Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/629

 *bers of the nascent sect from internal quarrels, Paul was right; but a principle which in certain cases may be expedient for a given end, is not to be set up as a universal rule of ethics. Nor is it obvious that Paul intended to do this. He himself, if questioned, would probably have admitted that there were limits beyond which concession ought not to go, those limits being fixed by the consideration that such concession, if pushed too far, must end in the perpetual subordination of the whole of the Christian body to the weaknesses of its least enlightened members. The morality expressed in the lines

"Leave thou thy sister when she prays Her early heaven, her happy views, Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse A life that leads melodious days,"

is good morality under certain conditions, but there is too great a tendency on the part of those who retain their "early heaven" to press this conduct upon those whose "faith has centre everywhere, nor cares to fix itself to form." It ought not to be forgotten that but for the Christian disregard of forms, persevered in in despite of the scandal to the Jews, Christianity must always have remained a branch of Judaism.

A peculiar merit to be set to Paul's account is, that he is the only one of all the writers in the New Testament who treats the supremely important question of the relations of the sexes, a subject so remarkably overlooked by Christ himself. Whether the guidance he affords his converts on this head is good guidance or not, he does at least attempt to guide them. Let us notice first what he considers abnormal relations, and then proceed to what he lays down as a normal one. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians he is loud in his denunciations of a man who cohabited with his father's wife, the father being, I presume, deceased. Whether the son had married his stepmother, or merely lived with her, is not altogether clear, since, in either case, the apostle might brand their connection with the title of fornication. However, he condemns it uttterly and without reference to any accompanying circumstances, desiring the Corinthian community to deliver up the man to Satan for the de