THE injunction, "Keep thyself pure," is worthy to be repeated to every generation of young men, since it was written to Timothy by the great Apostle more than eighteen hundred years ago. The young man who undertakes to keep himself pure will find his task ins not to be accomplished without a struggle. A young man who is brought into the world with a well-balanced body will find that the sexual passions and propensities will assert themselves with such vehemence and vigor that if they are not to be permitted to dominate and control, but are to be kept under and made to occupy their appointed subordinate place, they will require that he should have settled principles, a firm purpose and a strong will.  God has made no mistake in giving us a strong sexual nature. I would not take away from any young man, if I could, his sexual intensity or rob him of the most manly, healthy development of his sexual nature. Sexuality has been strongly marked in all the great men in every land who have risen to eminence in all departments of life. Without it man would be mean, selfish, sordid and ungracious to his fellow men and uncivil to womankind. Were it not for his nature which God has implanted in his being, no man would desire to provide for the support of another individual, or enter into him the necessity of supporting a family of dependent and growing children. No man becomes affable, gracious and considerate to women until he is rendered so by the awakening of his sexual nature and the quickening of that within him, which, when held under proper discipline and control, renders him noble and unselfish. No other part of his being so much assists him in the development of that which is highest, nobles and best in his nature. It emasculates men, women, and animals to despoil them of their sexual power by mutilating or removing any part of their reproductive organs. If a man is thus mutilated when he is young he becomes a creature which is repellent to men and abhorrent to women. His body is without manliness, his mind is without ambition, his life is without a purpose, and he walks the earth loathing himself and despised by all who are normally constituted. God has made no mistake in giving man a strong sexual nature, but any young man makes a fatal mistake if he allows the sexual to dominate, to degrade, and to destroy that which is highest and noblest in his nature. Even the effort tob ring the sexual nature into subjection is a discipline which develops force of character and a sense of manly strength and victory. If you feel that the struggle is a fierce one, let me say to you, as Paul said to the young men at Corinth, "Quit you like men; be strong." But if you feel like most young men are likely to feel, that your struggle is more fierce than that in which others are engaged, then let me say to you as this same Apostle said to those voluptuous Corinthians more than eighteen hundred years ago, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted a over that y e are able, but will with temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be better able to bear it." That the battle is fierce with many is manifest by the fact that thousands are in the vilest servitude to lust. In some senses they may be said to have succeeded in life, but they are slaves to a perverted use of their sexual natures. Alexander wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, while he had not yet conquered himself; Napoleon vanquished nearly the whole of Europe, while in his own character he was a slave to an insatiable ambition. These men were masters of millions of others, but they were not masters of themselves. Bidel, the famous French lion-tamer, who often went into the cage face to face with untamed beasts fresh from the forest, says: "The brutes are afraid of me because they see I am not afraid of them.. To master these brutes I have to begin by being complete master of myself." Let it be distinctly understood from the first that no man who desires to keep his body pure and his record clean can expect to succeed if his thoughts, his speech, his imagination and his heart are filled with corruption and evil. While no man can totally exclude evil thoughts from his mind, yet he makes a grave mistake when he harbors and fosters them. Thoughts of evil enter the mind as easily as germs of disease are taken into our bodies with the food we eat and are inhaled into the lungs with the air we breathe. But in a strong, healthy body, these germs of disease are killed by the overmastering power of the vital forces; where the standard of vitality is not sufficiently high, these germs of disease find lodgment in congenial soil and engender in the body the diseases which beget death. No one can evade or escape from these germs of disease, but they cannot withstand the vital forces or live and propagate in the body of a healthy person. Or, to illustrate in another way, weeds will grow of themselves in any soil without being sown. The farmer is not to blame because there are weeds in his field, but he is to blame if he allows the3 weds to take possession of the field. The strength of their growth may even attest the richness of the soil, but the farmer who plows his field and sows it with good seed is master of the soil. When the harvest comes it will not be an ingathering of weds, but of wheat. The trouble is not so much that evil is suggested to the mind, but that the thought is harbored and is permitted to remain sufficiently long to welcome the incoming of other evil thoughts, until lust in conceived, which brings forth sin. To be pure in body and in life one must be pure in mind. Perhaps nothing contributes more to the defilement of the mind than the reading of impure books. The Society for the Suppression of Vice in this country has been able to accomplish much in the destruction of vice-engendering literature, but there are hundreds of books issued every year by otherwise reputable publishing houses, the characters of which are interesting to the reader, only because they appeal to his sensual nature and t he result is that unconsciously, their minds are defiled, their imagination polluted, their virtue overthrown, and their bodies debauched. There are books that lie exposed in the houses of respectable people, the influence of which upon the life and upon the thought is to sap the vital forces of the body, for the results they effect are the same in kind as masturbation and self-pollution, and from which their results differ only in degree. For even masturbation and self-defilement may be practiced in the mind while the mechanical processes are not perpetrated upon the body. The physical, intellectual and moral effects, however, are of the same kind, even lacking but slightly in degree. The appeal to the amative and sexual nature is so universal in novels that it might safely be laid down as a rule that no young men or young women should be permitted to read a novel before they arrive at the age of twenty-five. There are so many good books in the world, and so much which needs to be learned, that no young man or young woman can afford to squander his or her time and opportunities in reading a novel until he or she has cultivated a lasting taste for such literature as is indispensable in the acquisition of knowledge, and has laid a foundation broad and deep for the formation of character. If books of this best class are not read first, during the formative years, and a taste acquired, they will never be read after novel-reading has once been begun, and the perverted taste has been cultivated and developed. The writer may be thought by some to occupy extreme views upon this subject, but looking back over an experience of nearly fifty years, and a large acquaintance with men in all departments of life, he thinks that he can honestly say that he has never known a person, either man or woman, whether in the gospel ministry of out of it, who has been given to the reading of novels, who has not been perceptibly weakened either in his intellectual or moral powers, or in both. While he knows some men who have attained some prominence in t he pulpit who are given in some degree to novel-reading, yet he does not know one such clerical novel-reader who is not living far beneath his opportunity and privilege, and below the eminence which it would have been possible for him to have attained if he had fed his mind upon the fact instead of fancy, if he had made the real and the actual the subjects of his thought and the basis for his judgments and conclusions. Not only is the mind to be kept pure, but the imagination must be carefully guarded. Turn away from obscene pictures as you would from the most loathsome contagion. The influence of an obscene picture is contaminating, and its effects are deceptive and destructive. The influence of vicious pictures often leads to illicit sexual indulgence, plunges the unhappy victim into a life of vice, and in hundreds and thousands of cases terminates in diseases which are far-reaching in their results upon the inoffensive and innocent as well as in their terrible physical and moral effects upon the guilty offender. Banish from your room and your possession all photographs and pictures whether known as works of art or shielded under some similarly deceptive and euphonious title, but which are nevertheless "nude and nasty," and which consequently beget impure thoughts, pollute the imagination and debase that which is nobles and best in the beholder, it matters not whether the pictures are suspended from the walls of an art gallery or grace (disgrace) the parlors of the wealthy. If you desire to be pure in body you must also be pure in speech. "Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners." While the harboring of evil thoughts tends to the degradation of a single individual, impure speech debases not only the person who utters it, but degrades those into whose ears the vile thou ghts are poured. There are men who would give thousands of dollars if they had not looked upon some obscene picture which has so photographed itself upon the mind that it refuses to be obliterated, or has become animated and quickened into an almost ever-present thought or dominant passion. So there are those in whose memory the recollection of a vile story lives, clinging to the very fibre of their being, refusing to be banished from the thought or obliterated from the memory. If you would "Flee youthful lust" you should also flee from those who are lustful in their thoughts, their lives, or their speech. Avoid and turn away from impurity, whether it be that which is loathsome to the eye, abhorrent to the thought, or degrading to the imagination. Close your ears to the corrupting influences of vile stories which are so effectively plumed with wit and pointed with fancy that they pierce and poison the very soul of thought and character. The young man who desires to be pure in life must also be careful about the purity of his blood. No man can eat pork, at least to any considerable amount, without perceptibly poisoning his blood. Numerous forms of skin disease are easily traceable to the eating of pork, both fresh and cured, in the many forms of sausage, pudding, ham and bacon. But some people say if pork is not to be eaten, then why was it created? The hog, like the hawk and the crow, is a scavenger. He was created to eat that which is loathsome, and which, if not destroyed, would endanger our lives by exposing us to infection and death. Where there are no facilities for the destruction of garbage by great furnaces such as are erected in the outskirts of large cities, swine may serve a useful office in the consumption of garbage gathered from large areas. Garbage, however, should be consumed, and this can easily be done by burning it in the stoves and furnaces and in the abodes where it is accumulated. But even where swine are kept to consume the refuse, there is no reason why the flesh of these scavengers should afterward become a form of food for human beings. The great basis, however, for moral purity is to be found in the human heart. The unregenerate heart is utterly at enmity not only against God, but against everything that is nobles, purest and most Godlike in human nature. Many do not so regard it, but "the heart" by nature "is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." It is not only without faith in God, but is also without faith in humanity. No man has a reasonable basis for permanent personal purity until he has a pure heart. The natural heart "is at enmity against God, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." This wicked heart of stone must be taken out of our flesh, and God must give us a new heart, "a heart of flesh." We must be born of God, we must have that regeneration of the Holy Ghost of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus, when in answer to the inquiry of Nicodemus, "How can a man be born when he is old?" Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; ant that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Or, to express this change of mind and heart in our own language, we would say it is illustrated in your own experience when you look out of the window and you say that the wind is blowing from the north. Now you cannot see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind. You can see the dust and the leaves and the straw which are driven before the wind, and therefore you say that the wind is blowing from the north, because it is driving the dust and leaves and straw toward the south. After a time you look out of the window, and you say that it is the south wind. How do you know that the wind is blowing from the south? You cannot see the wind, but you see the effects of the wind; you see the straws, and the leaves and the dust, that are now driven before it in the opposite direction ; therefore you say that the wind is changed. Just so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit. You cannot see the Spirit. He comes into a man's heart and into a man's life, and makes of him spiritually a new creature. At one time you look out upon his life and conduct, and you see that he is worldly and selfish, given perhaps to lust and vice, and that he hates God, that he despises His Word, that he avoids the church and all that is good and pure, and so you judge correctly from these outward manifestations that the influences which prevail within heart are unrighteousness, that he has not been "born of the Spirit." But after a time you look out upon this man's life and conduct again, and you see that there has been wrought a great change. Instead of hating spiritual things, despising God's message, and speaking contemptuously of the church and godly people, he now worships God, reads His Word, attends regularly upon the services of the church, and leads an upright Christian life. These changes are named by Christ as the evidence that that man has been the subject of this mysterious and transforming power of God. Now you did not see the Holy Spirit when He came into this man's heart, but you have observed the outward results which have been manifested in his life; therefore you say that that man has been regenerated, that he has been born of the Spirit. He might be able to tell just when that change occurred, and again, he might not be able to tell the day, the month, or even the year when the change occurred. That the change has taken place there is no shadow of doubt in his own mind or in the minds of those who know him. Such is the change of heart to which Jesus referred, and to which we refer when we say that no man can be permanently pure in his thoughts and life without having a pure heart as the basis for that purity. These principles are not only written in the Word of God, but they are also written deep down in our nature. The instinct of the soul is to reach out after God, just the same as the plant which is placed by the window reaches out after the light. It soon bends over toward the window, and if you turn the plant around so that it bends inward toward the room, it will only be a short time until you will find that the natural reaching out of the plant after sunlight has bent it over again toward the window. So you may seek to turn your mind and your heart away from God, but they will reach out naturally toward the divine light of the Son of God. If you were a frequent visitor in the crowded wards of some large hospital, and were observant in your visits, you would note how naturally these pale faces, as with a common impulse, are turned toward the light. You might ask of them the reason, but they might not be able to tell you why. The reason is written in their nature, deeper down than their understanding. They do so naturally, they do not know why. So there is a universal instinct of the sou l that turns the face of every sin=sick mortal toward the light of diving truth, toward the Sun of Righteousness. But how many are to-day unhappy, simply because in their nature, deeper down than their understanding, there is a longing and a reaching out after God and heaven and sacred things, while at the same time, in wicked rejection of their Saviour, they are turning their faces away from Christ, the light of the world. Next after the grace of God, perhaps no other earthly influence is more salutary and helpful to the young man who is struggling for purity of thought and life than the influence of a pure-minded, noble and inspiring woman. The companionship, or even the acquaintance, of some women is not helpful to a young man who is struggling for master over his lower nature. Some women, although not impure in their lives, are yet impure in their hearts. Amative by nature, voluptuous in form, and with a predominating sensuality, they inspire impure thoughts and arouse the most dormant sexual nature. But these conditions are not found among the majority of women. As a rule, they are by nature chaste, pure-minded, and when their hearts are endued by divine grace and their lives are brought under the sway of refining and religious influences, if they are not rendered frivolous by society or empty-headed by novel reading, their companionship and acquaintance are more than likely to prove helpful and inspiring to a young man. Association with women who are pure in heart and noble in life is never anything but inspiring and elevating. When a man loves a woman who is pure and noble, and when he sets up for himself the same standards of moral and personal purity which he sets up for her, he has thrown around himself one of the surest and strongest of human safeguards.  No man can possibly make a greater mistake than to set up two standards of virtue, one for men and the other for women. The problem of social purity will never be solved so long as women condone in men the sin which consigns one of their own sex to the eternal obloquy and endless ostracism which is heaped upon her when she goes wrong. The measure which is meted out to women should also be meted out to men. A moral leper, regardless of sex, deserves to be ostracized and banished.  Why should there be two standards of morals, one for women and another for men? Why should it be thought right for a man to do what is universally acknowledged to be wrong for a woman to do? Has God made one standard for men and another for women? does the moral character of the act depend upon who does it? Is the question of right and wrong a mere question of gender? If God made His own immutable nature the basis of the moral law, then surely the moral law is unchangeable, is the same for male and female, for bond and free, for rich and poor, for black and white; without regard to race, class, color or condition. And the question remains, if God did not make the double standard of conduct and character, then where does it come from and who made it? The double standard is of human origin. It did not originate in civilized, but in uncivilized society; not in Christian communities, but in pagan lands. It is, indeed, remarkable that a principle so essentially pagan could engraft itself so successfully upon our Christian civilization and bring forth abundantly in this enlightened age the fruits of a genuine heathenism. In the benighted periods of the world's history the wife was purchased, stolen or captured. She was regarded as a mere chattel, to be bought or sold or even slain. Women had no personal rights to be recognized or respected, but the will of the man was regarded as supreme. It was regarded as his right to require upon the part of his wife the strictest fidelity, while he exercised the most unrestrained license and regarded himself accountable to no one. While the man sets up restrictive standards for the woman, yet in his own life and conduct he ignored every standard of justice and broke down all the barriers which nature had set up. This unequal, unjust and unrighteous standard is, in this enlightened century, not only tolerated, but by many even held and taught as a correct standard of moral character and conduct.  Now the moral character of an action is not determined by the gender of the doer. Guilt or innocence does not attach itself to the body, but to the soul. The body is only the instrument of the soul. It is not the body that is to be judged for the deeds done while the soul and the body are united, but it is the soul that is to be judged for the deeds done while the soul and the body are united, but it is the soul that is to be judged for "the deeds done in the body." It is not the house, but the occupant of the house that is arraigned, and upon whom judgment is passed.  Neither is the character of an act to be determined by mere incident. The body is only the home or temporal abode of the soul. The style of the house or its materials does not determine the character of the deeds of its occupant. An act that would be wrong for a person who lives in a white house would not be right for another who lives in a brown house. The character of the acts of the tenant is neither affected nor determined by any variation in form or color of the tenement in which he lives. These are mere incidents. Neither is the right or wrong of an act to be determined by the gender of the body which the soul inhabits. What is right for one soul is right for any other soul, and what is wrong for any one soul is wrong for every other soul, regardless of all questions of gender, race, class or condition. What is wrong in America is wrong in China; what is right near the pole is right under the equator; what is wrong for the woman in England is wrong for the Englishman in India. God has not made one law for one nation, class or gender, and another law for another nation, class or gender. What is wrong for the soul that inhabits the body of a woman is equally wrong for another soul that inhabits the body of a man. At home or abroad, on the land or upon the sea, by day and by night, for all time and for all people, whether male of female, bond or free, high or low, there is to all but one moral law. There is not now, there never has been and there never will be two standards of moral conduct; and it becomes men and women alike, in the home and in the school, in Church and State, to teach the true principle and thus help to correct this error, which fosters vice, defiles the individual, degrades society, results in untold sin and wrong, and destroys multitudes both for this world and the world to come. One of the greatest safeguards of a virtuous young man is intelligence. Virtue based upon intelligence is always safer than "innocence" based on ignorance. We have not used the word "knowledge," because that might imply that a young man was to obtain knowledge by by experience. Such an acquisition would be both expensive and ruinous. Intelligence can be acquired without much expenditure, either of money or effort, and without any ruin. We think we may safely say many young men who enter upon a life of vice are largely prompted in their first approaches because of their ignorance and a desire for information. What they have heard concerning women has awakened their curiosity; vile stories and corrupting books and suggestive pictures have quickened the imagination, and, conscious of profound ignorance, they undertake to secure by experience that information they have found themselves unable to acquire in a proper manner. Many of the books professing to give information and to be helpful to young men have been written by those who are themselves corrupt; the information imparted is false, the influenc e pernicious, because the design of the author is to work upon the imagination of his reader and alarm him in order to effect the sale of nostrums and secure from among his readers a large number of young men who will suffer themselves to be imposed upon and robbed, to their own discomfiture and the enrichment of the author. There are a goodly number of books which are well calculated to impart reliable information and render young men intelligent upon this as upon any other subject; and no young man can come properly to know his own physical and sexual nature, and that of womankind, without being i nspired with admiration and awe at the marvelous manifestations of divine wisdom displayed in these wonderful and mysterious bodies of ours, and without having his respect and admiration heightened for every pure-minded and noble woman to whom God has given life and being. Every man who knows the real nature of a pure woman will adore and desire to protect her, rather than be moved to sexual passion by thought of her, and he will desire also to lift her to a throne and to crown her with honor and to sceptre her with love. No truly intelligent man will desire to debase a pure woman with vile lust, to trample her virtue beneath his feet, and degrade her to the level of the brute. The question of personal purity is one of greatest importance to every young man. What the individuals are, that the state will be. As a patriot and as a lover of humanity you owe it to others that you should yourself be pure. You owe it to your parents, to your business associates and to all who respect and trust you, that you should be pure. The age demands men who are pure from head to foot, from heart to brain. But it is important also that you should realize that by your conduct you are developing or debasing your character. What you do is determining what you shall be, both in this world and in the next. If, as you should, you expect purity in the dear, sweet whom you some day hope to claim as your bride, you should remember that all you desire to find in her she has an equal right to expect and to demand of you. If she is to be noble and pure, then you should also be noble and pure. But there is also another thing to be seriously remembered. What you are in your own life, that your children after you are most likely to become. If you are vicious, you are making it easy for your children to be vicious after you; but if you are pure and upright, you will be making it easier for them to be pure and upright. If we have ourselves inherited bad tendencies, we owe it to those who are to come after us that these vicious tendencies shall find in us such a resolute determination and such and invincible purpose that the strength of these tendencies shall be broken, so that the children who come after us shall inherit opportunities and endowments such as we ourselves have never enjoyed. Henry Ward Beecher wisely said that since so much depends upon blood, every person should exercise great caution in the selection of his grandfather, and the statement is suggestive. If we are not permitted to determine the character of our grandparents, we are permitted measurably to determine the character and destiny of our grandchildren by looking carefully after the conduct and character of their grandfather.