A MAN'S STRUGGLE
A great many men are secretly ashamed of the very fact that they have
to struggle with temptation in the matter of purity. In an inner
chamber of their lives they contend with impure thoughts and impure
suggestions, but they try to keep the doors of that chamber shut, and
would blush if others knew what goes on there. Yet all healthy and
normal men are so tempted. Those who seem to have escaped have
generally taken the course of repressing the whole sexual side of their
natures, and of shutting their eyes to the sexual facts of life, which
is not a wise course. And so, firstly, in view of the task of facing
temptation it would be well for us all to realize that temptation
itself is not sin. We may expose ourselves to quite unnecessary
temptation. We may play with fire. We may be fools, if we will. But
some element of temptation is part of our normal lot in life, and we
need not blush about it. To the average young man it can truly be said,
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." In
this respect we are all brothers in arms, and I believe the first step
towards victory lies in an honest facing of the fact. Let us admit that
we are tempted and get openly to the business of understanding how
temptation can be conquered.
Let me attempt first of all to clear away certain mischievous delusions
about the subject. It is actually believed in many quarters, and half
believed in many more, that continence is bad for a man. It is only
"natural," men often say, for an adult man to satisfy his desires, and
if he does not he suffers in health. It is a point on which we must let
the doctors speak, even although plenty of individual men could testify
from experience that the idea is nonsense. And what do the doctors say!
Sir Dyce Ductworth, Sir James Paget, Sir Andrew Clark, Sir Clifford
Allbutt, and scores of others have all expressed themselves with the
clearest emphasis. Sir James Paget, for instance, says, "Chastity or
purity of life does no harm to mind or body. Its discipline is
excellent. Marriage can safely be waited for." Further, in the noble
little book on "Sex" by Thomson and Geddes, I find this sentence:
"Féré, a leading authority on sex pathology and hygiene, denies
categorically that a man is ever hurt by continence, and affirms that
he is always the stronger." What probably is true is that if a man
lives in thought an impure life, and submits himself to exciting
suggestions and imaginations, the secretions of his body will be
increased, so that he may become subject to very severe strain. And
that, if continued, may work nervous damage. But this only means that a
continent life requires thought and proper direction. There _need be_
no evil effects from continence. We must be quite clear about
this point, for so long as we toy in mind with the suggestion that
there is any natural necessity for incontinence, we are fatally
weakened for our struggle. It is a man's glory to be master of himself,
and to maintain his virginity through the years before marriage. And he
may quite well achieve it, if he will but go the right way about it. No
doubt the struggle is much harder for some than for others. No doubt
there are reasons in plenty for charity to those who fail. But there is
no real reason why any man should not hope and expect to succeed, and a
right expectation is the very foundation of success.
Then, secondly, a man would do well to realize one simple physiological
truth about his body. That body naturally and regularly secretes semen.
But it is not necessary that that semen should be discharged by sexual
activity. On the contrary, a large part of it can be reabsorbed by the
body and used up in mental and physical activities to the great benefit
of the body and the enrichment of life. That is why the ancients taught
that Diana is the natural born enemy of Venus. The man who takes plenty
of regular exercise employs his vital forces in a way that lessens the
strain of his moral conflict. And though it is true that this
re-absorption of semen does not completely remove it, Nature has her
own method during sleep of readjusting things in a quite harmless way.
From this it follows of course that the real secret of a successful
struggle for purity lies in living a life full of wholesome and varied
activities. Our artistic sensibilities are intimately related to our
sexual natures, and by some self-expression through art, or by the
sympathetic appreciation of the art of others, we provide an enriching
outlet for our natural energies. Social activities and wholesome social
intercourse, too, are of the very greatest importance. The sedentary
and lonely life is often found quite fatal, and a life in which only
male companionships are available is very undesirable. Indeed it
may truly be said that the best way of avoiding undesirable relations
with women lies in the cultivation of right and happy relations with
them. I suppose more men have been brought through this difficult
period owing to the fact that association with women of refined natures
made the thought of sexual irregularity seem repulsive, than by any
other single force.
But at all costs let us be sure that we live full lives. I heard lately
of a man who was so constantly assailed by sexual cravings, and so
convinced that in him they were abnormally strong, that he went to
consult a psychotherapist. When he had been fully examined it was found
that in him sexual cravings were really rather weaker than in the
average man, but that in the house of his life they had no rivals,
so that he imagined them to be almost all-powerful.
It is when a man allows himself to sit in idleness and indoors that the
fumes of lust are apt to rise up and make the windows dim, till in that
stuffy air he lives evilly at least in thought, and is weakened for
the problem of defense. But the man who will get out into the bracing
open air of life will find his noxious fancies blown away and his mind
restored to health.
Then, thirdly, there are certain fairly obvious points in relation to
the right management of the body about which doctors are agreed. They
really amount in general to the suggestion that we should live a simple
and bracing life, and keep brother body in his proper place of
subjection all round. Keep your body clean, and do not funk your cold
bath in the morning. Avoid luxurious foods, and overeating of any sort.
Get up when you wake up in the morning, and avoid lying in bed half
awake. Take plenty of fresh air and exercise every day. And
finally, and at all costs, keep absolutely sober. Probably the last of
these pieces of advice is by far the most important. It is the
unvarnished truth that the vast majority of men who have gone wrong did
so for the first time, not when they were drunk, but when liquor had
made them reckless and forgetful. The plain truth about alcohol is that
it has a twofold effect upon the human constitution. On the one hand
it heightens desire, and on the other it lowers self-control. It is
that fatal combination that has been the undoing of many a man. On one
night of folly men have thrown away that which they may have guarded
jealously for years, and not because they were vicious or gross in
nature, but only because they allowed the edge to go off their
sobriety. Often by the next night they would have given almost anything
to be able to live that bit of life over again and live it differently.
But it was too late. I know of no argument for temperance that has
anything like the weight of this one.
Then, too, a word must be said about the broad jest and the undesirable
story.
Many a broad jest is excused because it has in it some savor of real
humor; but it would be well for us to ask ourselves deliberately what
things we are going to allow ourselves to laugh at. We all laugh at
some of the ways of lovers and no doubt we always will. They have
beautiful ways, but beyond question some of them are amusing. There
is no possible reaction to a girl's persuasion that her boy is pure
hero and saint except a smile; and love itself will blend with such
smiles.
But it is quite a different thing to bring laughter to bear on love
itself, or on marriage, or on the sacramental intimacies that express
love. I believe it is a profane thing to do. Our best instincts call
on us to treat these things as sacred. And sacred things are easily
spoiled by careless speech. No vulgarities are quite so vulgar as those
which, in printed rags and ragged talk, are clustered round marriage.
In the name of all that is beautiful and holy let us be done with them.
Further still, a great many broad stories have in them a minimum of
humor and a maximum of dirt. By a strange perversity men who are
scrupulously clean in body and who have both intellectual and artistic
capacities will stoop to defile their tongues with such things. There
are few colleges or offices where public opinion entirely forbids them.
But they do a deadly work none the less. They cling about the mind with
fatal tenacity. They surround the subject of sex with unclean
associations. They defile the inner house of life. And it is in that
inner house of thought and imagination that the real battle of
purity is fought.
Our real task in this part of life is to see sex as a clean and
beautiful thing, to be treated with reverence. Thousands of people
never achieve this, even though they live respectable and decent lives.
And the reason lies in the fact that in their early days vile stories
and jokes defiled the whole subject for them.
A similar thing is true of pictures. Some day we shall as a race
recover the sense that the form of a woman is one of the most beautiful
things in all God's earth. We shall look at the great statues and
pictures which do justice to that beauty with no other feelings than
thankfulness and joy. But there are very few men who can do that today.
What has made it impossible is the existence of pictures of a
suggestive kind, which are handed round in furtive ways, and are
literally drenched with unclean associations. For which reason it is a
real point in connection with a man's struggle that he should have
nothing to do with suggestive pictures. Many years ago I had a friend
with great intellectual power. He held a position of great
responsibility and was widely respected. He also had conspicuous
literary gifts, and knew how to work hard and well. But he brought to
me the greatest shock I have ever had in my life. When he was well on
in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash, and had to fly the
country. He was never able to show his face in England again, and died
a diseased exile in a foreign land. And all because he had been
overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind. The shock he
gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was
still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to
such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being
sold there was found in his study cupboard a great pile of indecent
French plays and novels. That was what did it. In secret he had for
years debauched his mind, and inevitably in the end his thoughts
brought forth fruit. That experience taught me once for all how certain
it is that the inner world of thoughts is the real place where a man
attains or misses purity.
There is something grim and stern about this business. I confess to a
certain wholesome fear in connection with it which I hope never to
lose; though fear will never do as our predominating emotion in this
respect. But I keep a place for fear--enough of it to drive me to my
knees. I have seen boys go wrong at fifteen, and I have seen old men
go wrong at sixty. I believe that no man is safe until he is dead. He
was no coward, nor had he a licentious past behind him, who confessed
that late on in life he had to beat his body and bring it into
subjection lest having preached to others he should be a castaway. He
knew; and was honest and wise enough to keep up precautions to the end.
There is simply no way through this part of life for the man with slack
habits and a self-indulgent attitude of spirit. The man who will not
stand up and brace himself, who is not game for a fight, and will not
endure hardness is never going to make anything fine out of the
splendid but difficult enterprise we call human life. And all the time
he will need to have his sentinels out. All the time he will need to
make sure that he is master in his own house of life, and allows no
interloping thoughts or imaginations to run riot there.
But what about religion! The conventional way in which to end a plain
talk about any sort of temptation is to say that God can and will help
a man in those straits where his own will is too weak, and that through
prayer there is a way of escape for us all. I believe all that
absolutely. With great gratitude I may say that I know it. Indeed I
cannot understand how any man who has been saved from overthrow can
fail to see as he looks back on his life that it was just the goodness
of God that upheld him. But I have learnt to beware how I tell men and
women that by prayer they can get through, though all other means fail.
Men who were having to face a severe strain of temptation have come
back to me and told me that they had tried the way of prayer and that
it had not availed them. The fact is that something far greater than
a mere attempt to use prayer as a special device for this special need
is required.
We are so made that religion is a divine possibility for all of us.
Indeed it is more than a possibility: it is a necessity if life is ever
to seem complete. Without it all other things fail in the end to hold
off attacks of disappointment and ennui. Because we were made with the
capacity for it, we cannot be content without it. It may take many
years for a man to discover that without religion life is going to be a
failure; and it is that discovery that constitutes for many the tragedy
of middle life. In early days the varied interests of life carry many
through in some sort of satisfaction. And yet even with the young the
life that is without religion is of necessity an unbalanced life.
Parts of the man or woman concerned are inactive, and the other parts
occupy too much of the stage. Till an interest in God--that greatest of
all interests--has entered a man's life attention is too much concerned
with other things. Till the spirit is awake the body obtrudes itself
too much on consciousness. And thus a man fights the battle of purity
on wrong terms. There is no interest so cleansing as an interest in
God. Nothing so takes a man out of himself as the attempt to face His
demands. Nothing is so certain to counterbalance all unruly thoughts as
to know and worship Him. No discipline is so bracing and purifying as
the discipline of seeking Him.
But this seeking of God means something much greater than the mere
attempt to use prayer for a special purpose. It means getting our whole
life rightly related to Him. It means subordinating our desires to His
will, and seeing our whole life as something to be used for His glory.
Religion cannot be made a mere appendage to life. It cannot be kept in
an outhouse like a motor bike, to be used when occasion calls. When God
comes into a life He comes to rule--and to rule everything. No doubt we
are all tempted to resent the surrender of self which is thus asked of
us. Instinctively we cry out for our own way. We want to manage our own
lives and to plan out our futures in such ways as will please us.
Because religion involves discipline and obedience, we are all apt to
turn away from it. We may have liked some of the emotions which are
associated with worship, and inspired by religious thoughts. But we
want to call no one Master--not even God. So long as that state lasts
no one will find religion a help in the battle with temptation. If we
faced the truth about ourselves many of us would find that what we
really want is to be allowed to live rather worldly and selfish lives
and then to be able to bring God in on occasion to save us from certain
particular sins which we loathe. But that cannot be.
In other words, the way of escape is to get one's whole life and one's
whole nature rightly related to God. That means the profoundest of all
possible readjustments, because it means that instead of putting
himself in the center of every picture, a man puts God there. And when
that readjustment has been completed the power of temptation is gone. I
would not now say to a man merely that if he will pray he will get the
help he needs. I would say that if he is willing for a real spiritual
experience he may pass into a new state of being, in which he will
fight with success where he used to fail. Religion _will_ do all things
for you if you give your whole self to it, but it will not fit into
life as an occasional resource.
Let no one suppose, however, that consciousness of God has no relation
to the sexual side of life. Far from it. What the man who submits to
God will find is, firstly, that he is helped to clean and reverent
living, and to mastery over his body. But he will also find that when
at last real love calls him up into complete companionship of body and
soul with a woman he loves, God Himself will enter into that life and
become associated with all the emotions and activities which spring
from the sex element in our beings. Such men will come to thank God
that He made them with sexual powers in their natures. They will thank
Him that passion is a fact. They will say with utter conviction that
love with all it means both for the bodily and the spiritual life is
the greatest of all God's gifts to man.
Only to have experience of that quality a man _must_ come to marriage
undefiled. That is the fact that makes the struggle worth while. That
is what Browning meant when he said it was
"worth
That a man should strive and agonize
And taste a veriest hell on earth
For the hope of such a prize."
God does not call us men to a meaningless struggle. The fierceness of
temptation is _not_ mere cruelty. The prizes in this part of life are
great beyond all telling. If any man who reads these pages will but
brace himself for the struggle and put forth all his manhood in order
to win through, the day will come when he and a woman who is dear to
him will thank God that he did fight, and will understand that it was
abundantly worth while. She is waiting for you out there in the future.
She hopes and prays that when you do find her, you will be such a man
as can be honored and truly loved. She probably keeps herself for you,
even though you have not yet met her, with some delicate and shy
reserve. You will never really be worthy of all that she will give you,
but you may at least prepare for her and yourself a great and holy
experience. To know the full beauty of the thing that married life may
be is nearly if not quite the greatest of human attainments. To spoil
it beforehand is the most pitiful of all pities.
Wherefore get up and fight!
ADDENDUM,
ESPECIALLY FOR YOUNG MEN STRUGGLING WITH
SELF-ABUSE
It is in this form that sexual temptation comes into the lives of a
very great many men, including many able, high-minded men. All the
general things already said in this chapter are relevant to your case,
but I wish to add some direct words to you because I have acute
sympathy with you in your trial.
You ought, of course, to have been warned when you were very young, and
then you might have escaped the danger. Possibly you slipped into the
habit without at first realizing that it was wrong; and probably now
you hate the habit, and even sometimes hate yourselves because of it.
It is quite likely, too, that false and exaggerated things have been
said to you about it and made you miserably afraid.
Now it _is_ a bad habit. It is bad because you feel it to be unworthy
and rather unclean, and it creates unhappy associations in your mind in
connection with sex, which is a very unfortunate thing for you. And it
is a perversion. It is an unnatural way of satisfying sexual craving,
and, as you know, it leaves psychic disturbance behind it. The one
perfect way of satisfying sexual desire is complete union
with a woman you truly and honorably love. That leaves behind it a
feeling of complete satisfaction and rest. All other ways leave psychic
disturbance. Further, this habit often leads to active homosexuality.
I hear of men who talk as if homosexuality was quite a normal and right
thing with men of a certain type. It is, in fact, _always_ a regression
(see quotation from Dr. Crichton Miller in chapter for girls, p. 107).
Do get that fixed in your mind. It is an abnormal, unnatural thing
which has definite and evil nervous results.
But let me get back to the problem of self-abuse.
The Student Christian Movement lately collected from a number of
doctors, psychologists, and other experienced people, a body of
valuable truths and suggestions about this matter, and I cannot do
better than pass them on to you.
_Firstly_, what are the facts about its consequences? These have been
exaggerated. Its effects are chiefly psychical. It does not affect the
intelligence or weaken mental power. It takes long to weaken the body,
and it is rarely, if ever, a cause of insanity.
On the other hand, it does destroy self-respect; it does leave men
psychically disturbed, and for that reason it affects consciousness of
the presence of God disproportionately quickly as compared with other
sins, and produces the feeling of loss of spiritual power. There are,
in fact, abundant reasons for desiring deliverance, though there is no
reason for panic.
As has been said again and again in this book, our sexual nature is a
gift from God, with glorious possibilities in it of enriching
experience. That is why it is so very important not to misuse it.
Now if you really want deliverance, you have first to realize that the
seat of the trouble and of the cure is in the mind. (Occasionally there
is a slight abnormality that requires surgical treatment, but that is
exceptional.)
The content of the mind in ordinary times is even more important than
at the crisis. It may be too late then.
You must prepare the ground by resting on God even when you do not feel
the need of Him. Fill your mind with clean, healthy things, and expel
lustful thoughts, even though they may seem to have no special physical
effects.
Give full play to your affections--love of family, of friends, of men
and women, and children.
Devote your bodily strength, and the life force that is in you, to
great positive ends--the service of God and man.
Keep healthy. Here are wise practical details. Take plenty of exercise,
but not too much. Men often fail when tired out. Avoid heavy meals--
especially late at night. Take cold baths daily. Do not lie in bed
after waking. Avoid quacks like the plague. Beware of the reactions
that follow emotional excitement. Work off your emotions in positive
ways. Emotionalism has danger in it.
Learn to pray for the right thing, not for deliverance, but for
strength for victory. Learn to trust God in all things--in this among
others.
If you want to prevent the thing from obsessing you, you must not let
your failures obsess you. Turn your back on them. The only way to drive
out one thought is to put another in. An attempt merely to shut down is
doomed to failure. Concentrate on active life and service. The truth
is, you cannot have the help of Christ just for the cure of this evil.
Give yourself wholly to Him, and you will find He has set you free. You
cannot bring religion in just for a part of life. If your whole life is
in God's hands this trouble will disappear.
_Lastly_, a word to the man who is down and out.
God is strong enough and near enough for this never to happen again if
you will let Him have the whole of you--not body only, but mind and
heart and life. But if you do fail again, do not despair, do not blame
God, and do not say or think that He has finished with you.
God's love is such that He will never turn from you if you turn to Him.
God is no farther from the failures than from the successful. He cares
as much for those who fail.
The real and ultimate danger of this thing is not danger to your mind
and body, but the danger that it may come between you and God.
Wherefore come back to God every time.
Remember, whatever the past has held, there are still great
possibilities of happiness and victory before you through the power of
God.
Others are in as great difficulties, and others who were in them have
won through to victory. There is reason for hope.
We are not meant always to stand alone. Two are more than twice as
strong as one. Perhaps you should share your difficulty. Only do not
make it an excuse for getting mawkish sympathy.