MARITAL MODERATENESS
The foundation of marriage and of the home can only be built
permanently upon the abiding nature of love. Like our own being, love has a
twofold nature. They are the spiritual part which is immortal and unchangeable
and the other is the physical part, which is temporary in purpose and
continuance, and is liable to perversion and debasement. The physical part may even be permitted to
over-shadow, debase and quite obscure the spiritual. In its natural unfolding
and manifestation, love is very much like the plant that is rooted in the earth
whiles its flower in the sunlight. The earth and the roots in their relation to
each other are essential and even indispensable to the seemingly ceaseless of
the plant. So therefore, love has its physical and its spiritual nature. Love
is rooted in that unconscious law of our nature which God has ordained for the
preservation and perpetual of human life. “Nothing but a spurious delicacy or
an ignorance of facts can prevent our full recognition that love looks to
marriage, and marriage to offspring, as a natural succession.” While this is
its aim, but yet it serves other high ends.
In its twofold nature, love dignifies its possessor. It
makes him responsive to the love of God upon the one hand and to the love of
mankind upon the other. It gives purpose and zest to life, brightens the
intellect, quickens the imagination, inspires purpose and imparts physical
power. It beautifies and glorifies the individual, and makes him worthy of
redemption. “When it is pure and true, it unites two souls in bonds of
happiness which never fret, and which becomes stronger as time passes and the
passions become chaste and subdued.”
But it’s just that there is a monster, which is known as
lust. It bestows neither beauty nor life. It is like the parasite plant which
is not naturally rooted in the earth, but knit itself about the growing beauty
of other plant-life, only to suck out the life-currents from the stem which has
lifted it out of the dirt into the sunlight, and in return for which its only
charity is that it spreads its stolen greenness over the death which it has
created itself.
The greatest happiness in married life can never be obtained
except by the observance of marital moderation. So precisely what is moderation
in the exercise of the reproductive function in married life, it would be very
difficult to determine and define. What might be moderation for one man, or for
one woman, might be the most extravagant excess for another. The husband may
feel inclined to grant himself such indulgence as would entitle him to be
regarded as considerate and as within the bounds of moderation when considered
in relation to himself personally, and yet the privileges which he grants
himself might be most immoderate and most ruinous for his wife, or in some
instances the reverse might be the case, whereby the indulgence which might be
moderate for his wife might be most excessive for him.
No husband or wife can determine what the moderation in
their own personal instance is until they have duly considered the obligation
which they are under to the other, and the effect of the relation, not simply
upon himself or herself, but upon the others as well. The principle which must
govern every husband or wife who desires to be moderate in the marital
relation, is, not to seek to grant themselves the utmost indulgence which will
enable them to abide within the limits of individual safety only, but so
persistently to exercise the spirit of self-control and self-mastery, that they
may attain to those best results which are only possible to those who do not
call the reproductive function into exercise at too frequent intervals.
No man or woman who exercises the reproductive function upon
the return of every slight inclination can realize that greatest pleasure and
satisfaction which are always possible, but so seldom experienced. The wise
husband and the wise wife will not seek that utmost indulgence which brings them
to the limit of endurance, but will constantly desire to be governed by such
restraint and moderation as will secure for them the most blessed results.
To say nothing of morality, intelligence and culture have
their province in the exercise of the privileges which are possible to married
people. The reproductive sense, like the sense of hunger, or any other sense,
is to be brought under the dominion of intelligence and refinement. In the
government of our other senses there are laws which no intelligent man will be
willing to violate. He will not eat the first food upon which he chances to
come, simply because he is hungry. He requires that it shall be of the proper
kind, and properly prepared. The worm will seize upon its food regardless of
its character, and without any reference to other considerations than that of
satisfying its own inclination. Wild beasts will contend over a bone, but man
is lifted by intelligence to a higher realm. His food must be of a proper kind,
it must be properly prepared, and is to be eaten at appointed intervals. He
will not eat that which belongs to another. He desires his food served with
proper regard to cleanliness and pleasing taste. He beautifies his table, makes
his eating the occasion of social fellowship, takes into consideration the
wants and needs of others. If we thus regulate the appetite, why should we not,
as intelligent beings, regulate the exercise of the reproductive sense? Why
should we yield, like animals, to the first inclination? Why should we plunder
ourselves or our companion of the God-given sense of modesty? Why should we be
willing to indulge ourselves to such an extent as to injure the one individual
whom we love and prize above all others in this world?
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