collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly
amatory--e.g., sex-deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and
ecstatic feelings of union with the Savior in a few Christian mystics.
But then why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive
function, and prove one's point by the worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or
by the ecstatic feelings of some other saints about the Eucharist?
Religious language clothes itself in such poor symbols as our life
affords, and the whole organism gives overtones of comment whenever the
mind is strongly stirred to expression. Language drawn from eating and
drinking is probably as common in religious literature as is language
drawn from the sexual life. We "hunger and thirst" after
righteousness; we "find the Lord a sweet savor;" we "taste and see that
he is good." "Spiritual milk for American babes, drawn from the
breasts of both testaments," is a sub-title of the once famous New
England Primer, and Christian devotional literature indeed quite floats
in milk, thought of from the point of view, not of the mother, but of
the greedy babe.

Saint Francois de Sales, for instance, thus describes the "orison of
quietude": "In this state the soul is like a little child still at the
breast, whose mother to caress him whilst he is still in her arms makes
her milk distill into his mouth without his even moving his lips. So
it is here.... Our Lord desires that our will should be satisfied with
sucking the milk which His Majesty pours into our mouth, and that we
should relish the sweetness without even knowing that it cometh from
the Lord." And again: "Consider the little infants, united and joined
to the breasts of their nursing mothers you will see that from time to
time they press themselves closer by little starts to which the
pleasure of sucking prompts them. Even so, during its orison, the
heart united to its God oftentimes makes attempts at closer union by
movements during which it presses closer upon the divine sweetness."
Chemin de la Perfection, ch. xxxi.; Amour de Dieu, vii. ch. i.

In fact, one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion of
the respiratory function. The Bible is full of the language of
respiratory oppression: "Hide not thine ear at my breathing; my
groaning is not hid from thee; my heart panteth, my strength faileth
me; my bones are hot with my roaring all the night long; as the hart
panteth after the water-brooks, so my soul pan