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Chapter XLIX: The Power of Purity · Pushing to the Front

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Chapter forty nine of Pushing to the Front by Arizon Sweat Marden. This LibriVox
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recording is in the public domain recording by Luke Sartor, chapter forty nine.
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The power of purity. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
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see God sermon on the mount. My strength is as the strength of ten,
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because my heart is pure Tennyson. Virtue alone raises us above hopes,
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fears, and chances Seneca. Even from the body's purity, the mind receives
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a secret, sympathetic aid. Thompson. Purity is the broad word with the
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deep meaning. It denotes far more than superficial cleanness. It goes below the
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surface of guarded speech and polite manners to the very heart of being. Out
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of the heart are the issues of life. Make the fountain clean, and
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the waters that flow from it will be pure and limpid. Make the heart
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clean, and the life will be clean. Purity is defined as free from
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contact with that which weakens, impairs, or pollutes. How forceful then,
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is the converse of the definition impurity weakens, impairs, and pollutes. It
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weakens both mind and body. It impairs the health. It pollutes not only
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the thoughts, but the conduct which inevitably has as its beginning and its end
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in thought. Innocence is the state of natural purity. It was the state
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of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. When they sinned they knew
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that they were naked. They lost innocence, never to regain it. But
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purity may be attained as an unclean garment may be washed, so the heart
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may be purified and made clean. Ghosts of past impurities still may dogos,
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but they are ghosts that may be laid with an imperative. Get thee behind
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me, Satan. They are like the lions that are frighted Bunyan's pilgrim.
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Chained securely, they may roar and threaten, but they are powerless if we
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deny their power. The men who is striving for purity wholeheartedly is like one
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who sits safely in a guarded house. Old memories of evil things like specters
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may peer in at the windows and mow and giver at him, but they
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cannot touch him unless he gives them power, unless he unlocks the door of
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his heart and bids them enter. As the lotus flower grows out of the
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mud, so may purity and beauty spring up from even the vilest past if
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we but will it so. As purity is power, so impurity is impotence,
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weakness, degeneracy. Many a man goes on in an impure career,
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thinking himself secure, thinking his secret hidden. But impurity, like murder,
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will out. There was a noted pugilist who was unexpectedly defeated in a great
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battle. People said the fight was a fake, that it was a put
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up job, but those who knew said impurity. He had lived an evil,
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debauched life for several years, and he went into the ring impaired in
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strength, weakened by his transgressions of the law of pure living. Purity is
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power, impurity is weakness. There is a saying of scripture which is absolutely
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scientific. Be sure your sin will find you out. Note this, It
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is not that your sin will be found out, but your sin will find
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you out. Sin recoils on the sinner, and of all sins that surely
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find us out, the sins against purity are the most certain to bring retribution.
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Young men do not think that listening to an off color story or anything
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that is vulgar can injure them much, And for fear of ridicule, They
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laugh when they hear anything of the kind, even when it is repulsive to
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them, and when they load it. It is a rare thing for a
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young man to express with emphasis his disapproval. To know life properly is to
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know the best in it, not the worst. No one ever yet was
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made stronger by his knowledge of impurity or experience in sin. It is said
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that the mind's phonograph will faithfully reproduce a bad story, even up to the
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point of death. Do not listen once you can never get the stain entirely
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out of your life. Your character will absorb a poison. Impurity is especially
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hatle in its grasp upon the young, because of the vividness of the youthful
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imagination and the facility with which insinuating suggestions and to the youthful thought. Our
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court records show that a very large percentage of criminals began their downfall through the
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fatal contagion of impurity, communicated from various associations. Remember that ye cannot tell
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what may come to you in the future, what honor or promotion, And
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ye cannot afford to take chances upon having anything in your history which can come
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up to embarrass you. Or to keep you back. A thing which you
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now look upon as a bit of pleasure may come up in the future to
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hamper your progress. The thing you do to day while trying to have a
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good time may come up to block your progress years afterwards. I know men
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who have been thrust into positions of honor and public trust, who would give
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anything in the world if they could blot out some of the unclean experiences of
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their youth, things in their early history which they had forgotten all about,
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and which they never expected to hear from again. I raked up when they
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become candidates for office or positions of trust. These forgotten bits of so called
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pleasure loom up in after life as insurmountable bars across their pathway. I know
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a very rich young man who thought he was just having a good time in
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his youth, sowing his wild oats, who would give a large part of
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his vast wealth to day if he could blot out a few years of his
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folly. It seemed strange that men will work hard to build a reputation and
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then throw it all away by some weakness in their character. How many men
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there are in this country with great brain power, men who are kings in
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their specialties, men who have worked like slaves to achieve their aims, whose
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reputations have been practically ruined by the flaw of impurity. Character is a record
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of our thoughts and acts. That which we think about most, the ideals
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and motives uppermost in our mind, are constantly solidifying in de character. What
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we are constantly thinking about and aiming toward, and trying to obtain becomes a
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permanent part of the life. The men whose thoughts are low and impure very
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quickly gives this bent and tendency to his character. The character levels itself with
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thought, whether high or low. No man can have a pure clean character
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who does not habitually have pure clean thoughts. The immoral man is invariably in
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impure thinker. Whatever we harbor in the mind outpictures itself in the body.
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In Eastern countries, the leper is compelled to cry unclean, unclean upon the
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approach of any one not so cursed. What a blessing to humanity if our
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modern moral lepers were compelled to cry unclean, unclean before they approach innocent victims
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with their deadly contagion about the vilest thing on earth. Is a human being
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whose character is so tainted with impurity that he leaves the slimy trail of the
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serpent wherever he goes. There never was a more beautiful and pathetic prayer than
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that of the poor, soiled, broken hearted Psalmest his hour of shame,
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Create in me a clean heart, who shall ascend into the heel of the
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Lord, who shall stand in his holy place. He that hath clean hands
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and a pure heart. There are thousands of men who would cut off their
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right hands to day to be free from the stain the poison of impurity.
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There can be no lasting greatness without purity. Vice honeycombs the physical strength as
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well as destroys the moral fiber. Now and again some man of note topples
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with a crash to sudden ruin. Yet the cause of the moral collapse is
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not sudden. There has been a slow undermining of virtue going on probably for
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years. Then in an hour, when honor, truth or honesty is brought
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to recrucial test, the weakened character gives way, and there it is an
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appalling commercial or social crash, which often finds an echo in the revolver shot
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of the suicide Tennyson shows the effect of Launcelot's guilty love for Guinevere in The
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Great Night's conscious loss of power. His wrongful passion indirectly brought about the death
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of fair Elaine. He himself at times shrank from puny men wont to go
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down before the shadow of his spear, like a scarlet blot. His sin
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stains all his greatness, and he muses on it remorsefully. For what am
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I? What profits me my name of Greatest Night? I fought for it,
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and have it pleasure to have it, none to lose it. Pain
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now grown a part of me. But what use in it to make men
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worse by making my sin known or sin seem less, the sinner seeming great.
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Later, when the knights of the Round Table joined in the search for
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the holy Grail, that lost sacred vessel, the cup, the cup itself
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from which our Lord drank at the last sad Supper with his own, Launcelot
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was overtaken by his sin and failed ignormously. Only Galahad the Pure was permitted
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to see the cup unsurrounded by a blinding glory, a fearful splendor of watching
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eyes and guarding shapes. No one is quite the same in his own estimation.
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When he has been once guilty of contact with impurity, his self respect
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has suffered a loss, Something has gone out of his life. His own
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good opinion of himself has suffered deterioration, and he can never face his life's
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task with quite the same confidence again. Somehow, he feels that the world
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will know of his soul's debauch and to judge him accordingly. There is nothing
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which will mar a life more quickly than the consciousness of a soul stain the
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loss of self respect, The loss of character is irreferable. We are beginning
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to find that there is an intimate connection between absolute purity of one's thought and
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life and his good health, good thinking, and good work, a very
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close connection between the moral faculties and the physical health. That nothing so exhausts
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of vitality and vitiate the quality of work and fields, so takes the edge
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off of one's ambition, dulls the brain and aspiration. As impurity of thought
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and life it seems to blight all the faculties and to demoralize the whole man,
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so that his efficiency is very much lessened. He does not speak with
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the same authority, the air of the conqueror disappears from his manner. He
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does not think so clearly, he does not act with so great certainty,
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and his self faith is lost because confidence is based upon self respect, and
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he can no longer respect himself when he does things which he would not respect
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in another. The fact that his impure acts are done secretly makes no difference.
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No one can thoroughly respect himself when he does that which demoralizes him,
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which is unbecoming a gentleman, No matter whether other people know it or not,
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Impurity blights everything it touches. It is not enough to be thought pure
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and clean and sound. One must actually be pure and clean and sound morally,
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or his self respect is undermined. Purity is power because it means integrity
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of thought, integrity of contact. It means oldness. The impure man cannot
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be a great power because he cannot thoroughly believe in himself when conscious that he
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is rotten in any part of his nature. Impurity works like leaven, which
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affects everything in a man. The very consciousness that the impurity is working within
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him robs him of power. Apart from the moral side of this question,
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let us show how these things affect one's success in life by sapping the energies,
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weakening the nature, lowering one's standards, blurring one's ideals, discouraging one's
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ambition, and lessening one's vitality and power. In the last analysis of success,
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the mainspring of achievement must rest in the strength of one's vitality. For
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without a stock of health equal to great emergencies and persistent longevity, even the
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greatest ambition is comparatively powerless. And there is nothing that will sap the life
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forces so quickly as dissipation and impure living. Is there anything truer than that?
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To be carnally minded is death. If the thought is carnal, the
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body must respond, must express it in some physical discord. Nothing else will
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destroy the very foundations of vitality quicker than impurity of thought and animal self indulgence.
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The ideals must be kept bright and the ambition clean cut. Purity of
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thought means that the mental processes are not clouded, muddy, or clogged by
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brain ash from a dissipated life, from violation of the laws of health.
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Pure thought comes from pure blood, and pure blood from a clean, sane
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life. Purity signifies a great deal besides freedom from sensual taint. It means
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saneness, purity, and quality. It has been characteristic of great leaders men
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whose greatness has stood the acid test of time, that they have been virtue
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us in conduct, pure in thought. I have such a rich story that
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I want to tell you, said an officer, who one evening came into
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the Union camp in a rollicking mood. There are no ladies present, are
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there? General Grant, lifting his eyes from the paper which he was reading
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and looking the officer squarely in the eye, said slowly and deliberately, no,
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But there are gentlemen present. A great trait of Grant's character, said
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George W. Child's, was his purity. I never heard him express an
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impure thought or make an indelicate allusion in any way of shape. There is
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nothing I ever heard him say that could not be repeated in the presence of
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women. If a man was brought up for an appointment and it was shown
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that he was an immoral man, Grant would not appoint him, no matter
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how great the pressure brought to bear. On one occasion, when Grant formed
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one of a dinner party of Americans in a foreign city, conversation drifted into
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references to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said, gentlemen, please
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excuse me, I will retire. It is the glory of a man to
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have clean lips and a clean mind. It is the glory of a woman
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not to know evil, even in her thoughts. Isaac Newton's most intimate friend
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in young manhood was a noted foreign chemist. They were constant associates until one
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day the Italian told an impure story, after which nun never would associate with
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him. My extreme youth, when I took command of the army of Italy,
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said Napoleon, rendered it necessary that I should evince great reserve of manners
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and the utmost severity of morals. This was indispensable to enable me to sustain
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authority over men so greatly my superiors in age and experience. I pursued a
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line of conduct in the highest degree, irreproachable and exemplary in spotless morality.
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I was a cato, and must have appeared such to all. I was
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a philosopher and a sage. My supremacy could be retained only by proving myself
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a better man than any other man in the army had I yielded to human
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weakness, I should have lost my power. The military antagonist and conqueror of
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Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, was a man of simple life and austere
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of virtue. When he was laid to rest in the crypt of Saint Paul's
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Cathedral, in streaming London's central roar, the poet who wrote his funeral ode
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was able to say of him, whatever record leap to light, he never
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shall be shamed. The peril of impurity lies in the insidiousness of the poison.
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Just one taint of impurity, one glance at a lewd picture, one
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hearing of an unclean story, may begin the fatal corruption of mind and heart.
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It is the little rift within the lute that by and by will make
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the music mute, the little rift within the lover's lute, or little pitted
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speck in garnered fruit, that rotting inward slowly molders all. When Bunyan's pilgrim
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was assailed by temptation, he stopped his ears with his fingers and fled for
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his life. Let the young man who values himself, who set store upon
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health and has ambition to succeed in his chosen career, be deaf to unclean
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speech, and flee the companionship of those who think and speak uncleanness. It
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is the experience of every man who has forsaken vice and turned his feet into
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the paths of virtue, that evil mammories will, in his holiest hours,
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leap upon him, like a lion from ambush, into the harmony of the
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hymn he sings. Memory will interpolate unbidden the words of some sensual song,
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pictures of his debauchures his path. Placentiousness will felt his vision, and the
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unhappy victim can only beat upon his breast and cry me miserable. Whither shall
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I flee? This has been through all time the experience of the men that
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have sought sanctity in seclusion. The saints, the hermits in their caves,
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the monks in their cells, could never escape the obsessions of memory, which,
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with horrible realism and scorching vividness, revived past scenes of sin. A
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boy once showed to another a book of impure words and pictures. He to
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whom the book was shown, had it in his hands only a few minutes.
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In after life, he held high office in the church, and years
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and years afterwards told a friend that he would give half he possessed had he
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never seen it, because its impure images at the most holy times would arise
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unbidden to his mind. Physicians tell us that every particle of the body changes
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in a very few years, but no chemistry, human or divine can entirely
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expunge from the mind a bad picture, like the paintings buried for years in
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Pompeii, without the loss of tint or shade. These pictures are as brilliant
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in age as in youth. Association begets assimilation. We cannot mix with evil
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associations without being contaminated, cannot touch pitch without being defiled. Impurity is especially
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fatal in its grip upon the young because of the vividness of the youthful imagination
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and the facility with which insinuating suggestions, And to the youthful thought, indelible
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and satanic is the taint of the evil suggestive power which allude questionable picture or
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story leaves upon the mind. Nothing else more fatally mars the ideals of life
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and lowers the standard of manhood and womanhood to read Writers whose lines express the
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utmost possible impurity, so dexterously and cunningly, that not a vulgar word is
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used but rosy, glowing suggestive language. Authors who soften evil and show deformity
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with the tints of beauty. What is this but to take the feet out
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of the straight road into the guiltiest path of seduction. Very few realize the
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power of a diseased imagination to ruin a precious life. Perhaps the defect began
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in a little speck of taint. No other faculty has such power to curse
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or bless mankind, to build up or tear down, to ennoble or debauch,
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to make happy or miserable, or has such power upon our destiny as
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the imagination. Many a ruined life began its downfall in the dry rot of
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a perverted imagination. How little we realize that, by subtle moral manufacture,
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repeated acts of the imagination weave themselves into a mighty tapestry, every figure and
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fancy of which will stand out in living colors, in the character web of
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our lives, to approve or condemn us. In many cases where for no
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apparent reason, one is making failure after failure, never reaching even approximately the
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position which wass anticipated. For him. If he would look frankly into his
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own heart and searchingly at his own secret habits, he would find that which
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hidden, like the worm at the heart of the rose, is destroying and
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making impossible all that ennobles, beautifies and enriches life. I solemnly warn you,
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says Beecher, against indulging a morbid imagination. In that busy and mischievous
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faculty begins the evil. Were it not for his airy imagination, man might
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stand his own master, not overmatched by the worst part of himself. But
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ah, these summer reveries, these venturesome dreams, these fairy castles, builded
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for no good purposes. They are haunted by impure spirits who will fascinate,
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bewitch, and corrupt you. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed art
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thou most favored of God, whose thoughts are chastened, whose imagination will not
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breathe or fly in tainted air, and whose path hath been measured by the
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golden reed of purity. To be pure in heart is the youth's first great
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commandment. Do not listen to man who tell ye that vice is a necessity.
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Nothing is a necessity. That is wrong, that debauce's self respect.
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All wickedness is weakness, Vice and vigor have nothing in common. Purity is
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strength, health power. Do not imagine that impurity can be hidden. One
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may as well expect to have consumption or any other deadly disease, and to
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look and appear healthy, as to be impure in thought and mind, and
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to look and appear manly and noble. Souled character writes its record in the
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flesh. No, no, these are not trifles, said George Whitefield,
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when a friend asked why he was so particular to bathe frequently and always have
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his linen scrupulously clean. A minister must be without spot even in his garments.
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Purity in a good man cannot be carried too far. There is a
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permanency in the stamp left by the sins resulting from impure thought that follows even
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to the grave. Disease is unnameable. The consequences of the scarlet sin the
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following after the strange woman write their record in the very bones, literally fulfilling
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the scripture statement, their sins shall lie down with their bones in the dust.
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We often detect in the eye and in the manner the black leper spots
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of impurity long before the youth suspects they have ever been noticed. When there
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is a scar or a stain upon one's self respect, it is bound to
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appear on the surface. Sooner or later. What fearful blots and stains are
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left on the characters of those who have to fight for a lifetime to rid
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themselves of a blighting and contaminating influence. Moral or physical chemists tell us that
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scarlet is the only color which cannot be bleached. There is no known chemical
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which can remove it. So formerly scarlet rags were made into blotting paper.
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When the sacred Writer wished to emphasize the power of divine forgiveness of divine love,
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he said, even though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be
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made white as wool. It certainly takes omnipotent power to expunge impurity from the
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mind. There is certainly one sin which only divine power can bleach out of
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the character, the sin of impurity. No man can think much of himself
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when he is conscious of impurity anywhere in his life, And the very knowledge
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that one is absolutely pure in his thought and clean in his life increases his
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self respect and his self faith. Wonderfully. It is a terrible handicap to
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be conscious that, however much others may think of us, we are foul
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inside, that our thoughts are vile. It does not matter that our vicious
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acts are secret. We cannot cover them. Whatever we have thought or done
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will outpicture itself in the pression, in the bearing. It will be hung
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out upon the bulletin board of the face and manner for the world to read.
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We instinctively feel a person's reality, not what he pretends, but what
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he is. For we radiate our reality, which often contradicts our words.
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There is only one panacea for impurity. Constant occupation and pure high thinking are
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absolutely necessary to a clean life. I should be a poor counselor of young
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men, wrote a true friend of youth, if I taught you that purity
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is possible only by isolation from the world. We do not want that sort
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of holiness which can thrive only in seclusion. We want that virile, manly
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purity which keeps itself unspotted from the world, even amid its worst debasements.
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Just as the lily lifts its slender chalice of white and gold to Heaven,
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untainted by the soil, in which it grows. Though that soiled be the
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reservoir of death and putrefaction. Impurity is the forfeiture of manliness. The true
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man must be untarnished. James went so far as to declare that this is
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just what religion is, pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father.
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Is this to keep himself unspotted from the world. Every true man shrinks from
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uncleanness. He knows what it means. Impurity makes lofty friendships impossible. It
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robs all of life's intercourse, of its fresh and its joyous innocence, its
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sullies, all beauty. It does these things chiefly because it separates man from
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God and his vision. The best and holiest is barred to the stained man.
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Impurity makes it impossible for him to appreciate what is pure and fine,
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dulls his finer perceptions, and he is not given the place where only pure
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and fine things are. There can be no such thing as an impure gentleman.
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The two words contradict each other. A gentleman must be pure. He
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does not have fine clothes. He may have had few advantages, but he
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must be pure and clean. And if he have all outward grace and gift,
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and be inwardly unclean. Though he may call himself a gentleman, he
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is a liar and a lie o, young man, Guard your heart,
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purity, keep your innocency, never lose it. If it be gone,
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you have lost from the casket the most precious gift of God, the first
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purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling. If soiled, can
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be cleansed by no fuller's soap. If a heart be broken, art may
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repair it. If a light be quenched, the flame may kindle it.
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But if a flower be crushed, what art can repair it? If an
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odor be wafted away, who can collect or bring it back? Parents are,
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in many cases responsible for the impurity of their children through a mistaken sense
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of delicacy. They allow the awakened search mind of the child to get information
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concerning its physical nature from the mind of some boy your girl no better taught
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than itself, and so conceive wholly wrong and harmful ideas concerning things of which
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it is vitally important that every human being should, at the onset of life,
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have clear and adequate ideas. Such silence, many times is fatal and
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always foolish. If not criminal. I have noticed, said William Acton,
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that all patients who have confessed to me that they have practiced vice lamented that
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they were not when children made aware of its consequences. And I have been
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pressed over and over again to urge on parents, guardians, schoolmasters, and
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others interested in the education of youth the necessity of giving to their charges some
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more some intimation of their danger. To parents and guardians, I offer my
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earnest advice that they should, by hearty sympathy and frank explanation, aid their
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charges in maintaining pure lives. What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? A
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prominent writer says, if young persons poison their bodies and corrupt their minds with
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vicious courses, no lapse of time after a reform is likely to restore them
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to physical soundness and the sole purity of their earlier days. There is one
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idea concerning purity which should never have been conceived, and having been conceived,
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should be once and forever eternally exploded. It is that purity is different in
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the different sexes. It would be loosened the foundations of virtue to countenance the
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notion that, because of a difference in sex. Man are at liberty to
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set morality at defiance and to do with impunity that which, if done by
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a woman, would stain her character for life. To maintain a pure and
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virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman, must be
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virtuous and pure, both alike, shunning all acts infringing on the heart,
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character, and conscience, shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed,
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can never be entirely thrown out again. Is there any reason why a man
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should have any license to drag his thoughts through the mud and filth any more
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than a woman? Is there any sex? In principle, isn't a stain
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a blot upon a boy's character just as bad as upon a girl's. If
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purity is so refining and elevating for one sex, why should it not be
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for the other. It is incredible that a man should be socially ostracized for
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comparatively minor offenses, yet be rotten with immorality, and be received into the
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best homes. But if a woman makes the least false step in this direction,
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she is not only ostracized, but treated with the utmost contempt. While
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the man who is the chief sinner in causing a woman's downfall, society will
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pardon to put it on the very lowest ground. I am certain that if
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young men knew and realize the fearful risks to health that they take by indulging
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in gross impurities, they would put them by with a shudder of disgust and
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aversion. It may very easily happen, and very often actually does happen,
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that one single step from the path of purity clouds a means whole life with
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misery and unspeakable suffering, and not only that, but even entails life long
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disease on children yet unborn to return to its maker at the close of life,
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the marvelous body which he gave us, scarred by a heedless life,
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with the heart rotten with impurity, the imagination filled with vicious images. The
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character honeycombed with vice, is most ungrateful of return for the priceless life of
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opportunity. A mind retaining all the dew and freshness of innocence shrinks from the
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very idea of impurity, the very suggestion of it, as if it were
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sin to have even thought or heard of it, as if even the shadow
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of the evil would leave some soil on the unsullied whiteness of the virgin mind.
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When modesty is once extinguished, it knows not a return. End of
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chapter forty nine, The Power of Purity. Recording by Luke Sartor Griffith,
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New South Wales,