Men, Women, and God | Page 2

with
uncomfortable reserve. And I address myself to men and women alike.
I do it all on the basis of one assumption, namely, that a God of love in designing our
human nature cannot have put into it anything which is incapable of a pure and happy
exercise; and in particular that in making the sex interest so central, permanent, and
powerful in human beings He must have had some great and beautiful purpose. I start, in
fact, with the faith that the sexual elements in our humanity, once rightly understood and
finely handled, make for the enrichment of human life, for the increase of our health and
efficiency, and the heightening of our joy. I believe that nothing is more necessary for the
world to-day than that we should trace out the ways in which this tremendous life force
that is implanted in us all may be used to forward the higher aims of our common life,
and to help the race on its upward march. And yet even as I write the word "sexual" I
cannot but remember that the mere word will for many good people produce a sensation
of distaste. Partly because they have a sincere passion for purity, and partly because this
whole subject has been defiled for them by the excesses and indecencies of mankind,
they doubt whether it can be right or useful to think about it at all. They regard the facts
of sex with a mixture of fear, perplexity, and shame, and take themselves to task if still
some curiosity about them lingers in their minds. Therefore before I go any further I
would like to ask such people to realize that they are denying my initial assumption. They
have not yet come to believe that there is any divine and holy purpose enshrined in the
sexual side of life, although God is responsible for its place in our humanity; and I would
beg them forthwith to think this matter out.
Sex is no accident in our humanity. The function of the sexual elements in our physical
frame is so central that unless they be truly managed health and strength are impossible.
Their relation is no less vital to our mental and aesthetic life, and they appear to control
almost absolutely our nervous stability. No man or woman attains to fullness and
harmony of life if the sexual nature be either neglected or mismanaged. No society is
strong and happy unless this part of life is truly adjusted. It may even be said that the
evils that come through the mismanagement of sex relations have beaten every
civilization up to the present. And no doubt it is natural enough to shudder over the
abominations of prostitution and sex vice in general, and so to turn our minds away from
the whole matter. But for all that our emotional energies would be better employed in
trying to understand this titanic force, and in learning how it may be utilized for our
upward progress. Mere prohibitions have so utterly and entirely failed us that we ought
now to realize that there is no hope in them alone. What we need is a positive
constructive ideal for this part of life which will indicate the real value of the sexual
forces in us, and not leave young men and women partly perplexed, partly ashamed, and
partly annoyed because they are as the Creator made them.
And so I repeat we must begin with the assumption that, though we have not yet spelt it
out, God must have had some great purpose of love when He created men and women
with a clamant sex instinct at the center of their personalities.

Hebrew instinct declared that "God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was
very good." Christian instinct must repeat the verdict with vastly increased conviction,
for our humanity is such that the Son of God could wear it. He was not ashamed to call us
brethren, and to be tempted like as we are. To suggest that in passion and in its exercise at
the bidding of love there need be anything that is not holy, is to arraign the Creator. Sex
love abused and misunderstood has indeed strewn the world with tragedies and disease.
But sex love is going to remain. Not until we have learnt to make it an instrument for the
perfection of life and the heightening of vitality can we hope to reach the life which the
love of God designed for us; and to that we shall not attain until we have dared to acquire
knowledge and through knowledge to attain to wisdom.
The ideal which still lingers in many minds, though it is seldom openly confessed, is that
boys and girls, young men and women, should be