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 approximately, the position which was anticipated for him, if he would look frankly into his own heart, and searchingly at his own secret habits, he would find that which, hidden, like the worm at the heart of the rose, is destroying and making impossible all that ennobles, beautifies, and enriches life.
"I solemnly warn you," says Beecher, "against indulging a morbid imagination. In that busy and mischievous faculty begins the evil. Were it not for his airy imagination, man might stand his own master,—not overmatched by the worst part of himself. But ah! these summer reveries, these venturesome dreams, these fairy castles, builded for no good purposes,—they are haunted by impure spirits, who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt you. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed art thou, most favored of God, whose THOUGHTS are chastened; whose imagination will not breathe or fly in tainted air, and whose path hath been measured by the golden reed of purity."
To be pure in heart is the youth's first great commandment. Do not listen to men who tell you that "vice is a necessity." Nothing is a necessity that is wrong,—that debauches self-respect. "All wickedness is weakness." Vice and vigor have nothing in common. Purity is strength, health, power.