CHAPTER XIII

FORGETTING THE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND

I have implied in this book that the very best in sexual experience is only for those who keep themselves unspotted in early life, and who come to the sacrament of marriage with no previous and lower experience of sex intimacy. I am even sure that the very best is spoilt a little by all previous unworthy thinking, and by all perverse practices.

I know that that will sound a hard saying to very many, for there are few who have fulfilled these conditions for knowing the best. It must seem to them that I am practically saying to them, "You can never now enter into the holy of holies." Yet I cannot alter what I have said, however acute may be my sympathy with those who have stumbled. I believe it is true, and no good ever came of hiding the truth. It is because it is true that I have such confident hope for mankind. Men and women do in their hearts want the very best, and when they come to know what are the only terms on which that very best can be had they will, I believe, accept those terms.

But this would be a cruel book, and a false book too, were I to imply that there is no way in which the past can be forgotten and forgiven, and no way into purity and joy even for those who have wandered. Were that so I could not write at all about this subject, for it would then be too tragic.

Perhaps the worst consequence of aberrations in thought and conduct is that they make it very very hard to be perfectly happy and unashamed when at last love calls them to enter into the inner chambers of marriage and romance. The shadows that rest at times on that part of marriage even for some very happy lovers are due to the fact that the man (or sometimes the woman) was once involved in something else before that was a little like it, and yet was haunted then by a sense of wrong-doing and so could not have a perfect experience. It is only to the pure that _all_ things are pure.

But it is _not_ true that the past need dog and spoil the future. It is not true that sin is irremediable, nor that its stains remain for ever. The essential and central thing in Christianity is the assertion that there is a remedy for the situation that sin creates.

I do not think there is any remedy to be found in simply trying to ignore the past--or in saying that our aberrations were only those of ninety per cent. of mankind, and were so natural as to be not worth bothering about. In such ways we may push the past out of sight, but we do not deal with it. It remains there though out of sight. For the fact is that such sayings do not quite convince us, and therefore they cannot kill the past.

Nor is there any remedy to be found merely in the forgiveness of man or of woman. Women are proverbially, and perhaps divinely, willing to forgive. But a woman's forgiveness does not necessarily make a man able to forgive himself. Nor does it always cleanse an unclean inner life. To many a man it has been just the fact that his fiancée or wife was so sublimely willing and able to forgive that has revealed to him his own unworthiness and made it sting the more.

No! there has got to be something much more drastic in our lives if we are to get free from shame and remorse. We have got to go down into that stony valley of humiliation where men and women face the naked facts before their God, and stop all attempt to hide or to deceive. We have got to stop the sophistries which are so dear to us, and through which we try to put the blame on others, or on circumstance, or on fate. We have got to face the fact that the evil things--whatever they were, either small or great--happened because we were weak--because we put pleasure before duty--because we gave in to lust, or evil suggestion, or a craven longing to please the flesh. Yes! They happened because we were weak, and that is a horrible thing to have to admit. Yet admitting it is the only way to regain contact with the truth. And what next? The next thing is that in that extremity we find God. It might seem that He would probably be the last one to be found through humiliation and the open admission of being impure. But in actual experience that is how He is found. That is His way--to meet the man who has discovered his own insufficiency--to intervene at the desperate minute--to reveal to incarnate weakness His eternal strength--to give a strange assurance that He Himself is about to enfold the man or woman in His power, and tale charge of the future. And when that has happened a man knows what to do with his past. He can leave it with God, and then it loses at once all power to haunt him or put him to shame. It was unclean, but the cleansing fires of the divine love have taken it in charge, and its power is broken. That is something very different from trying to hide it or trample upon it. That is really killing it, and after that a man both may and can forget.

"If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." That is literally true even in this connection. Spiritually a man ceases to be the same person as the one who was once so weak and unclean. He has entered a new spiritual country.

Experience has proved all this over and over again. Men who in early youth were wild have by the grace of God become so essentially pure as to become capable of true and blessed experiences of love and all that love leads to with a fine woman. But it does need the grace of God. Those who attempt simply to forget and make light of their early follies do not escape from them.

And why should I not boldly say the same thing--exactly the same thing-- about a woman? It is certainly true. No one seriously believes that the redeeming grace of God, which is sufficient for all other sins, fails before this one. No one who has understood Christ doubts that He can make a new woman, and a pure and noble woman, out of one who has stumbled. And yet curiously society has never learnt to forgive women. A man is allowed to forget the things which are behind. Generally a woman is compelled to remember them till the very end. I shall never forget being once at a meeting of men in New York where a very great American woman spoke to us all on this subject. She pointed out to us that society had never learnt to control the evils of this part of life because it had never learnt to adopt the method of Jesus, which was frank and full forgiveness. We have been afraid. We have thought it would be socially disastrous. But Jesus had no hesitation in His voice when He said to a penitent Magdalene, "Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more." Of course she sinned no more. There is in all the universe no constraining force like that combination of forgiveness and trust.

I am sure we cannot make our standard too high. I am sure we need to guard against all compromise in thought with its august demands. But I am equally sure we need to learn to forgive generously if we are ever to help those who have stumbled. Forgiving sinners does not mean condoning sin, else could there never be any divine forgiveness. What it does mean is loving the persons concerned. Till we learn to exercise that divine art, we do but shut the doors of hope against sinners and push them farther down.

Of course this means that for a pagan society there is no choice between a sternly cold and cruel morality on the one hand, and license on the other. For pagans cannot forgive. They alternate between a moral indifference in which there is no hope for anybody, and a cold and callous condemnation of sinners which is both hypocritical and cruel. We have all seen both policies in action and know how hopeless they both are. But in exact proportion as we learn to think and feel with Christ we shall learn to forgive, and so doing shall begin to have mastery over the evils in sex life that spring from ignorance, waywardness, want of discipline, and the misunderstanding of love. History is one long record of how by the force of law and by alternate severity and carelessness the human race has tried to find for itself the right path through this special country. But the record is largely one of failure. There is no way of success for a society that depends upon such forces. Here as in a dozen other connections the only way to life is that Christian way which the world has so largely repudiated. Mankind want to make a success of their life in this world--want to make the most possible of it--but they want it apart from the leadership of Christ, and so they miss it. He can show us the way of life if we will but listen, but no other can.

And His way is always and altogether the way of love--love that can tame the brute in us and make it a servant--love that can transform passion into a holy fire--love that makes men patient and women generous--that takes the common things of life and makes them sacred-- and above all love that can hate sin with fierce sincerity, and yet love and forgive sinners.

It is after this fashion that God loves us. We must so love one another if we are to make human life great.

There is another and a larger sense in which there is need that we should forget the things which are behind. We need as a race to escape from an evil past. Our greatest danger in this whole connection is the danger of moral skepticism. "Sex vice has always been common," men say with truth; and then with fatal unreason they add, "and always will be." That way lies sheer disaster. The whole situation calls for faith in man's future--faith in his capacity for purity--faith in love. And that faith is really but a part of any true faith in God.

In the past even Christian people have tried to evade the problem of sex. The truth about it has not been openly sought. Its challenge has not been bravely met. Its possibilities have not been realized. And therefore fears, sufferings, excesses, cruelties, and injustice to women have degraded our common life. The whole matter is central for our civilization. While we think and work for reconstruction we would do well to remember that there can be no happy and harmonious life for us till this whole problem has been solved--till we have learnt to enthrone pure love in our midst and by its passionate and cleansing power to subdue the brute and exercise our complete humanity to the glory of God. Love never faileth. It purifies passion and dominates the flesh. If we believe in God we needs must believe in the triumph of love; and that means a divine consummation at last to all our wanderings and struggles in connection with Sex.

APPENDIX

A BRIEF SKETCH OF SOME OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTS

BY

A. CHARLES E. GRAY, M.D. (ED.)

APPENDIX

SOME OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTS

Of all the vital forces with which living things are endowed, the two most potent are the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct for race-preservation. This latter gives rise to the reproductive urge. So deep-seated is this instinctive force, that in many instances in the vegetable world, the threat of individual death results in a special effort of reproduction and the individual dies to live in the next generation. A force which is thus so insistent in the whole animal and vegetable world is naturally not absent in the human being, and it is well we should definitely recognize the fundamental power of this, in every normal man and woman. Not seldom the reproductive instinct is spoken of as a thing which can be put on one side and ignored. All experience and history prove that this is impossible, and that the attempt to do so ends in failure and disaster. But in civilized communities it is equally impossible to allow such a force to range unrestrained, hence the laws and customs of modern peoples. But mere assent to external authority can never achieve more than partial success. What is needed is whole-hearted agreement with an ideal which can only be attained by education of every individual in a real understanding of themselves and their responsibilities in sex matters. It is due to the fault of parents and teachers, rather than their own, that many men and women are to-day paying the penalty of having misused or abused this divinely implanted instinct.

_The Law of Bi-sexual Reproduction_

It is one of Nature's plans that in the genesis of a new individual two individuals should take a share. This holds good throughout the whole range of living things except the lower forms of plant and animal life, such as fungi and animalcule. But, with one or two individual exceptions, as plants and animals evolve, the union of two elements, male and female, is needed to start the amazingly complex process of building a new individual. Thus in flowers the stamens, the pollen bearers, provide the male element which, through the intermediary of the pistils, fertilizes the egg in the vesicle. In the higher animals the egg or ovum is produced by the female, and is fertilized by the sperm-cell produced by the male. The necessary union between these two essential elements is attained in various ways. Thus the female salmon deposits her eggs on a convenient spot in the bed of a stream and the attendant male salmon then projects over them the spermatozoa. In the higher animals there is a further development, and special organs are evolved to ensure the conjunction of the two elements. I have not space to describe in detail the effect of this union of the two cells, generally spoken of as fertilization. It may be found fully recorded step by step in any biological manual. Very briefly, the sperm-cells, which are active, freely moving units, swarm round the egg-cell and one of them eventually enters it. The essential part of the cells, namely the nuclei, coalesce into one nucleus, and an active process of cell division and multiplication is at once started. The single cell divides into two daughter cells, then again into four, and so on. Very early in development, the cells, which at first appear similar, become differentiated into different types, but the whole ordered sequence of the development of an embryo is achieved by this cell division and multiplication. Each original cell contains a substance which, on account of its being easily colorable with artificial stains, is called chromatin, and this chromatin is believed to be the bearer of the hereditary qualities. The cell division is so arranged that each new cell receives an equal share of the male and female chromatin, and this process is continued in every case of cell division, so that eventually, in every part of our bodies, the dual inheritance remains complete.

But though both parents have thus an equal share in the cellular elements of the new life, it is the female whose reproductive organs provide for its nourishment and protection until birth takes place.

_The Human Sex Organs_

In the female these consist of the womb or uterus, the ovaries, and a canal called the vagina which leads from the lower end of the uterus to an external opening, the vulva. The ovaries, two in number, are situated one on each side of the uterus. The uterus, which is pear-shaped, with the apex downwards, has three openings, one at the apex and one at each side at the upper part. These two upper openings are provided with a tubule extension, the Fallopian tubes, whose outer ends are fringed and lie in close relation to the ovaries. The ova or egg-cells are developed in the ovaries, and through a complex and elaborate process a single cell comes to maturity from time to time. It is then discharged into the open end of the Fallopian tube, reaches thereby the uterus, and if not fertilized is discharged through the lower opening of the uterus into the vagina. It is not known exactly when this discharge of ova takes place, but it is believed to coincide more or less with the monthly period. If, however, fertilization of the ovum takes place, it is not discharged, but remains in the uterus. The lining membrane of the uterus grows round and envelops it, and the wonderful process of cell division and multiplication proceeds which results in the growth and development of a child.

These various organs are situated in the lower part of the abdomen, within the protection of the bony pelvis or basin. This pelvis is, compared with the male pelvis, broad and shallow, to provide for the passage of the fully developed child at birth. The vagina is the passage by which, during the birth process, the child reaches the outer world, and it is also the sex organ by which, in the female, the union of the male and female elements, of which we have spoken, takes place in the sex act.

The male sex organs consist of the testicles, in which the sperm-cells or spermatozoa are evolved, of a coiled duct leading there from, and of the distinctive male sex organ, the penis. This last serves the double purpose of providing an exit for the contents of the bladder and for that emission of the spermatozoa which occurs in the sex act. There are also certain glands situated in close relation to this duct which provide a fluid which is emitted at the same time as the spermatozoa, the whole being termed the seminal fluid. It is thus clear that in both sexes there are essential reproductive organs, the ovaries in the one case, the testicles in the other, providing respectively ova and sperm-cells, and there are also organs for the purpose of securing the union of these two elements, namely the vagina in the female and the penis in the male. These two sets of organs form the primary sex characteristics or actual sex organs.

_The Sex Act_

The special process which secures this union of the male and female elements is termed copulation or coitus. It takes place in all warm-blooded animals, as well as many others, but in man, with his highly developed mental and psychical qualities, it is a truly complex experience in which body, mind and soul all take their part.

Physically its central fact is the ejaculation of the seminal fluid by the male and its reception by the female, and this culmination with its psychical concomitants is spoken of as the orgasm. Before coitus is feasible, the organs designed for the purpose have to be brought into an appropriate state for its consummation. The penis and the vulva are alike furnished with erectile tissue. The penis has to be erected in order to penetrate into the vagina, while the female organs add their share in facilitating the act both by the erection of the tissue round the vulva and by the outpouring of a lubricating secretion which bathes all the parts. The mechanism of this is a nervous one, and its originating cause while partly physical is chiefly mental, due to the emotions aroused by love and courtship, and thus in every act of coitus properly realized, an essential preliminary is an abbreviated courtship. This initial stage has been described as the stage of tumescence, and is succeeded by the introduction of the male organ into the vagina. A motor nerve discharge follows which produces ejaculation of the seminal fluid and is for the male the climax of the orgasm. The female is, however, by no means passive; motor nerve discharges take place leading to rhythmic contraction of the vagina, and she experiences, or should experience, a similar orgasm to the male. The climax is followed in both by a feeling of satisfaction and repose which generally issues in refreshing sleep. It is to be noted, however, that in the female the whole process is apt to be slower than in the male. Her orgasm frequently coincides with the male, but often it comes later. If this is not realized by her partner, and inconsiderate haste be practiced, then, in place of satisfaction, a state of nervous tension may remain, which is not only psychically deleterious, but, if repeated, may lead to actual illness.

I have spoken of the sex act as it should be, a fine and lofty emotional experience of two people between whom is the bond of love. It is true that in the female an entirely passive part is physiologically possible, and it is also true that in the male, who is biologically the hunting and pursuing animal, spontaneous desires arise from time to time which are too often accorded a bodily and disharmonious satisfaction. Disharmonious because it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the completely satisfactory realization of the sex act involves the participation of every side of human nature, spiritual and physical, and is the outcome of an intense desire for perfect unity with the beloved. Hence mere bodily satisfaction of sensuous desire must have a disharmonious and deteriorating effect, because it ignores a basal fact of man, namely spirit, and leaves that side of him starved and unsatisfied. And the same is true of all sexual aberrations and perversions. Though they may seem at the moment to be unimportant, the fact remains that they are sins against both the spirit and the flesh, and are followed inexorably by their own punishment.

It is argued by some that the sexual act should be restricted to occasions, when there is a definite intention of begetting children. This does not seem either reasonable or desirable. Nature's plans were certainly, in the case of human beings, not constructed on that basis. It would introduce an element of calculation and deliberation into what is naturally a finely spontaneous thing, and it would put a quite unnecessary, and in some cases, at least, a harmful, strain upon two people. As Havelock Ellis has put it: "Even if sexual relationships had no connection with procreation whatever, they would still be justifiable, and are, indeed, an indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual; for it is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest graces and aptitudes of life have full scope." This does not imply that married life does not call for the exercise of self-restraint and continence, in this as in other respects.

Those who regard marital relations as an opportunity for unbridled sexual indulgence are not likely to win success in an adventure of considerable difficulty in which all that is fine in man or woman will find full scope for development. But it does mean that sexual intimacy has a value in itself as an expression in the terms of the body of the love which unites husband and wife, and that, when duly controlled, it leads to health and general harmony.