the heart may be purified and made clean. Ghosts of past impurities still may dog us, but they are ghosts that may be laid with an imperative "Get thee behind me, Satan." They are like the lions that affrighted Bunyan's pilgrim—chained securely. They may roar and threaten, but they are powerless if we deny their power. The man who is striving for purity wholeheartedly is like one who sits safely in a guarded house. Old memories of evil things like specters may peer in at the windows and mow and gibber at him, but they can not touch him unless he gives them power, unless he unlocks the door of his heart and bids them enter.

As the lotus flower grows out of the mud, so may purity and beauty spring up from even the vilest past if we but will it so.

As purity is power so impurity is impotence, weakness, degeneracy. Many a man goes on in an impure career thinking himself secure, thinking his secret hidden. But impurity, like murder, will out. There was a noted pugilist who was unexpectedly defeated in a great ring battle. People said the fight was a "fake," that it was a "put up job." But those who knew said "impurity." He had lived an evil, debauched life for several years, and he went into the ring impaired in strength, weakened by his transgressions of the law of pure living. Purity is power; impurity is weakness.

There is a saying of Scripture which is absolutely scientific: "Be sure your sin will find you out." Note this; it is not that your sin will be found out, but your sin will find you out. Sin recoils on the sinner, and of all sins that surely find us out, the sins against purity are the most certain to bring retribution.

Young men do not think that listening to an offcolor story, or anything that is vulgar, can injure them. much, and, for fear of ridicule, they laugh when they hear anything of the kind, even when it is repulsive to

them, and when they loathe it. It is a rare thing for a young man to express with emphasis his disapproval. To know life properly is to know the best in it, not the worst. No one ever yet was made stronger by his knowledge of impurity or experience in sin.

It is said that the mind's phonograph will faithfully reproduce a bad story even up to the point of death. Do not listen once. You can never get the stain entirely out of your life. Your character will absorb the poison. Impurity is especially fatal in its grip upon the young, because of the vividness of the youthful imagination and the facility with which insinuating suggestions enter the youthful thought.

Our court records show that a very large percentage of criminals began their downfall through the fatal contagion of impurity communicated from various associations.

Remember that you can not tell what may come to you in the future, what honor or promotion; and you can not afford to take chances upon having anything in your history which can come up to embarrass you or to keep you back. A thing which you now look upon as a bit of pleasure may come up in the future to hamper your progress. The thing you do to-day while trying to have a good time may come up to block your progress years afterwards.

I know men who have been thrust into positions of honor and public trust who would give anything in the world if they could blot out some of the unclean experiences of their youth. Things in their early history, which they had forgotten all about and which they never expected to hear from again, are raked up when they become candidates for office or positions of trust. These forgotten bits of so-called pleasure loom up in after-life as insurmountable bars across their pathway.

I know a very rich young man who thought he was just having a good time in his youth—sowing his wild

oats—who would give a large part of his vast wealth to-day if he could blot out a few years of his folly.

It seems strange that men will work hard to build a reputation, and then throw it all away by some weakness in their character. How many men there are in this country with great brain power, men who are kings in their specialties, men who have worked like slaves to achieve their aims, whose reputations have been practically ruined by the flaw of impurity!

Character is a record of our thoughts and acts. That which we think about most, the ideals and motives uppermost in our mind, are constantly solidifying into character. What we are constantly thinking about, and aiming toward and trying to obtain becomes a permanent part of the life.

The man whose thoughts are low and impure, very quickly gives this bent and tendency to his character.

The character levels itself with the thought, whether high or low. No man can have a pure, clean character who does not habitually have pure, clean thoughts. The immoral man is invariably an impure thinkerwhatever we harbor in the mind out-pictures itself in the body.

In Eastern countries the leper is compelled to cry, "Unclean, unclean," upon the approach of any one not so cursed. What a blessing to humanity if our modern moral lepers were compelled to cry, "Unclean, unclean," before they approach innocent victims with their deadly contagion!

About the vilest thing on earth is a human being whose character is so tainted with impurity that he leaves the slimy trail of the serpent wherever he goes.

There never was a more beautiful and pathetic prayer than that of the poor soiled, broken-hearted Psalmist in his hour of shame, "Create in me a clean. heart." "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean

hands and a pure heart." There are thousands of men who would cut off their right hands to-day to be free from the stain, the poison, of impurity.

There can be no lasting greatness without purity. Vice honeycombs the physical strength as well as destroys the moral fiber. Now and again some man of note topples with a crash to sudden ruin. Yet the cause of the moral collapse is not sudden. There has been a slow undermining of virtue going on probably for years; then, in an hour when honor, truth, or honesty is brought to a crucial test, the weakened character gives way and there is an appalling commercial or social crash which often finds an echo in the revolver shot of the suicide.

Tennyson shows the effect of Launcelot's guilty love for Guinevere, in the great knight's conscious loss of power. His wrongful passion indirectly brought about the death of fair Elaine. He himself at times. shrank from puny men wont to go down before the shadow of his spear. Like a scarlet blot his sin stains all his greatness, and he muses on it remorsefully:

"For what am I? What profits me my name

Of greatest knight? I fought for it and have it.
Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it pain;
Now grown a part of me: but what use in it?
To make men worse by making my sin known?
Or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great?"

Later when the knights of the Round Table joined in the search for the Holy Grail, that lost sacred vessel,

"The cup, the cup itself from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with his own,"

Launcelot was overtaken by his sin and failed ignominiously. Only Galahad the Pure was permitted to see the cup unsurrounded by a blinding glory, a fearful splendor of watching eyes and guarding shapes.

No one is quite the same in his own estimation when he has been once guilty of contact with impurity. His self-respect has suffered a loss. Something has gone out of his life. His own good opinion of himself has suffered deterioration, and he can never face his lifetask with quite the same confidence again. Somehow he feels that the world will know of his soul's debauch and judge him accordingly.

There is nothing which will mar a life more quickly than the consciousness of a soul-stain. The loss of self-respect, the loss of character, is irreparable.

We are beginning to find that there is an intimate connection between absolute purity of one's thought and life and his good health, good thinking, and good work, a very close connection between the moral faculties and the physical health; that nothing so exhausts vitality and vitiates the quality of work and ideals, so takes the edge off of one's ambition, dulls the brain and aspiration, as impurity of thought and life. It seems to blight all the faculties and to demoralize the whole man, so that his efficiency is very much. lessened. He does not speak with the same authority. The air of the conqueror disappears from his manner. He does not think so clearly; he does not act with so great certainty, and his self-faith is lost, because confidence is based upon self-respect, and he can no longer respect himself when he does things which he would not respect in another.

The fact that his impure acts are done secretly makes no difference. No one can thoroughly respect himself when he does that which demoralizes him, which is unbecoming a gentleman, no matter whether other people know it or not. Impurity blights everything it touches.

It is not enough to be thought pure and clean and sound. One must actually be pure and clean and sound morally, or his self-respect is undermined.