ns of memory which with horrible
realism and scorching vividness revived past scenes of sin.

A boy once showed to another a book of impure words and pictures. He
to whom the book was shown had it in his hands only a few minutes. In
after-life he held high office in the church, and years and years
afterwards told a friend that he would give half he possessed had he
never seen it, because its impure images, at the most holy times, would
arise unbidden to his mind.

Physicians tell us that every particle of the body changes in a very
few years; but no chemistry, human or divine, can entirely expunge from
the mind a bad picture. Like the paintings buried for centuries in
Pompeii, without the loss of tint or shade, these pictures are as
brilliant in age as in youth.

Association begets assimilation. We can not mix with evil associations
without being contaminated; can not touch pitch without being defiled.
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.

Indelible and satanic is the taint of the evil suggestive power which a
lewd, questionable picture or story leaves upon the mind. Nothing else
more fatally mars the ideals of life and lowers the standard of manhood
and womanhood.

To read writers whose lines express the utmost possible impurity so
dexterously and cunningly that not a vulgar word is used, but rosy,
glowing, suggestive language--authors who soften evil and show
deformity with the tints of beauty--what is this but to take the feet
out of the straight road into the guiltiest path of seduction?

Very few realize the power of a diseased imagination to ruin a precious
life. Perhaps the defect began in a little speck of taint. No other
faculty has such power to curse or bless mankind, to build up or tear
down, to ennoble or debauch, to make happy or miserable, or has such
power upon our destiny, as the imagination.

Many a ruined life began its downfall in the dry rot of a perverted
imagination. How little we realize that by subtle, moral manufacture,
repeated acts of the imagination weave themselves into a mighty
tapestry, every figure and fancy of which will stand out in living
colors in the character-web of our lives, to approve or condemn us.

In many cases where, for no apparent reason, one is making failure
after failure, never reaching, even approximat