At the Reformation, John a Lasco, a Catholic Bishop who became a Protestant and settled in England, laid it down, following various earlier theologians, that the object of marriage, besides offspring, was to serve as a "sacrament of consolation" to the united couple, and that view was more or less accepted by the founders of the Protestant churches.

It is the generally accepted Protestant view to-day.[11] The importance of the spiritual end of intercourse in marriage, alike for the higher development of each member of the couple and for the intimacy and stability of their union, is still more emphatically set forth by the more advanced thinkers of to-day.
[11] It is well set forth by the Rev.H.Northcote in his excellent book, _Christianity and Sex Problems_.
There is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who are still only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point to the example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions are entirely different--as worthy of our imitation.

It has taken God--or Nature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle to evolve Man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage to reproduction which marks the lower animals.

But on these people it has all been wasted.

They are at the animal stage still.