In the fourth century of our era, the Jewish-Christian sect of the Sarabaïtes concluded their religious festivals with wild sexual orgies, which are graphically described by Cassianus. This sect persisted into the ninth century. The later history of the Christian sects is full of this religio-sexual element. Religious and sexual ardour take one another’s place, pass one into the other, mutually =increase= one another. I need merely allude to certain points familiar in the history of civilization, and investigated and described by many recent students: the religio-erotic orgiastic festivals of the Nicolaitans, the Adamites, the Valesians, the Carpocratians, the Epiphanians, the Cainites, and the Manichæans. Dixon, in his “Spiritual Wives” (2 vols., London, 1868), has described the sexual excesses of recent Protestant sects, such as the “Mucker” of Königsberg, the “Erweckten” (“the awakened”), the Foxian spiritualists of Hydesville, etc. Widely known also is the peculiar association between sexuality and religion in Mormonism, polygamy being among the Mormons a religious ordinance. Not only do Roman Catholicism and Protestantism exhibit such phenomena, but in the Greek Church also sexual mysticism gives rise to the most remarkable offshoots. Leroy-Beaulieu gives an account of the Russian sect of the “Skakuny,” or “Jumpers,” who at their nocturnal assemblies throw themselves into a state of erotic religious ecstasy by hopping and jumping, like the dancing Dervishes of Islam. When the frenzy reaches a climax, a shameless, utterly promiscuous union of the sexes occurs, of which incest is a common feature.[55] Quite apart from these sectarian peculiarities, religio-sexual perceptions play a definite part in the ideas of present-day, truly pious Christians. The idea of a “unio mystica” between man and the Deity manifests itself everywhere.[56] Albrecht Dieterich, in his learned work, “A Mithraist Liturgy,” contributes valuable material to the history of civilization concerning these mystical unions. The oldest heathen cults were familiar with the idea of love unions as a representation of the union of man with God; and in the New Testament the ideas of the bridegroom and the marriage feast play a leading part. Christ is the “bridegroom” of the Church, the Church is His “bride.” Pious maidens and nuns are happy to call themselves the brides of Christ. This ecstatic union has always as its substratum a sexual imagination. Augustine says: “Like a bridegroom Christ leaves His bridal chamber; in the mood of a bridegroom He bestrides the field of the world.”