佚名/Anonymous
Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.Goodness is only investment that never fails.In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us.Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us.Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled；like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies.Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature.I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own；that we may be well, yet not pure.
If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion.The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us.Chastity is the flowering of man；and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established.Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied.I fear that we are the divine allied to beasts, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms；all purity is one. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.What is chastity？How shall a man know if he is chaste？He shall not know it.We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard.From exertion come wisdom and purity；from sloth ignorance and sensuality.In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind.An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued.If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome.