

For girls the process is often specially difficult. The task that confronts a girl at this stage is the task of accepting herself "as a woman." I know it is not an easy task or so many girls would not be heard saying that they would rather have been boys. No doubt one reason why girls feel this is that often their parents, and especially their mothers, have shown a preference for the boys in the family and have accorded to them a favored position. The psychologists report that an "inferiority complex" has thus been formed in many a girl's mind. And thus a very real wrong is done to them.

And yet this is not the whole explanation of the matter. In many girls there is a rebellion against their sex. Many hate the physical signs of their developing natures. It seems to them they are being called to a part in life which they have no wish to play. And if particular emotional stresses accompany that development, that may seem to them only one further reason for being annoyed at the nature of things.

I am sure too that the conventional notions of what a woman should be must often prove very annoying, if not enraging. Many men still cherish the idea of woman as a sort of household ornament—gentle and "sweet". Many have not accommodated themselves to the notion that a woman should know the blunt facts about this hard life and this disordered world. Society often seems to expect of a woman that she should be submissive, patient, and merely gentle. And of course nature has ordained that many women should be strong, stimulating, and militant in spirit. Of a really great woman it was said to me the other day that she is really more like a flame than a "cow". But the "cow" idea holds the field in many places. Well! happy those who have a sense of humor and can laugh when society is very foolish.

I dare not enter farther on a discussion of what it means for a girl to accept herself "as a woman". In that matter men seem always to flounder into folly. Even women are not yet agreed about it. Perhaps it is one of the things that is only gradually being discovered at this particular stage of human experience. I am indeed sure that we do not yet know all that women are meant to be and are capable of doing for the world. And that being so I can see that the difficulties which lie about the path of life for women to-day are peculiarly trying. It may be a real privilege to be a woman during this particular period of discovery and experiment. But it cannot but be also rather a strain. The one thing that I can with certainty say is that a woman is called to be like Christ—like Him in His meekness which was the outcome of perfect selflessness and self-mastery—in His gentleness which was the product of sensitive love—but like Him also in His strength, His boldness, His resolute refusal to bend before evil, His positive activities in the name of love.

One particular feature in a woman's impulse towards independence I cannot pass by without a special word. The very suggestion annoys some women that they are not complete in themselves without any relation to the other sex. Being without any conscious desire for the companionship of man, and without any definite sex consciousness, they resent the idea that woman is not complete in herself. To those who insist that the sexes vitally need each other such women would reply that they are altogether exaggerating and over-emphasizing the sex element in life.

Well, about the fact that man is not complete without woman I have no doubt whatever. And I have no reluctance whatever about admitting it. Perhaps that fact gives me no right to dogmatize about the other sex, but a considerable experience has left me in no doubt about the matter. I do not mean for a moment that a great and useful career is not possible to women quite apart from marriage. I do not forget that many women have great powers of intellect in the exercise of which they are living in a world apart from sex difference. But I believe it to be a serious mistake for either man or woman to imagine that they have no clamant sex instinct hidden within the depths of their personalities. And if the instinct is there it can only be folly to try to obscure the fact. It has to be reckoned with if life is to succeed. In many women it only awakens after early youth is past. The exceptions in whom it never awakens must be very few indeed. If the attempt has been made to ignore it the subsequent troubles are apt to be only the more intense. In this matter we are confronted with an unalterable decree of nature. To rebel against it is only to be broken in the long run. In various and great ways the instinct may be turned to splendid uses other than the usual ones of marriage and motherhood. But the instinct is there, and if wisdom means understanding ourselves and handling ourselves bravely, then it must be reckoned with. To quarrel with the nature of things is mere folly.

Another special feature of the period in a girl's life I am thinking of is a tendency to intense and passionate affections for other women—a tendency to idealize some other woman till she seems the center of life and adorable beyond words. A very real danger lurks here, and yet I would like to speak with great care about the matter, because a true friendship is always one of the finest and most enriching things in life, while a grande passion for another member of one's own sex is a different thing with an undesirable element in it.

In girls about thirteen or thereabouts grandes passions for other girls or for school-mistresses are very common, and so far from being harmful they may serve a very useful purpose. They generally pass away pretty quickly, and unless the older woman has been unwise they leave no bad effects behind them.

But among older girls they are a very different thing and often lead to serious trouble and unhappiness. What has happened in such cases is that an instinct which is designed to produce love for one of the opposite sex has been perverted to add an element of passion to what should have been merely a healthy friendship for another woman. And the result is an unhealthy type of relationship. It is unhealthy because, to begin with, in this way girls let themselves go and allow their emotions to run away with them; and that just at a time when it is most important that they should have themselves in firm control. And further, when members of the same sex employ lovers' language, and indulge in the imitation of lovers' endearments, there is something sickly about the whole business which healthy instinct condemns. I do not mean, of course, that when girls link arms or even embrace each other in moments of excitement there is anything mistaken. To some people such expressions of emotion are as natural as breathing. But grandes passions lead to much more than that sort of thing, and so become a serious evil.

It is in connection with this problem that psychologists have brought into use the rather ugly word "homosexuality", though it means nothing more dreadful than this tendency to put a member of one's own sex into the place that should be occupied by a member of the other sex. But I find a certain amount of talk going on which assumes that some people are of the homosexual type, and that it is natural and right for them to express themselves in this way. As a matter of fact homosexuality is always a sexual perversion and is fraught with great danger of nervous disorder. Dr. Crichton Miller says in The New Psychology and the Teacher: "From the point of view of psychological development homosexuality in the adult is a regression.... Clinical experience confirms the view that in the long run the man or the woman of the intermediate type is bound to pay the price of regression in one way or another" (p. 120).

Of course the essential defect of these passionate attachments between two women is that they can never fully satisfy. They cannot give a woman children, and they leave the mother heart in her starved. For this reason it is a primary obligation on each of the two to resolve that so soon as a man enters the life of the other she will at all costs make room for him, The cost of this may be very great, but love that is at all worthy of the name will not another from a path that might lead to marriage has misunderstood the very meaning of love. Women have repeatedly told me that the passionate relationships I am speaking of lead to grave unhappiness. They almost never last, and the one who breaks away may cause acute suffering to the other; while an attempt to continue them after the life has gone out of them results in a very poor and pitiful relationship. And yet all this leaves still open the question of how they are to be dealt with in actual life. One thing worth saying is—Be warned in time, and do not let them grow. When they threaten they can be turned into true friendships by girls who understand, and true friendship is always a bracing and strengthening thing. But I would not for a moment suggest that a "G. P." should be ruthlessly broken. That would often be a cruel thing to do which might cause great and even permanent damage to a sensitive nature. But if both who are involved in the matter will face the truth about it, they may succeed in passing on into a natural and healthy friendship which may be invaluable to both and a gain to society. If it be asked wherein lies the essential difference between a G. P. and a friendship I think answer has been given in the words: "Friendship is an other-regarding emotion and proves itself to be an uplifting force, while a G. P. is self-regarding, and consequently generally is socially exclusive and therefore harmful." A G. P. generally involves a desire to have somebody else all to yourself. That is the sign of the unnatural sex element in it. But a friendship leads to happy co- operation between two people in the work and recreation of the world. One of the tests of universal application in this realm of life lies in the fact that real love always wants to give, and that the attitude of wanting greedily to get is not true love. Many and many an unhappy girl who frets and torments herself because she does not get all she wants from some other woman would find the world and life transformed if she would but wake up to the fact that in her bit of the world there are other people who need the love she might give them. She would thus find a noble outlet for her emotions, become a boon to other people, and in the process discover her own happiness—possibly to her own surprise.

I know very well what is likely to happen to some girls who read these words and who are involved in a passionately affectionate attachment. I can almost hear one such saying, "Of course I see that these things ought to be said, and that some girls are very silly about their friendships, and it only makes me the more thankful that in my case everything is so natural, and right, and good."

We are all like that! We are extraordinarily slow to recognize in our own lives the evils and dangers which we can see so clearly in the lives of others. And so I would like to make a direct appeal to all girls, and to all men too, who are involved in these relationships. Do face the facts openly! Do look ahead! Do ask yourselves what you are going to do about these affairs as time goes on! You must know they cannot last in their present form. You would be right if you even said that they to last. You may drift along, always postponing any definite action, and just enjoying the present while it lasts. But that is exactly the way in which calamity is allowed to enter people's lives. And you and she, or you and he, might forthwith face the unalterable facts I have been referring to, and take all danger by the throat and throttle it. You might do that now. That is to say, you and your dear friend might agree that you will at once get the passionate element out of your relationship, and forego the pleasure you have in that respect. You might begin now to learn true friendship, and get rid of what is really a sickly thing. It might hurt—it probably would at first. But none of us human beings need be the mere creatures of our feelings. Our true and lasting happiness always depends upon refusing any such slavery. If you do achieve a wholesome and true friendship it may enrich your whole future life. If you let things go on as they are you will have a very unpleasant memory to humiliate you.

I feel sure that certain general counsels apply with special force to this part of life, and in particular the one which bids us all live busy and positive lives. Brooding is not a wholesome occupation for anybody at any time, but, on the other hand, through hours of active effort emotion finds an outlet and our natures are restored to peace. Introspection is to many people an actual luxury, but like other luxuries it enervates. Reveling in their own emotions is a favorite hobby with quite a lot of people, but for all that it is a very bad one. There really should be no time for it. Our emotions are all needed as driving forces for the times of action. In particular the cultivation of a sense of beauty in art is one of the normal outlets for emotion, and even for sex emotion. Some happy people can themselves make music, and so express themselves. Most of us find that common kindness suggests that we should restrict our efforts in that direction to times when we are alone. But if we cannot play we can at least learn the art of good listening. And if we are not musical at all we can perhaps appreciate true painting, or great poetry, or fine literature. It all helps.

May I say a plain word or two about the shyness and self-consciousness in society which so torment young girls? The first thing I would say is that they will almost certainly pass away before long, and that therefore they need not be bothered about. Lots of the most effective and socially successful men and women in the world went through a painful period of shyness in early youth, and now only smile at the memory of those days.

In so far as that self-consciousness is produced by society of any sort, it is based upon the delusion that other people look at us and think about us a great deal more than they do. It is also due to a habit of minding what other people think and say a great deal more than the facts warrant. We are not so important as to attract much general notice, and other people are not so important that on account of their prejudices and conventions we should distress ourselves.

But in so far as discomfort in society is due to the presence there of members of the opposite sex, there is something different to be said. The whole contention of this book is that the attraction which exists between the sexes is a right and wholesome thing, and that the way of wisdom is to accept the fact of it quite simply. When that is done it is found possible to let that mutual attraction issue in friendship and camaraderie of a kind that enriches and dignifies life.

Of course all this is much easier for girls who have been brought up with boys. They learn to be at home with the other sex, not to be fussy and foolish, and not to trade upon their sex. But that sort of relationship to men is also quite possible even for those who were not brought up with boys, and in the attaining to it girls find their real peace of mind.

I would also like to put down here some thoughts about beautiful girls.

A beautiful girl always makes me want to do two things. One is to thank God for making so lovely a thing, and the other is to say a prayer that she may have special help given her for her specially difficult lot. For beauty is both a very great gift and a very hard thing to handle. Some of you must know that you are beautiful, and you are sure to find the fact exciting, delightful, and yet embarrassing. You have great powers—powers over other women and over children in part—and very great powers over men. You can, if you will, use that power to induce men to make fools of themselves. You can let yourselves slip into the habit of living on admiration and feeding on the pleasure it gives you. You can exploit your beauty to win through it things you do not really deserve. People will forgive much to a beautiful woman, and you can trade on that fact. You can get a great deal of your own way if you master the art of being charming as well as beautiful; and you can in that way use your beauty to your own undoing, and make it partly a curse to others. In fact you are certain to have to face many temptations which the majority of women escape. That is the hard part of your lot. All who understand know quite well that life cannot but be more complicated for you than for most, and you have a very great claim on their sympathy. But the way to avoid your dangers is not to pretend to yourself that you are not beautiful. Pretence never helps us. The way is to face the fact of your beauty, realize that you did not create it, and therefore need not be vain about it, and then go on to decide what use you are going to make of the power it gives you. It can be used for God—otherwise He would not have given it. It can be turned into influence of a very wonderful kind. If you can induce men to make fools of themselves, you can also draw out all that is best in them, and inspire them for fine living. In plain English, when a beautiful woman is also a good woman she is one of the greatest boons to mankind. She can give great pleasure to others—but she can do more, she can stir the latent idealism in men and women in wonderful ways. She can move through the world as a source of gracious, kindly, and bracing influence. Of course, once again, the essential secret is to think of giving and not of getting, to get self into the background and live for love and service—to employ your great gift for the sake of the giver of it. I suspect that it must need a great deal of self-discipline— perhaps more than a man can understand. I am sure it must need a great deal of prayer. But it has been done, and can be done again.

And that leads me naturally to the last thing I want to say in this chapter. I have already said in the chapter specially addressed to men that the great help for the difficult early days of life is to be found in religion. [Footnote: Cp. p. 80ff.] And of course that is equally true for girls.

Religion means having a great and worthy interest at the center of our lives, which gives meaning to the whole of them. Being religious means that the essential and eternal part of us is coming into life, and it almost necessarily follows then that the other parts of our personalities slip into their proper places. It means having an object for our affections more than worthy of all our deepest emotions, and more than able to fill our empty hearts. Religion in the early days of life is generally very emotional. I believe that that is perfectly right and natural, provided we also make efforts to be sincere and to love the truth. Because it is emotional, its value as an outlet for feeling is very great. It does not remain at its first emotional level. Later on there comes an inevitable change when many think, quite wrongly, that they are losing their religion. But at the stage I am thinking of religion naturally and normally expresses itself in intense feeling. We are all hero worshippers at that stage of life. Hero worshipping, however, is apt to get us into trouble, for our heroes fail us in time. The one perfect hero who never fails us is Christ. He alone never disappoints, and to love Him is to have all the nobler chords in our beings set in motion. We are sure to despair of ever becoming worthy of Him. But no leader of men was ever so willing to take us as we are and make the best of us. To be near Him may mean being made to feel deeply ashamed. In His presence we are sure to feel small and mean. But that also is a good thing, and in spite of it He loves us. In other directions we seek with longing to find love, and often fail. With Him we may be quite sure of finding love. And He goes on loving to the end.

Being loved by Him does at last draw out the best in us. Inevitably we begin to want to be more worthy—to serve and love others for His sake—to know and love the truth—to find and worship beauty. And that means having a life full of splendid and worthy interests.

Emotional muddles may in fact be the lot of most of us for a while. But if at the center of them all there is an honest love for Christ, they cannot overwhelm us; and in the long run we are sure to emerge into the life that has both peace and power in it.



CHAPTER IX

INVOLUNTARY CELIBACY

Modern England has for many generations been a place so unhealthy for the young that a vast problem has grown up in our midst which seriously disturbs the normal adjustment of sex relationships. It would seem to have been Nature's intention that there should be slightly more men than women in the world, for boy babies outnumber girl babies [Footnote: The actual figures are 1052 boy babies to 1000 girl babies.] What it would mean if there were more adult men than women in the world it is hard to imagine. It would at once have enormous social consequences. No woman would remain a celibate except by her own choice. Men would have to behave themselves in order to win wives, and would cease to occupy the demoralizing position of being able to get wives whenever they want them. It would in fact mean a new world in many ways.

As things are, however, the unhealthy conditions of modern life produce a greater mortality among boy babies than among girl babies, and males come to be in a minority. This state of affairs has been greatly aggravated by the war, but it was serious even before 1914. It was then the case that the women outnumbered the men by about a million. The number must be nearer a million and a half to-day.

The result is that over a million women have to face the prospect of a life in which their most deeply implanted instincts—the instincts for wifehood and motherhood—cannot find their normal satisfaction, and the problem thus created is one of the most difficult in the whole of life. It is, of course, nothing less than insulting nonsense to talk about these women as "superfluous women." Behind the very phrase there lurks the old delusion that women are only needed in the world as wives and mothers. As a matter of fact a great deal of the work that is most needed in our civilization—work in education, art, literature, nursing, social service, and other departments of life—is being done by these women.

But while that is true it is also true that the personal life of the unmarried woman presents acute problems of a most intricate kind. Probably only a woman can truly understand those problems or justly estimate their urgency, but no man with any insight or sympathy can fail to know that the lot of the unmarried woman involves secret stresses, unsatisfied yearnings, and sometimes hours of dark depression. She may be unmarried because she has persistently refused to try to be satisfied with any second best. As a witty woman friend of mine once put it, she may be unmarried because "the attainable was not desirable and the desirable was not attainable." She may be unmarried because a very true lover of early days went on before, and she has never felt able to put anyone else in his place. Or she may have loved truly some man who loved another. Or nothing may ever have happened to awaken conscious love in her, in which case it is still possible that her nature may cry out at times for the satisfaction of its primary needs. And while all this is true, she is conventionally supposed never to show by any sign that she would have liked to be married. However much she may suffer it is held unseemly for her to show that she suffers, or to ask for sympathy. She is often, and I think quite indefensibly, denied by social convention the stimulus of any really intimate friendships with men. She is made the subject of uncounted third-rate jokes. And if, as life goes on, she develops peculiarities of manner or asperities of temper—if she begins to lose vitality and grace, these things are noted with contempt by people who little imagine how much real heroism may lie concealed in the object of their scorn. I believe, however, that I speak for a very large number of men when I confess that nothing kindles in me quite the same flame of resentment at things as they are, as just this fact that so many gracious and kindly women, plainly made for motherhood and fitted for a fine part in life, should find themselves held in the clutches of this insistent problem.

It may well help all such to realize the fact stated above, namely, that the problem is no part of the eternal and designed order of things, but one of the results of our social misbehavior. In a very real sense the women who suffer in this matter suffer vicariously for the sins of all society. It is not they who are guilty, but all mankind. For all who mean resolutely to face the problem and to win through to victory, it is first of all essential that they should realize the fact that their acute depressions and their restlessness of mind have really a quite well-defined physical and psychological cause. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five these depressions often become very acute, so that the whole horizon of life is darkened. Sensitive women often torment themselves by wondering what they have done that is wrong, for of course all depression is apt to take the form of a sense of wrongdoing. Further, at this period the religious sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse. They can no longer respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a general cynicism. Envy of others will suggest itself, and though it be sternly repressed, it still adds to the general strain, while good advice from others will seem just the last straw which cannot be borne.

But one half of this problem has disappeared at once for many from the day when they faced the plain truth that the cause of trouble is physical. Physiological processes with certain inevitable psychological accompaniments are at the bottom of it. Because their natures have not received their natural fulfillment a complicated situation has arisen which cannot be easily lived through, though it may be in the end triumphantly controlled. And if it helps ordinary people to learn that sometimes when they seem to be suffering from a sense of sin they are really only being plagued by indigestion, it may very much more help women in this difficult period to know that they are only going through an inevitable physical readjustment. What is happening is that sexual desire—it may be in vague, unconscious, and very general forms—is asserting itself. Nothing could be more absurd than to suggest that there is anything wrong or immodest in that fact. It is quite inevitable. Indeed, the first step out of the trouble lies in accepting the fact and then in considering how it is to be dealt with.

What is the way out of this difficult bit of life? All said that can be said about the physical and psychological causes, a very real problem remains. There must be a way of meeting it which ends in complete victory, for women who have come through it victoriously are to be found on all hands. What has been the secret of their victory? I prefer to let a woman begin the answer. "I think," writes one, "that the only possible thing for such women to do is to have their eyes fixed on God, and to know that in some mysterious and wonderful way He understands and meets all our needs. I think it needs a definite act—of our wills, our intellects, and our emotions—an act of consecration and self-offering to God, and until that is done there will be no peace." And then, after expressing her conviction as to the insufficiency of the policy of mere sublimation she continues, "I really believe that for women a real act of surrender—a joyful offering to God—is the only way."

I am sure the ultimate wisdom about this whole matter is contained in those sentences, and I am sure because there are numerous other departments of life in which similar problems assail both men and women, and in relation to which the way of self-surrender is the only possible way to life.

After all, it is not only unmarried women who have to face the experience of wanting passionately something which they cannot have. In various forms that challenge comes to most men and women whether married or not. Our desires demand one thing, and life with its imperious authority offers something different; and it is perhaps in that way that most of us come to the crisis of our lives. It is easy to break oneself against a situation of that sort. It is easy to spoil life completely by an obstinate concentration on the object that is being withheld—to lose life by insisting on finding it in one's own chosen way. Men and women alike make shipwreck of their lives in that way every year.

But there is another way. Our real life is life in God, and the way into it is always the way of surrender. To say with utter sincerity and absence of self-will, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" is to begin to find deliverance at once. We could not and should not surrender thus to anybody else. He alone perfectly understands. But when we have put ourselves into His hands without reserve, immediately life begins to arrange itself. With such surrender there comes a peace which nothing else can bring. I say it with acute sympathy for all strong-willed, high-spirited people, for whom surrender is very difficult. But I say it with an assurance that is based upon the unanimous verdict of the souls of all history who have found life. "I have learned," said one much harassed and persecuted man, "in whatsoever state I am therein to be content." He was content because in whatsoever state he might be he was always in the fellowship of God, and therefore in enjoyment of his essential life. He knew himself secure whatever life might bring, and even though life itself should end. He was inwardly in a state of profound peace and spiritual freedom, and that is why all the gracious powers of his humanity were able to find free and beautiful expression.

So it must be with all of us. We find our real life, and we become masters or mistresses in life only when we have given in and allowed the love of God to direct and sustain us. For the particular problem dealt with in this chapter and for all other painful and pressing problems of life, the way of victory is to seek and find the life that is hid with Christ in God.

* * * * *

No doubt at this point two questions will arise in the minds of some. Firstly, some will want to say, "All that is very well for those who are religious, but how about the people who are not religious?" I have no answer to that question, because I believe there is none. Religion is not a sort of hobby that just seems to suit certain peculiar people. It is a prime necessity for all of us. In a great many other connections it becomes increasingly plain to all who have eyes to see that there is no solution for the problem of life except the one which God Himself offers to all seeking souls. We may refuse to seek Him, but in so doing we close the prison doors against ourselves. I am not surprised that in studying the problems of sex I find no answer to the most acute of them apart from religion. That is what I should expect. Is it likely that men and women who were made for God should ever find any lasting satisfaction or any way to victory in life apart from Him? And indeed, in the particular connection I am now writing about, it is the fact that not a few women have lived to be almost thankful for the problem of involuntary celibacy that once confronted them in so menacing a way. It threw them back on God, and their experience of Him has been so rich that they are thankful for the compulsion that drove them into His fellowship.

There is no mysterious hunger in the inner life of any woman—no restless longing ever torments her—no painful stresses ever make her life seem difficult—no weary loneliness ever makes the world seem desolate, but He understands—perfectly and utterly. And if it be love that a woman longs for, there is no love like unto His love—perfect in tenderness, in understanding and in power. Yes, God Himself is the final answer to the problem of all lives that here seem to be unfulfilled, whether they be lives of men or women.

The other question that will be raised will be put in these words: "You have said that in the dark hours that come to so many women religious feeling seems to be suspended, and yet you go on to say that the way of escape lies in religion," I know that what I have written may seem for this reason utterly tantalizing to some. I know that in general it is in times when we most need religion that it is apt to seem most remote from us. Most of us have been in that dilemma. But there is a way out. It consists partly in remembering that religion is not only a matter of feeling, and that when feeling fails us the mind and will remain. But it consists still more in remembering that religion is not so much our affair as God's. God does not only answer the prayers of people who are feeling religious. If religion be what the experience of thousands declares it is, then we have reason to expect that our seeking of God will have results even when our emotions seem dead. We can at least direct our thought life. We can set ourselves towards Him by the deliberate direction of attention. We can think the true and right thoughts. And in that way a religion begins to come into life that is tenfold more abiding and sustaining than any religion that is a mere matter of feeling. It may need rigid self-discipline and really hard work thus to direct attention and attain to a regulated thought life. But then, I am not suggesting that there is an easy way through this problem. There is a way, and a way that leads to real victory; but it is no more easy than any other path that leads to a great goal.

I should like further to draw on the experience of women themselves to add some additional suggestions born of common sense and experiment. A very wise woman once supplied through me some hints to one who was going through this difficult period, and I am sure her hints are worth passing on to others. She insisted that no woman at this stage should attempt to live alone. Healthy friendship with other women is one of the greatest possible helps to success. As I have noted in a previous chapter, there is a danger that lurks not far away in this connection. But too much cannot be said of the helpful and bracing influence of friendships that are kept really healthy. Then, it is a mistake for women to live in institutions when that can be avoided. It really helps to have some room or rooms in the care of which the home-making instinct can find expression, and which may thus become a means to self-expression. More important still, my friend insisted that it is better at this period to work with people than with things. Other people always tend to draw us out of ourselves, if we will allow that to happen. They make demands on our affections. They keep us in touch with real life and its vast variety of emotions and interests. They make self-forgetfulness possible. Further, it is important for such women—as important as for all other people—to learn the truth that the way to win love is to give it. When people suffer tortures of loneliness it is essentially loneliness of heart. Like all other normal persons they long to be loved. But nothing is more futile in such a situation than simply to sit down and wait for someone to come along and love us. That way lies despair. What we can do is to awaken to the fact that all around us are people who also long to be loved, and that we have love to give them if we will but be generous. They may not seem very attractive people, but in that case they only need our love the more. Is it not being loved that makes people lovely! And when women rouse themselves to use their own love generously for others, they begin—always—to find the doors of deliverance opening.

A further very great step will have been taken when it is realized that the life force which is not going to have its normal and natural outlet need not on that account be wasted. It can be directed to other ends with enormous benefit to the world. I cannot hope to say anything on this point one-half so adequate or so helpful as the chapter Miss Royden has already written in Sex and Common Sense. Out of the fullness of knowledge she has gained by an amazingly sensitive sympathy she has there written the best account I have ever seen of how thwarted sex emotion can be sublimated to other ends, and made an immensely effective force for the progress of the race. In both men and women sexuality is just life force. If the natural method of expression be denied to it, it will still seek out ways in which to express itself. If it has been merely repressed unwillingly and incompletely the results, as the psychologists are telling us, are apt to be disastrous. But if the situation is openly faced, and honestly accepted—if a conscious surrender of the normal sex career be achieved—then it is possible to utilize the life force that springs from our sex natures for great physical, mental, or emotional activities, and that without any of the evil results that follow from mere repression. In fact by living an abundant life in natural, useful, and absorbing ways the problem becomes capable of a truly happy solution.

I have written the word "happy" deliberately. But I am not sure that at first this way out will seem happy. Useful it certainly will be, but all said and done I fancy that some residue of regret will be apt to remain, and that because of it women will be tempted to indulge in self-pity. And self-pity both for men and women is the most enervating of all emotional luxuries. Therefore, I wish to insert here a word of grateful testimony. If the sublimation of sex instinct seems to some women a poor and pale substitute for the normal career of marriage and motherhood, I am at least sure that for society at large it is a very blessed substitute. My chief experience of life has been in those places called slums, where life is always seen in its most drab and pitiful guise, and I can speak with certainty about this problem in relation to them. In the districts in which I have worked there have always been at least a few unmarried women who were spending with lavish generosity their whole life force in practical service and sympathy for needy children, harassed mothers, wayward men, and the sufferers of the district in general. No members of the human race are living anywhere with greater effect. No other women are called blessed with greater sincerity. Half a dozen in particular I can think of who in this way have done more for the redemption of society in such places than a score of happily married mothers could have accomplished. I do not know whether they feel that the sublimation of their instincts has been a complete success, but I do know that hundreds of grateful people have no doubt about it whatever. The whole world in its modern guise is crying out for such services as women alone can render, and if, on the one hand, women are the chief sufferers through the confusions of human affairs, they have at least a wonderful chance of finding and applying the remedy. The world can never make good to them the wrong it has done them; yet they may, if they will, put the world inexpressibly in their debt. No doubt mankind does not deserve it, but the one perfect lover in history was willing to die for an undeserving world. It can never be other than a great calling to follow where He leads the way.

A woman of great experience tells me that here I ought to suggest that in that minority of cases where it is possible, an unmarried woman may with great advantage adopt a child. There are many children in the world to-day without parents, and these children have a greatly lessened chance of life. But when one of these children is adopted in the way suggested a great benefit is brought firstly to the child, secondly to society, and thirdly to the woman herself, who thus acquires a worthy object for all the passionate devotion she possesses. Having known this plan adopted in several instances, I have wondered why it is not more common, at least when financial considerations make it a possibility.

No doubt to take this course or any of the other courses here suggested will need courage. But all successful ways of life need courage. Life itself is a challenging summons to courage. There is no happy way through for those who sit down in fear or who give in to their own distresses. Fate is a tyrant only to those who will not face him with spirit. A full and satisfying life has to be snatched from under the enemy's guns, but it can be so snatched. Neither men nor women need give in though often defeated. "Unconquering but unconquered" may be the best motto that we can hope to deserve, but for all those who inscribe it on their banners a strange happiness does creep into the soul.



CHAPTER X

THE ART OF BEING MARRIED

I

HOUSEHOLD HARMONY

I have the greatest sympathy with married couples who never read any books or pamphlets containing advice to married people, and are determined that they never will. Once a man and a woman have left their respective homes and set up in one of their own their common life is so entirely their own affair, and they have such a clear right to resent all intrusions into it, that the policy of rejecting all advice beforehand has clearly something to be said for it.