We have to follow our reason as our sole guide in our individual treatment of all such things as food and health and sex.  God is the king of the whole world, he is the owner of our souls and bodies and all things.  He is not particularly concerned about any aspect, because he is concerned about every aspect.  We have to make the best use of ourselves for his kingdom; that is our rule of life.  That rule means neither painful nor frantic abstinences nor any forced way of living.  Purity, cleanliness, health, none of these things are for themselves, they are for use; none are magic, all are means.  The sword must be sharp and clean.  That does not mean that we are perpetually to sharpen and clean it—­which would weaken and waste the blade.  The sword must neither be drawn constantly nor always rusting in its sheath.  Those who have had the wits and soul to come to God, will have the wits and soul to find out and know what is waste, what is vanity, what is the happiness that begets strength of body and spirit, what is error, where vice begins, and to avoid and repent and recoil from all those things that degrade.  These are matters not of the rule of life but of the application of life.  They must neither be neglected nor made disproportionally important.

To the believer, relationship with God is the supreme relationship.  It is difficult to imagine how the association of lovers and friends can be very fine and close and good unless the two who love are each also linked to God, so that through their moods and fluctuations and the changes of years they can be held steadfast by his undying steadfastness.  But it has been felt by many deep-feeling people that there is so much kindred between the love and trust of husband and wife and the feeling we have for God, that it is reasonable to consider the former also as a sacred thing.  They do so value that close love of mated man and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness and to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very presence and assent of God.  There are many who dream and desire that they are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more who would fain be so, and some who are.  And from this comes the earnest desire to make marriage sacramental and the attempt to impose upon all the world the outward appearance, the restrictions, the pretence at least of such a sacramental union.

There may be such a quasi-sacramental union in many cases, but only after years can one be sure of it; it is not to be brought about by vows and promises but by an essential kindred and cleaving of body and spirit; and it concerns only the two who can dare to say they have it, and God.  And the divine thing in marriage, the thing that is most like the love of God, is, even then, not the relationship of the man and woman as man and woman but the comradeship and trust and mutual help and pity that joins them.