o-religious
movements if they involved only a detection of individual lust
consciously using religion as a cloak for its gratification. Such a
conclusion is a fatally easy one, but it does little justice to the
chief people concerned, and it is quite lacking in historical
perspective. In most cases the initiators of these strange sects have
put forward a philosophy of religion as a justification of their
teaching, and only a slight knowledge of this is enough to prove that we
are face to face with a phenomenon of much greater significance than
mere immorality. This may be recognised even in the pages of the New
Testament itself. It is not a practice that is there denounced; it is a
teaching that is repudiated. And one sees the same thing at later
periods. The conviction on the one side that certain actions are
unlawful, is met on the other side with the conviction that they are
perfectly legitimate. Conviction is met with conviction. Each side
expresses itself in terms of religion; the ethical aspect is incidental
or subordinate. It is a contest of opposing religious beliefs and
practices.

The real nature of the conflict is often obscured by the fact of social
opinion and the social forces generally being on the side of the more
normal expression of sexual life. This, however, is no more than a
necessity of the situation. The continuance of a healthful social life
is dependent upon the maintenance of a certain balance in the relations
of the sexes, and anything that strikes at this strikes at social life
as a whole. In such cases we have, therefore, to allow for the operation
of social selection, which is always on the side of the more normal
type. From this it follows that although a small body of people may
exemplify a variation that is in itself socially disastrous, the main
forces of social life will prevent its ever assuming large dimensions.
Moreover, a large body of people, such as is represented by a church
holding a commanding position in society, will be forced to come to
terms with the permanent tendencies of social life, and will either
suppress undesirable variations or expel them. It thus happens that
while the larger and more dominant churches have been on the side of
normal, regularised expressions of the sexual life, abnormal variations
have constantly arisen and have been denounced by them. But the
significant feature is that they have arisen within the churches, and
most commonly during periods of g