Purity Plain and Simple

Purity is a word with a deep meaning. It denotes far more than superficial cleanness. It goes below the surfaces of guarded speech and polite manners to the very heart of being. Make the fountain clean and the water that flows from it will be pure and limpid. make the heart clean and life will be clean.

Purity is defined as "free from contact with that which weakens, impairs or pollutes." It weakens both mind and body. It impairs the health. It pollutes not only the thoughts but the conduct which inevitably has its beginning and its end in thought.

Innocence is the state of natural purity. it was the state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When hey sinned they knew that they were naked. They lost innocence never to regain it. But purity may be attained. As an unclean garment may be washed, so the heart may be purified and 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 one who is striving for purity wholeheartedly is like one who sits safely in a guarded house.

As purity is power so impurity is impotence, weakness, degeneracy. 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 in this country with a great mind,men who are kings in their specialties, who have worked like slaves to achieve their goals, whose reputations have been practically ruined by the law of impurity?

Character is a record of our thoughts and acts. That which we think about most, the ideas 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 men 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 thinker-whatever we harbor in the mind out-pictures itself in the body.

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 to embarrass you or to keep you back. A thing which you now look as a bit of pleasure may come up in the future to hamper your progress. The think you do-to-day while trying to have a good time may come up to block your progress years afterwords.