PURITY OF ASSOCIATIONS
Most people would like to be reckoned with the good and true of earth, but they often overlook the necessity of a change in their moral conditions before that which they hope for can come to pass. A mother, speaking on this point, says:
As a companion for my children there was brought into the family a little lamb, to which, in its helplessness, our hearts went out in love. We were about to take it in our arms to love and cherish when we discovered it was alive with what are commonly called “ticks.” Horrified, I ordered the lamb tied to a tree, and forbade the children, or any one, in fact, to go near it until it could be cleansed. I stood with my children on the piazza, watching it with mingled emotions. Its pathetic bleatings made us long to take it in our arms and caress it, “mother” it, in its separation and loneliness. But I and my children were clean. The lamb was not. Far from being clean, it was alive with filth. The standard of approach to me, as to all cleanly people, was cleanliness. Much as we yearned over the lamb and longed to care for it, until purified with a cleansing wash, communication could not be established. When the conditions were fulfilled, children and lamb, the latter white as newly-fallen snow, “clean every whit,” played together in happy companionship. (Text.)
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PURPOSE
The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder; a waif, a nothing, no man. Have a purpose in life, if it is only to kill and divide and sell oxen well, but have a purpose; and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.—Thomas Carlyle.
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See [Resoluteness].
PURPOSE DISCERNED