Sex and Common-Sense | Page 2

of
the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the hideousness of
debased and depraved sexuality, the greatness and the 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,