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CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. Or know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body."[1]
It needs not to accumulate quotations, for the salient fact is not in dispute. The insistence of St. Paul on chastity of thought and act as indispensable in the Christian must necessarily determine our general estimate of his teaching about marriage, the relationship which is more than any other affected by the standard of purity which is recognised by the general conscience. Any society which regarded the apostle's writings as inspired Scripture, and made them the authoritative source of moral teaching, could not but rise out of the depravity of ancient paganism and reach a level of domestic purity higher than any imaginable by the men of the time.
II.—To the same effect was St. Paul's consistent opposition to asceticism. It is
- ↑ 1 Corinthians vi. 13-20.
