history associated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a
history not so much of his physical as of his spiritual growth.

By what an irony have we come to associate the instinct of sex with all
that is bestial and shameful!

It has happened because the corruption of the best is the worst. I always
want to remind people of this truism when they have _first_ come into
contact with sex in some horrible and shameful way. That is one of the
greatest misfortunes that can happen to any of us, and unfortunately it
happens to many. Boys and girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance. The
girls perhaps know nothing till they have to know all. The boys learn
from grimy sources. I was speaking on this subject at one of our great
universities the other day, and afterwards many of the men came and talked
to me privately. With hardly a single exception they said to me--"Our
parents told us nothing. We have never heard sex spoken of except in a
dirty way."

It is difficult for us, in such a case, to realize that sex is not a
dirty thing. It _can_ only be realized, I think, by remembering that
the corruption of the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the
hideousness of debased and depraved sexuality, the greatness and the wonder
of sex love.

This is to me the great teaching of Christ about sex. Other great
religious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught
contemptuously of our animal nature. "He spake of the temple of His
body." That is sublime! That is the whole secret. And that is why vice is
horrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a
marketplace or a place of business: but of a temple.