ely small account for the man,
is absolutely false. Granted that, owing to social ostracism, the
outward degradation of impurity to the woman is far greater, I contend
that a deeper inner debasement is its sure fruition in the man. Cruelty
and lies are its certain accompaniment. As Burns, with a poet's insight,
has truly said:

"But oh! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeling."

Yes, it is exactly that; "it hardens all within"--hardens and darkens.
It is as our Lord says: only "the pure in heart" are capable of divine
vision. Only the man who has kept himself pure, who has never sullied
his white faith in womanhood, never profaned the sacred mysteries of
life and love, never fouled his manhood in the stye of the beast--it is
only that man who can see God, who can see duty where another sees
useless sacrifice, who can see and grasp abiding principles in a world
of expediency and self-interest, and discern

"In temporal policy the eternal Will,"

who can see God in the meanest of His redeemed creatures. It is only
the virginal heart that has kept itself pure, that grows not old, but
keeps its freshness, its innocent gaiety, its simple pleasures. The
eminent Swiss Professor, Aime Humbert, does but echo these words from
the sadder side, when, speaking of the moral malady which is the result
of impurity, he says:

"It does not attack any single organ of the human frame, but it
withers all that is human--mind, body, and soul. It strikes our
youth at the unhappy moment when they first cross the thresholds of
vice. For them the spring has no more innocent freshness; their
very friendships are polluted by foul suggestions and memories;
they become strangers to all the honorable relations of a pure
young life; and thus we see stretching wider and wider around us
the circle of this mocking, faded, worn-out, sceptical youth,
without poetry and without love, without faith and without joy."

Too soon and too earnestly we cannot teach our boys that the flaming
sword, turning all ways, which guards the tree of life for him, is
purity.

But thirdly, there are wider issues than the welfare, physical and
moral, of our own boys which make it impossible for us to take up any
neutral attitude on this question. We cannot remain indifferent to that
which affects so deeply both the status and the happiness of women. We
cannot accept a standard for men which works out w