Nothing can exonerate him from doing his utmost to determine and perform
the right act. Nothing can excuse his failure to do so. But what is here
being insisted upon is that none of these things has immediately to do
with God or religious emotion, except only the general will to do right
in God's service. The detailed interpretation of that "right" is for the
dispassionate consideration of the human intelligence.

All this is set down here as distinctly as possible. Because of
the emotional reservoirs of sex, sexual dogmas are among the most
obstinately recurrent of all heresies, and sexual excitement is always
tending to leak back into religious feeling. Amongst the sex-tormented
priesthood of the Roman communion in particular, ignorant of the
extreme practices of the Essenes and of the Orphic cult and suchlike
predecessors of Christianity, there seems to be an extraordinary belief
that chastity was not invented until Christianity came, and that the
religious life is largely the propitiation of God by feats of sexual
abstinence. But a superstitious abstinence that scars and embitters
the mind, distorts the imagination, makes the body gross and keeps it
unclean, is just as offensive to God as any positive depravity.



CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE LIKENESS OF GOD


1. GOD IS COURAGE

Now having set down what those who profess the new religion regard as