held.  He gives all in exchange for all, and possesses all in all.  He looks not at gifts, but turns to the giver above all good things.  Love knows no measure, but is fervent beyond all measure.  Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of labor, strives beyond its force, reckons not of impossibility, for it judges that all things are possible.  Therefore it attempts all things, and therefore it effects much when he who is not a lover fails and falls....  My Love! thou all mine, and I all thine.”

There is a certain natural disinclination in many quarters to recognize any special connection between the sexual emotions and the religious emotions.  But this attitude is not reasonable.  A man who is swayed by religious emotions cannot be held responsible for the indirect emotional results of his condition; he can be held responsible for their control.  Nothing is gained by refusing to face the possibility that such control may be necessary, and much is lost.  There is certainly, as I have tried to indicate, good reason to think that the action and interaction between the spheres of sexual and religious emotion are very intimate.  The obscure promptings of the organism at puberty frequently assume on the psychic side a wholly religious character; the activity of the religious emotions sometimes tends to pass over into the sexual region; the suppression of the sexual emotions often furnishes a powerful reservoir of energy to the religious emotions; occasionally the suppressed sexual emotions break through all obstacles.

FOOTNOTES: 

[385] Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, 1899.  Also, A.H.  Daniels, “The New Life,” American Journal of Psychology, vol. vi, 1893.  Cf.  William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

[386] Ed. Hahn, Demeter und Baubo, 1896, pp. 50-51.  Hahn is arguing for the religious origin of the plough, as a generative implement, drawn by a sacred and castrated animal, the ox.  G. Herman, in his Genesis, develops the idea that modern religious rites have arisen out of sexual feasts and mysteries.

[387] Bloch (Beitraege zur AEtiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Bd.  I, p. 98) points out the great interest taken by the saints and ascetics in sex matters.

[388] This omission was made by the original publisher of the “Discourse;” several of the most important passages throughout have been similarly cut out.

[389] Rev. J.M.  Wilson, Journal of Education, 1881.  At about the same period (1882) Spurgeon pointed out in one of his sermons that by a strange, yet natural law, excess of spirituality is next door to sensuality.  Theodore Schroeder has recently brought together a number of opinions of religious teachers, from Henry More the Platonist to Baring Gould, concerning the close relationship between sexual passion and religious passion, American Journal of Religious Psychology, 1908.