Once given the essential idea, to be grasped by the intuitive faculty
alone, the world is full of analogies, of natural revelations which help
to support and illustrate great truths. Patmore was, however, caught and
enthralled by one aspect of unity, by one great analogy, almost to the
exclusion of all others. This is that in human love, but above all in
wedded love, we have a symbol (that is an expression of a similar force
in different material) of the love between God and the soul. What
Patmore meant was that in the relationship and attitude of wedded lovers
we hold the key to the mystery at the heart of life, and that we have in
it a "real apprehension" (which is quite different from real
comprehension[13]) of the relationship and attitude of humanity to God.
His first wife's love revealed to him this, which is the basic fact of
all his thought and work.

The relationship of the soul to Christ _as His betrothed wife_ is
the key to the feeling with which prayer and love and honour should
be offered to Him ... _She_ showed me what that relationship
involves of heavenly submission and spotless passionate
loyalty.[14]

He believed that sex is a relationship at the base of all things natural
and divine;

Nature, with endless being rife,
Parts each thing into "him" and "her"
And, in the arithmetic of life,
The smallest unit is a pair.[15]

This division into two and reconciliation into one, this clash of forces