re left on the characters of those who have to fight for a lifetime to
rid themselves of a blighting and contaminating influence, moral or
physical!

Chemists tell us that scarlet is the only color which can not be
bleached. There is no known chemical which can remove it. So,
formerly, scarlet rags were made into blotting paper. When the sacred
writer wished to emphasize the power of Divine forgiveness, of Divine
love, he said: "Even though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall be made
white as wool!" It certainly takes omnipotent power to expunge
impurity from the mind. There is certainly one sin which only Divine
power can bleach out of the character--the sin of impurity.

No man can think much of himself when he is conscious of impurity
anywhere in his life. And the very knowledge that one is absolutely
pure in his thought and clean in his life increases his self-respect
and his self-faith wonderfully.

It is a terrible handicap to be conscious that, however much others may
think of us, we are foul inside, that our thoughts are vile. It does
not matter that our vicious acts are secret, we can not cover them.

Whatever we have thought or done will outpicture itself in the
expression, in the bearing. It will be hung out upon the bulletin
board of the face and manner for the world to read. We instinctively
feel a person's reality; not what he pretends, but what he is, for we
radiate our reality, which often contradicts our words.

There is only one panacea for impurity. Constant occupation and pure,
high thinking are absolutely necessary to a clean life.

"I should be a poor counselor of young men," wrote a true friend of
youth, "if I taught you that purity is possible only by isolation from
the world. We do not want that sort of holiness which can thrive only
in seclusion; we want that virile, manly purity which keeps itself
unspotted from the world, even amid its worst debasements, just as the
lily lifts its slender chalice of white and gold to heaven, untainted
by the soil in which it grows, though that soil be the reservoir of
death and putrefaction."

Impurity is the forfeiture of manliness. The true man must be
untarnished. James went so far as to declare that this is just what
religion is. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is
this * * to keep himself unspotted from the world."

Every true man shrinks from uncleanness. He knows what it means.
Impurity makes lofty friendshi