1st. They regard their system as part of their religion. Noyes said, in a "Home Talk," reported in the _Circular_, February 2,1874: "Woe to him who abolishes the law of the apostasy before he stands in the holiness of the resurrection. The law of the apostasy is the law of marriage; and it is true that whoever undertakes to enter into the liberty of the resurrection without the holiness of the resurrection, will get woe and not happiness. It is as important for the young now as it was for their fathers then, that they should know that holiness of heart is what they must have before they get liberty in love. They must put the first thing first, as I did and as their parents did; they must be _Perfectionists_ before they are _Communists_." He seems to see, too, that "complex marriage," as he calls it, is not without grave dangers to the community, for he added, in the same "Home Talk:" "We have got into the position of Communism, where without genuine salvation from sin our passions will overwhelm us, and nothing but confusion and misery can be expected. On the other hand, we have got into a position where, if we do have the grace of God triumphant in our hearts and flowing through all our nature, there is an opportunity for harmony and happiness beyond all that imagination has conceived. So it is hell behind us, and heaven before us, and a necessity that we should _march_!" 2d. "Complex marriage" means, in their practice: that, within the limits of the community membership, any man and woman may and do freely cohabit, having first gained each other's consent, not by private conversation or courtship, but through the intervention of some third person or persons; that they strongly discourage, as an evidence of sinful selfishness, what they call "exclusive and idolatrous attachment" of two persons for each other, and aim to break up by "criticism" and other means every thing of this kind in the community; that they teach the advisability of pairing persons of different ages, the young of one sex with the aged of the other, and as the matter is under the control and management of the more aged members it is thus arranged; that "persons are not obliged, under any circumstances, to receive the attentions of those whom they do not like;" and that the propagation of children is controlled by the society, which pretends to conduct this matter on scientific principles: "Previous to about two and a half years ago we refrained from the usual rate of childbearing, for several reasons, financial and otherwise. Since that time we have made an attempt to produce the usual number of offspring to which people in the middle classes are able to afford judicious moral and spiritual care, with the advantage of a liberal education. In this attempt twenty-four men and twenty women have been engaged, selected from among those who have most thoroughly practiced our social theory." [Footnote: "Essay on Scientific Propagation," by John Humphrey Noyes.]