f
the whole question.

In the present chapter our interest is mainly historical. And for
various reasons, chief amongst which is that interested readers may the
more easily follow up the study should they feel so inclined, the survey
has been restricted to the history of that religion with which we are
best acquainted--Christianity. Moreover, if we are to form a correct
judgment of the part played in the history of religions by the
misinterpretations already noted, it is necessary to trace the extent to
which they have influenced men and women in a collective capacity. For
the striking fact is that, in spite of the purification of the sexual
relations being one of the avowed objects of Christianity, in spite,
too, of the attempts of the official churches to suppress them, the
history of Christianity has been dogged by outbreaks of sexual
extravagance, by the continuous emergence of erotico-religious sects,
claiming Christian teachings as the authority for their actions. We need
not discuss the legitimacy of their inferences. We are concerned solely
with a chronicle of historic facts so far as they can be ascertained;
and these have a certain significance of their own, as events, quite
apart from their reasonableness or desirability.

A part cause of the movements we are about to describe may have been a
violent reaction against an extravagant asceticism. Something may also
be due to the fact that over-concentration of mind upon a particular
evil is apt to defeat its end by the mere force of unconscious
suggestion in the contrary direction. But in all probability much was
due to the presence of certain elements inherited by Christianity from
the older religions. At any rate, those whose minds are filled with the
idea that sexual extravagance on a collective scale and under the cloak
of religion is either a modern phenomenon, or was unknown to the early
history of Christianity, would do well to revise their opinions in the
light of ascertainable facts. No less a person than the Rev. S.
Baring-Gould has reminded us that criticism discloses "on the shining
face of primitive Christianity rents and craters undreamt of in our old
simplicity," and also asserts "that there was in the breast of the
newborn Church an element of antinomianism, not latent, but in virulent
activity, is a fact as capable of demonstration as any conclusion in a
science which is not exact."[122]

There would be little value in a study of these erotic