Sex is no accident in our humanity. The function of the sexual elements
in our physical frame is so central that unless they be truly managed
health and strength are impossible. Their relation is no less vital to
our mental and aesthetic life, and they appear to control almost
absolutely our nervous stability. No man or woman attains to fullness
and harmony of life if the sexual nature be either neglected or
mismanaged. No society is strong and happy unless this part of life is
truly adjusted. It may even be said that the evils that come through
the mismanagement of sex relations have beaten every civilization up to
the present. And no doubt it is natural enough to shudder over the
abominations of prostitution and sex vice in general, and so to turn
our minds away from the whole matter. But for all that our emotional
energies would be better employed in trying to understand this titanic
force, and in learning how it may be utilized for our upward progress.
Mere prohibitions have so utterly and entirely failed us that we ought
now to realize that there is no hope in them alone. What we need is a
positive constructive ideal for this part of life which will indicate
the real value of the sexual forces in us, and not leave young men and
women partly perplexed, partly ashamed, and partly annoyed because they
are as the Creator made them.

And so I repeat we must begin with the assumption that, though we have
not yet spelt it out, God must have had some great purpose of love when
He created men and women with a clamant sex instinct at the center of
their personalities.

Hebrew instinct declared that "God saw everything that He had made, and
behold it was very good." Christian instinct must repeat the verdict
with vastly increased conviction, for our humanity is such that the Son
of God could wear it. He was not ashamed to call us brethren, and to be