Love, the Law of Life

In order to produce life, death has to be faced. — Nay, death is but the dividing line which marks the | advance up the stairway of life. Death does not really | exist: it is just a step upward toward life. For this | reason Jesus gladly died on the cross, crying, ‘Father, | I trust my spirit to thy hands.”’ Love is stronger than death: this the cross teaches. ©

Death did not conquer love, but love conquered death. The mother, for love of her child, has no fear of death. “Love knows no death.”’ This is the meaning of the cross. |

Death is not victory. “O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting? The victory is ours, thank God! He makes it ours by our Lord Jesus Christ.” In this powerful art of life, then, the possession of the assurance of victory is what we term religion. Religion is not a scheme of death for men who have to die; it is the art of life for living men. It is the way of creation, the way by which man lives. Religion is, moreover, the stratagem of love, in which man may glory. Weak, cowardly beings should try - some other way. Men who are treading the pathway to God and to life should have Jesus sculpture his cross on their hearts.

In laborer-peasant Russia in the May Day Procession, it is said that one group marched with a crown and a Bible bound to a gun-carriage. In their view, materialists as they are, all social conditions and economic life are immediately to be reformed by revolution, and therefore there is no need to give thought to such things as religion, morality, or conscience. Christianity, in particular, which teaches revolution by change of the inner life, they regard as too tepid, and hence injurious and unprofitable.

Thus one school of socialists ignores religion and proclaims a new morality, while on the other hand another school stoutly insists that religion is not to be ignored. The latter school gives us greater surprise, for they comprise a group of students of sex who might naturally be imagined materialistic. Sir Francis Galton, nephew of Darwin, in his Study of Human Capacities, taught that love and sex morality ‘must be religiously motivated; and Karl Pearson, the biological statistician, who succeeded Galton, has pointed out the impossibility of reforming sexual “morality except by the power of religion.

Bloch, who made encyclopedic researches in sex problems, in his Modern Sexual Life observes in his scholarly way that sex life must depend upon religion. Ellen Key, critic of feminist problems, explains that the solution of sex love lies in religion. Havelock Ellis, investigator of sex psychology, in his Scheme of Social Hygiene declares that humanity cannot progress unless sex love is purified by religion; and, according to Forel, ‘Sexual desire can be controlled by religion: that is the true sex life.’”’ Such a tendency, even apart from the standpoint of completed religious systems such as Christianity and Buddhism, is a matter for thorough study. The fact that religion, which, from the point of view of the materialistic ethics, should be abandoned, is on the contrary welcomed, or rather invited, by authorities in sex problems, is indeed a remarkable phenomenon. The reason for it we shall consider primarily from the standpoint of Christianity, — which allows the sexual life.

Jesus was not a student of sex problems. Yet Jesus, two thousand years ago, states just as clearly as do the sex scholars of today, that the sex life must be a religious matter. Let us first consider Jesus’ teachings relating to sex problems. When we read the New Testament, we find that Jesus in the ‘Sermon on the Mount” gave a new interpretation of sexual morality, basing it upon his own experience. “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’! Thus in the Authorized Version; but in the Revised Japanese Version, the latter part reads: “Anyone cherishing lustful desire when looking at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” That is to say, the older translation appeared to be a caution against arousing lustful thoughts by looking at a woman, but in the new translation Jesus’ words. are a warning against cherishing lustful feeling when looking at a woman, that is, a warning against harboring lustful feelings in one’s motives. However, in any case, Jesus made the ancient admonition against adultery more comprehensive, teaching that adultery may even be secretly committed within a man’s heart. Furthermore, in the same connection Jesus spoke regarding marital life. He by no means negated sex, as do the “Holy Men”’ of India. “It used to be said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate. But I tell you, anyone who divorces his wife for any reason except unchastity makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”? Whereas, under the ancient law (Deuteronomy, chap. 24) a man could, whenever he so desired, write a divorce certificate and send his wife away even for the mere reason that he did not like her, Jesus taught that a man who divorced his wife for any cause except illicit intercourse made her an adulteress and anyone who married her an adulterer.

Jesus, who thus gave new commands against lust and in regard to marriage, also taught a new morality of love: ‘But from the beginning, when God created the world, ‘Male and female, He created them: hence a man shall leave his father and mother, and the pair shall be one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined, then, man must not separate.’’!

Men are generally liable to confuse the three things, sexual desire, love, and marriage. But they differ and must be clearly distinguished. Sexual desire is instinctive, impulsive. In love there is an added psychical element, or, in other words, love has a more personal quality. Marriage is the incorporation of these two things, giving them their proper setting in the social system.

When Jesus said, “Anyone cherishing lustful desire when looking at a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart,’’ he implied that when a man looked at a woman with lustful feelings, completely disregarding her inner life of the spirit, even though he had no intercourse with her, he was already in his heart an adulterer. In other words, the man who regards a woman as if she were soulless, bereft of personality, commits the sin of adultery. Sexual desire as it is bought and sold in the streets can exist apart from the personalities and souls of the partners. With this sexual desire alone neither true love nor marriage is possible. Sexual desire and love must be clearly differentiated. Behold the prostitutes of Japan! Do they not frequently exclaim, ‘“‘We may sell our flesh, but we don’t sell our souls’? Even women such as they clearly make the distinction between soul and sexual desire, and they know that love is not lust. True, indeed, love is not lust. When one loves, one does not look with lustful eyes at one of the opposite sex: one rises above base passion.

Love is new life. In primitive times, when humanity had not entered upon its consciously personal life, there was no love: it was for the most part only sexual desire, and women were bought and sold for gold. This ancient practice still persists in certain uncivilized communities. Among the lower classes of Chinese in Formosa the man who wishes to marry a girl must pay money to her parents over a long period to meet the expenses of the girl’s rearing. There were times when plunder marriage was practiced: men made sudden attacks, seized the girls they wanted, and carried them off. In such cases there could be no love; there was merely sexual desire, for the purpose of perpetuating the family line.

It is believed by certain people that, as in the ancient periods of communal life love also was communal, so in the future when a communistic society is established, love will again be communal; but such thinking is seriously in error. In so-called communal societies people lived in groups, and in order to prevent the extirpation of the group sundry irregular practices were resorted to. There were even instances of the propagation of a group by intercourse between fathers and daughters.: Practices of this nature were dictated by sexual desire as well as for the purpose of maintaining the group. Pure love could not develop under such conditions. Love was not communal, for love did not exist!

With the passing of the ages, however, and the emergence of the life of conscience, there began choice, selection, between the sexes; and love was born on the earth. In these days of capitalism men can, if they wish, satisfy their sexual cravings with money in the segregated districts. There is no necessity of choice of a mate there: selfish satisfaction of lust is the sole aim. But there is no love in such places. Love comes only when men advance to the point of seeking better mates. Love is born when the sexual life is refined and made personal. In love there must be the selection of a mate. If by love is meant that searching of the matured soul for a mate whose spirit harmonizes most intimately with it, then love must be conceded to be the most recent event in human evolution. This holy love was not achieved prior to the coming of Christ’s moral standard upon the earth.

Jesus said, “What God hath joined together, let not man separate.” That is to say, love is devotion to one alone.. Before Jesus came, but few marriages were monogamous. Polygamy and gregarious marriages prevailed. The principle of monogamy was first established by Jesus. Investigating the history of sex, we find that marital unions have been of many varieties. Every imaginable form of marriage has been practiced; and most of these forms have become obsolete in recent times. With the growth of the human soul one form, marriage by selection, has survived, and this is the modern evolution of love. Hence, we must regard love as the outcome of the last two thousand years of human development. During the Middle Ages especially, Christian love developed the code of chivalry, and woman was elevated to a place next to Deity. Respect was paid to her to a degree unknown in any other age.

We are to regard love not as something gross, but as the selection of personality. Marriage is the system socially and legally recognized for the purpose of perpetuating this love. In other words, marriage is the compact of love which society accepts. Jesus said that a man was not to divorce his wife except for unchastity, meaning that divorce was to be resorted to solely in cases of illegal union. Yet if men made a closer study and gained a clearer understanding of the thought of Jesus, there would actually be no occurrence of divorce. For, if men followed the idea of Jesus, marriage would be established upon a basis of personality and character—in other words, upon love. If, on the contrary, marriage comes about from sexual desire alone, it lacks the element of choice and hence, quite as a matter of course, selection will be made after the marriage.

Monogamy must not be thought of as a relation of rigid restraint. The way of true choice is one: if two spirits are ardent, they are no longer two, but one. The more thoroughly quickened conscience becomes, | the purer grows the love, and the two hearts unite as | one. It is an interesting fact that the conclusions of the quickened conscience and the decisions dictated by sex tend to coincide the one with the other.

The more we consider it, the more marvelous becomes the emergence of sex. The existence of the two creatures, man and woman, is full of mystery: while their hearts and blood vessels are the same, their sex organs alone differ. How inscrutable it all is! Who can say that he fathoms the depths of this mystery?

Until I studied the evolution of sex in plants, I had never thought at all in regard to this point. Think, for instance, of the stamens and pistils of plants. Would any person looking at them entertain foul thoughts? In plants of low orders reproduction takes place only by fission of cells: there is no distinction of sex. In a willow branch there is no differentiation of sex: if it is thrust into the earth, it grows into another tree. The lily grows from a red lobe at the bottom of the leaf. But in the case of the maidenhair tree (gingko biloba) the process is changed: the sex differentiation is made and the pollen is carried from the male to the female by the agency of the wind. It is truly marvelous. Among the gymnosperms there are no beautiful blossoms, but when the plants reach the flowering stage, sex-differentiation is created and marvelous functions are revealed. There are, of course, cases in which these functions operate within a single plant, and also those in which the operation is through two or more plants. At any rate, we cannot but think of the mysterious hand of God which created this difference of sex.

Plant reproduction in which the wind and insects are utilized to carry pollen between plants of the same species, has come about because with pollination limited to flowers on the same stalk there is no satisfactory evolution. Plants evolve best where the life is gregarious. The morning glory and the chrysanthemum have stamens and pistil in a single flower. So in order to make them produce beautiful flowers, it is necessary to have them grow gregariously.

Considering the evolution of plants, we learn that the more beautiful the flowers, the stronger the plant. For such a plant blooms in any environment. Plants

+, which, like moss, do not flower, are weak. There are some plants which have their roots directly under the flowers; and others which after pollination have only their roots left. There are also plants which flower on the sea bottom, and among these are plants which rapidly send up a portion which floats and blooms above the surface of the water.

According to Scott, the evolution of flowering plants is of many forms. The lovely cactus flower blooms in the deserts. This flower is really a metamorphosed leaf which blooms at the tips of the large cactus lobes. There is also a plant which flowers only once in fifty years—the dragon flower, which blooms, drops its seeds, withers, and does not bloom again for fifty years.

Thus, plants which bloom in the deserts, on sea bottoms, and on high mountains, all produce beautiful flowers; and the reason is, that there is selection among them. For life which is contented merely with satisfying sexual desire and securing selfish comfort, does not evolve and cannot become sturdy. In order to grow strong, old traditions and customs must be abandoned, and selection adopted. Applying this principle to mankind, it means that man must enter upon the life of the spirit. Unless his conscience is quickened, man will not rise. Thus it is that many authorities in the science of sex, though opposed to Christianity itself, | yet insist that sexual desire must be purified by religion.