Sex and Common-Sense | Page 2

wonder of sex love.
This is to me the great teaching of Christ about sex. Other great religious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught contemptuously of our animal nature. "He spake of the temple of His body." That is sublime! That is the whole secret. And that is why vice is horrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a marketplace or a place of business: but of a temple.
Christ, I am told, told us nothing about sex. He did not need to tell us anything but "Your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit."
It is my belief that in appealing to an American public I shall be appealing to those who are ready to face the subject of the relations of the sexes with perfect frankness and with courage. America is still a country of experiments--a country adventurous enough to make experiments, and to risk making mistakes. That is the only spirit in which it is possible to make anything at all; and though the mistakes we may make in a matter which so deeply and tragically affects human life must be serious, and we must with corresponding seriousness weigh every word we say, and take the trouble to think harder and more honestly than we have perhaps ever thought before; yet I believe that we must above all have courage. Human nature is sound and men and women do, on the whole, want to do what is right. The great impulse of sex is part of our very being, and it is not base. Passion is essentially noble and those who are incapable of it are the weaker, not the stronger. If then we have light to direct our course, we shall learn to direct it wisely, for indeed this is our desire.
Such is my creed. My prayer is for "more light." And my desire to take my part in spreading it.
A. MAUDE ROYDEN.
April, 1922.

PREFACE TO THIRD ENGLISH EDITION
In the first editions of this book a certain passage on our Lord's humanity (see p. 40) has, I find, been misunderstood by some. They have supposed it to imply a suggestion that our Lord was not only "tempted in all things like as we are"--which I firmly believe--but that He fell--which is to me unthinkable. I hope I have made this perfectly clear in the present edition.
Beyond this there are few alterations except the correction of some very abominable errors of style. The book still bears the impress of the speaker rather than the writer, and as such I must leave it.
With regard to the chapter called "Common-Sense and Divorce Law Reform," which now has been added to this edition, I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Jane Walker and the group of "inquirers" over which she presided, for the memorandum on Divorce which they drew up and published in the Challenge, of July, 1918. I am not in complete agreement with their views on all points, but readers of their memorandum will easily see whence I derived my view as a whole.
A.M.R.
January, 1922.

FOREWORD













Chapters
I. to VII. of this book were originally given in the form of addresses, in the Kensington Town Hall, on successive Sunday evenings in 1921. They were taken down verbatim, but have been revised and even to some extent rewritten. I do not like reports in print of things spoken, for speaking and writing are two different arts, and what is right when it is spoken is almost inevitably wrong when it is written. (I refer, of course, to style, not matter.) If I had had time, I should have re-shaped what I have said, though it would have been the manner only and not the substance that would have been changed. This has been impossible, and I can therefore only explain that the defective form and the occasional repetition which the reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that I was speaking--not writing--and that I felt bound to make each address, as far as possible, complete and comprehensible in itself.













Chapters
VIII., IX., and X. were added later to meet various difficulties, questions, or criticisms evoked by the addresses which form the earlier part of the book.
I desire to record my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sladen, but for whose active help and encouragement I should hardly have proceeded with the book: to Miss Irene Taylor, who, out of personal friendship for me, took down, Sunday after Sunday, all that I said, with an accuracy which, with a considerable experience of reporters, I have only once known equalled and never surpassed: and to my congregation, whose questions and speeches during the discussion that followed each address greatly helped my work.
A. MAUDE ROYDEN.
September, 1921.

CONTENTS
I.--THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE