those thrilling writhings are but dim shadows of a union which shall be perfect
people have been getting their kink on in the privacy of their own bedchambers for many hundreds of years
[Reverend Charles, author of
The Water Babies] Kingsley's reverence for the human body also led him to treat sex with his wife [Fanny], as a sacramental conduit to God. Married in 1844, the couple called their bed an "altar," referred to intercourse as "communion," and accompanied it with prayers and thanksgiving. Kingsley also claimed that in heaven he and Fanny would be "united [. . .] by some marriage bond, infinitely more perfect than any we can dream of on earth". Kingsley believed that the afterlife was the site of a sexuality beyond ordinary sex. Although prefigured by marital lovemaking, this sexuality was only fully realized in heaven, where spouses would enjoy a heightened mode of eroticism freed from the suspect physicality of earthly intercourse.
-- Charles Barker,
Erotic Martyrdom: Kingsley's Sexuality beyond Sex