population; purity pities them, and goes among them to redeem them. Prudishness shudders at evil where no evil is meant ; purity touches evil, but is undefiled. Prudishness affects a virtue, though it has it not; but the strength of true virtue is not to shun vice, but to vanquish it. Prudishness is the outcome of a diseased pruriency; but to the pure all things are pure, and the knowledge of ill falls from true purity as the mud-clots from the white raiment of Faithful at the fair. To be pure in heart is to be strong for the service of man; and the purer a man is the more pitiful, self-sacrificing, and effective will be his service. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." With them the vision of God perpetually tarries, and they know Him whom to know is life eternal. These are the men we want to-day; men who see God, who live ever in the clear light of God, who know Him as a Father and serve Him as a Master, who touch Him and are strong. These are the men we want to-daymen unstained by impurity, but pitiful to the impure, to whom no depth is too low or heart too vile for the healing touch of their wise and tender sympathy. We want pure men in the Press, the Senate, and the office, who shall shame vice into silence by their lives, and raise men into manly virtue by their deeds. We want pure men and pure women in the drawing-rooms of society, who shall make the profligate conscious of his moral leprosy by their example, and visit him with that rebuke which society is ever so loath to give to the titled and the wealthy. When such men attack

wrong their "strength is as the strength of ten, because their hearts are pure." They bring to the battle of the right no maimed and halting will, but the undiminished vigour of a clean heart and right spirit. And it is because the battle of the future is with the young men of any given age, these words of an old veteran to a young man gather such solemn emphasis and force, "Keep thyself pure."

There are those to whom I speak who have lost not only innocence, but purity. Your memory is full of the unquiet ghosts of long-dead deeds of wrong; your record is one of strong passions and weak will. There is nothing which sears the conscience like impurity; there is nothing so fatal to the finest instincts and so debasing to the nobler impulses. Of that you yourselves are only too bitter witnesses; you do the sin, and hate it; you fly the sin, and are drawn back by a lure stronger than your will; you resolve to break the bond, but the chain of habit seems rusted into the very flesh; and often, O how often! you think of the bright days of young innocence, and wish with what a passion of wild regret you were a boy again. That cannot be. But you may be born again. You may be forgiven, and receive into yourself the principle of a new life which is stronger than sin. "His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." Was ever music half so sweet as that? It is music: the music of a Divine hope. Christ claims your manhood; He waits to restore you to a nobler freedom, to instil the habit of love which shall be stronger than the

habit of sin; and you may know the truth, and the truth will make you free!

There are others who, like Timothy, owe much to heredity. Timothy had a godly mother and a godly grandmother, and came of pure and noble stock. The best inheritance God can give a man to start life with is a pious ancestry and a good home, and this many of you have had. But the purest ancestry, the godliest home, the cleanest blood, will not prevent temptation, and you are face to face with the great transgression of the world. Seek strength from God then, that you may keep your inheritance unimpaired. Beware the idle thought, the gleam of satanic entrancement shot on you from wicked eyes, the impure jest, the book which calls itself realistic, but whose realism is the literature of the sewer, the naked, shameless study of those secrets of putrefaction which God and nature hasten to hide in merciful oblivion-beware these things. To see God is better than to "see life," and "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." There is no cleverness in vice; it is mere brutality and shame, and to know nothing is better than to know evil. In virtue only is strength, in purity only is the secret of peaceful thoughts and manly energy, and wise and temperate life ripening into good old age. Take not the Sodom's apple though the very bloom of heaven seem to clothe it; it will but turn to dust and bitterness between the teeth. Covet not the bad man's knowledge; it is a poison working anguish and desolation in the life. Calm and undramatic as your life may appear beside the delirious

whirl and passion of lives swept into the dreadful maelström of evil, yet remember yours is safe life, yours is true life, yours is noble life, yours is abiding life too. I remind you of the last words of Gough, uttered in that very instant when death laid his finger on his lips— words in which the whole teaching of that eloquent tongue seemed compressed: "Young man, keep your record clean!" I remind you, also, of older words than his, in which the wisdom of many buried ages lingers : "Therefore, keep innocence "-or we will say purity"and do the thing which is right: so shalt thou be brought at the last to thine end in peace."

VII.

THE SIN OF ESAU.

•Lest there be any fornicator or profane.person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."-HEB. xii. 16, 17. ◊

HE Bible is the story of the moral evolution of

THE

the human race, and it is this truth which gives such emphasis and value to the individual histories. which are recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures. Sceptics say-nay, honest and perplexed doubters say, "Look at the frightful record of brutal and relentless wars which the Hebrew Scriptures contain; the fierce and cruel spirit which sometimes turns even the Psalms of David into curses, and strikes every string of that clear harp into discord; the records of individual violence, meanness, cupidity, craft, and lust, in which the historical books of Israel abound-and is this your Bible?" Yes, this is our Bible, and its very honesty is the pledge of its authenticity and the seal of its value. No other book takes so solemn a view of life, or is marked by so terrible a fidelity in its delineations of life. But throughout the Bible we see moral evolution going on. As the race of men march onward