It may be pointed out in reply that only that is a true ideal, which, being unattainable, admits of infinite gradation in degrees of proximity.

Such is the Christian ideal of the founding of God's kingdom, the union of all living creatures by the bonds of love.
The conception of its attainment is incompatible with the conception of the movement of life.

What kind of life could subsist if all living creatures were joined together by the bonds of love?
None.

Our conception of life is inseparably bound up with the conception of a continual striving after an unattainable ideal.
But even if we suppose the Christian ideal of perfect chastity realized, what then?
We should merely find ourselves face to face on the one hand with the familiar teaching of religion, one of whose dogmas is that the world will have an end; and on the other of so-called science, which informs us that the sun is gradually losing its heat, the result of which will in time be the extinction of the human race.
Now there is not and cannot be such an institution as Christian marriage, just as there cannot be such a thing as a Christian liturgy (Matt.vi.

5-12; John iv.