this jealous care may have been the result of a bitter lesson learned of the unwisdom of throwing pearls before swine, not because the swine turn and rend one for the earnest teacher of truth never gives his own danger a second thought but because the swine are too apt to soil the pearls by trampling them in the mire.
If it be asked in amazement, how this teaching of "Giving God the Glory" and sharing with Him the supreme joy of the marital relation could become so degraded by swinish human beings as to cause its teachers to withhold it in future from the masses, I answer:
By turning it into a commercial transaction with God.
The piggish, greedy man, learning by hearsay of the connubial bliss attending the Triune partnership with God, pressed eagerly forward with one thought uppermost: "I will pay God cash down for so much of my pleasure, and I mean to drive a close bargain with him."
The voluptuary, seeking to enhance his physical sensations, likewise pressed forward, saying to himself in an outburst of generosity: "God shall receive from me every whit as much as He gives me."
The sentimental, but selfish mystic, ever yearning for a new subjective experience, likewise pressed forward, thinking, "I shall get acquainted with God on intimate terms by dividing up my pleasure with Him."
Be not deceived: God is not mocked: Whatsoever a man soweth he shall reap. And each of these types failed to get what they expected in pleasure, because it cannot be secured by any means but by love.
Now, these would-be initiates not only failed (to get so much physical pleasure for so much tithing paid over to Him), but they tempted by that very failure to enter upon what we may call (to put it euphemistically) a bargain.
The nervous system had been wrought to too high a pitch not to insist upon a purchase in some market if not in God's market, then in the Devil's. Hence, I fancy too often abnormal vices and abominations of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah of the Orient today and the Roman Empire,
