It took years
to overcome the feeling that all such things were unclean and
defiling. Eventually light came to me through reading a passage
in a tractate on the Creed by Rufinus. He was defending the
doctrine, of the Incarnation against the pagan objection that it
was an unclean and disgusting idea that God should enter the
world through the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he meets
it by showing that God created the sexual organs, therefore the
objection is invalid--otherwise God would not be clean or pure,
having Himself designed them and their functions. This passage is
slight in itself, but gave birth to a line of thought which has
influenced me profoundly. I no longer regard sexual matters as
disgusting and unholy, but as intensely sacred, being the outcome
of the Divine Mind. Further, the Incarnation of the Saviour has
not only sanctioned motherhood and all that is implied by it, but
has eternally sanctified it as the means chosen for the
manifestation of God to the world. I should not obtrude my
theological conceptions, but for the fact that they have
determined my life-history in that aspect.
HISTORY IV.
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