To all appearance the problem oppresses only a few exceptional people.
Thoroughly conventional women married to thoroughly conventional men
should not be conscious of any restriction: the chain not only leaves
them free to do whatever they want to do, but greatly facilitates their
doing it. To them an attack on marriage is not a blow struck in defence
of their freedom but at their rights and privileges. One would expect
that they would not only demur vehemently to the teachings of Jesus in
this matter, but object strongly to his not having been a married man
himself. Even those who regard him as a god descended from his throne in
heaven to take on humanity for a time might reasonably declare that the
assumption of humanity must have been incomplete at its most vital
point if he were a celibate. But the facts are flatly contrary. The mere
thought of Jesus as a married man is felt to be blasphemous by the
most conventional believers; and even those of us to whom Jesus is no
supernatural personage, but a prophet only as Mahomet was a prophet,
feel that there was something more dignified in the bachelordom of Jesus
than in the spectacle of Mahomet lying distracted on the floor of his
harem whilst his wives stormed and squabbled and henpecked round him. We
are not surprised that when Jesus called the sons of Zebedee to follow
him, he did not call their father, and that the disciples, like Jesus
himself, were all men without family entanglements. It is evident from
his impatience when people excused themselves from following him because
of their family funerals, or when they assumed that his first duty was
to his mother, that he had found family ties and domestic affections
in his way at every turn, and had become persuaded at last that no man
could follow his inner light until he was free from their compulsion.
The absence of any protest against this tempts us to declare on this
question of marriage there are no conventional people; and that everyone
of us is at heart a good Christian sexually.