Man, living entirely in his physical nature, goes on and on in the gratification of the senses until he becomes satiated, and “blase,” and there is nothing satisfactory left for him upon the sensuous plane.  Then he either crystallizes into a hard, selfish being, or plunges still deeper into the slough of sensuality from which Divine Love alone can rescue him.  This power is most often manifested by woman, the natural law-giver and redeemer.  For ages man has projected his selfish human will into all the affairs of life, thus setting aside the higher law.  In the love relations he has specially dominated woman, reversing the divine order of nature, and thus killing out all possible inspiration, and consequent happiness.  Everywhere he has set up his own lustful desires as the rule and right of life in his relationship to woman, destroying the spiritual sacrament of marriage; and by his selfishness and greed of power, he has reduced her to a condition of prostitution.  He outrages the helpless ones who have confided their honor, and their lives to his keeping, and the law—­the vile, cursed, man-made law—­upholds him in this slaughter of all that should make his heaven of trusting love.  The wails of the wronged ones—­specially those who suffer in the marriage relation—­go up incessantly to God, and the woe of the children who, through these conditions, have inherited only animal love and instinct is enough to drown the “music of the spheres.”

Parenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at some period of incarnation exercise this important function.  To the uses of reproduction, the animal love with its blustering activities of expression, is, rightly understood, adjusted.  But above and beyond this is the spiritual union which brings forth children of the mind, the fruitage of the soul, manifest in noble thoughts and brave deeds.  Every expression of love, however crude and animal, is an impulsion of the flesh-enveloped soul toward the source of all love, and however distasteful one may seem, to such as have evolved a spiritual consciousness, and the demand for soul satisfaction, it cannot be ignored.

Through the pain of satiety, of disease, or suspended activity of the love nature, the ego at last senses its need of God.  It comes to know that nothing less than divine love can ever satisfy this demand of the heart.  The constant tendency of the inspired human being is to extremes.  The “golden mean” is the “high water mark” of real cultivation.  We have on one side the suppression of the ascetic, and at the other end of the line the abandonment of the debauchee—­both sinful and false because extreme, both casting a reproach upon the laws of God as outworked in, and through nature.  The ascetic, seeing the harmful results to the soul attending the usual unlimited, and undisciplined expression of nature which man accords to his supposed necessities, draws the line by cutting off all surplus