Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/278

 Oriental race inclined to homosexual passions.

To many an Uranian not only the conviction that his homosexual instinct is worthy, but also the thought of Christ as an Uranian, as understanding the gamut of the homosexual's joys and sorrows, are consoling and elevating. An English similisexual wrote to the authour of this study "—The idea of Christ as possibly an Urning has saved me from loneliness, from solitude, from loss of self-respect and of faith, as to this world and the next!"

Concidentally we find St. John, the supremely Beloved of Christ, eminently the herald of the widest gospel of human love. This message runs through the Johannean Epistles like a passionate leading-theme in some celestial symphony. "Love one another"—"Little children, love one another—" "There is no fear in love, for perfect love casteth out fear"—"That we should love one another". Is such an insistance of the gentle Apostle addressed exclusively to a sexless life of the spirit?

The primitive Church did not lack the note of homosexual feeling, in the case of saintly men. St. Augustine is an example. The history of Augustine's relation to his passionately-loved young friend in Thageste, his retrospects of its influence over him, afford one of many human passages in his famous "Confessions." Thus writes Saint-Augustine:

"About this time, as I began to teach in my birthplace, I made a friendship with a young man between whom and myself was such a conformity of inclinations and of sentiments as to make me love him above anything that one can express. We were both of an age, in the flower of our youth; we had been at school together.