As usual, this change of front has not yet been noticed by our
newspaper controversialists and by the suburban season-ticket
holders whose minds the newspapers make. They still defend the
citadel on the side on which nobody is attacking it, and leave its
weakest front undefended.
The religious revolt against marriage is a very old one.
Christianity began with a fierce attack on marriage; and to this
day the celibacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood is a standing
protest against its compatibility with the higher life. St. Paul's
reluctant sanction of marriage; his personal protest that he
countenanced it of necessity and against his own conviction; his
contemptuous "better to marry than to burn" is only out of date in
respect of his belief that the end of the world was at hand and
that there was therefore no longer any population question. His
instinctive recoil from its worst aspect as a slavery to pleasure
which induces two people to accept slavery to one another has
remained an active force in the world to this day, and is now
stirring more uneasily than ever. We have more and more Pauline
celibates whose objection to marriage is the intolerable indignity
of being supposed to desire or live the married life as ordinarily
conceived.
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