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Were man to make a practice of rising at dawn and contemplating in silence and alone the rising of the sun, he would need no other religion. The rest of the day would be hallowed for him by that morning memory and his actions would partake of the largeness and chastity of that lustral hour.

Except that pure chastity shine From the depth of the jewels: in garments of woven wind clad Our brides might as well take their stand, their game naked to stalk, As seek it in gossamer tissue transparent as air." "What should we say was the hardest calling, after literature?" he asked.

Yet, as the domestic tranquillity of a nation, depends greatly, on the CHASTITY of what may properly be called NATIONAL MANNERS, it is often better, to pass some things over in silent disdain, than to make use of such new methods of dislike, as might introduce the least innovation, on that guardian of our peace and safety.

It demands in words which anticipate Ibsen's Doll's House, that a woman shall be herself and lead her own life. But "her own life" was for Mary Wollstonecraft a social life. The ideal is the perfect companionship of men and women, and the preparation of men and women, by an equal practice of modesty and chastity, and an equal advance in education, to be the parents of their children.

To obtain his wife the Northern warrior must have deserved her, he must have given proofs that he was worthy of the woman who had preserved her chastity inviolate, and for whom love must be mingled with respect. It is curious to observe how exactly these sentiments, which existed at so early a period among the Gothic nations, were continued into feudal times.

And at considerable cost, with white-painted panelling throughout, with blue-and-white Chinese vases here and there, and more and more Bokhara rugs everywhere, and tussore silk curtains in the windows and every stick of furniture chosen for its premeditated chastity, the little brown house was made to serve him as a holy standard.

But I hope that which I am bound to do, but I trust not myself as long as I am in this body of death, for he is strong who daily tries to turn me from the faith, and from the sincere religious chastity to Christ my Lord, to which I have dedicated myself to the end of my life, but the flesh, which is in enmity, always draws me to death that is, to unlawful desires, that must be unlawfully gratified and I know in part that I have not led a perfect life like other believers.

The virtue of chastity was swamped in the popular Christian passion for the annihilation of the flesh, and that view was, in the sixteenth century, finally consecrated by the Council of Trent, which formally pronounced an anathema upon anyone who should declare that the state of virginity and celibacy was not better than the state of matrimony.

They also murmured highly against the influence assumed by secular persons in exercising the rights of patronage, which they termed a rape upon the chastity of the Church.

And on the other side these traditions have created the problem of "sexual abstinence," which has nothing to do with either asceticism or chastity as these have been defined in the previous chapter, but merely with the purely negative pressure on the sexual impulse, exerted, independently of the individual's wishes, by his religious and social environment.