Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/97

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BEFORE THE REFORMATION
81

destiny, which could not but have a cleansing and uplifting effect on society, wherever society admitted its control; and the tradition of the Founder carried into human life, wherever the Christian Church came, an ideal of individual character, and a sublime example of individual conduct, which wonderfully moved and exalted sincere professors of Christianity. These elements of historic Christianity were present and active from the first, and their influence is traceable rather in the creation of a new and higher state of feeling on the subject of sexual relationships, than in the formal legislation of Church or State.

Mr. Lecky has justly observed that "the facts in moral history, which it is at once most important and most difficult to appreciate, are what may be called the facts of feeling. It is," he says, "much easier to show what men did or taught than to realise the state of mind that rendered possible such actions or teachings; and in the case before us"—he writes with reference to the position