gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was
still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to
such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being
sold there was found in his study cupboard a great pile of indecent
French plays and novels. That was what did it. In secret he had for
years debauched his mind, and inevitably in the end his thoughts
brought forth fruit. That experience taught me once for all how certain
it is that the inner world of thoughts is the real place where a man
attains or misses purity.

There is something grim and stern about this business. I confess to a
certain wholesome fear in connection with it which I hope never to
lose; though fear will never do as our predominating emotion in this
respect. But I keep a place for fear--enough of it to drive me to my
knees. I have seen boys go wrong at fifteen, and I have seen old men
go wrong at sixty. I believe that no man is safe until he is dead. He
was no coward, nor had he a licentious past behind him, who confessed
that late on in life he had to beat his body and bring it into
subjection lest having preached to others he should be a castaway. He
knew; and was honest and wise enough to keep up precautions to the end.
There is simply no way through this part of life for the man with slack
habits and a self-indulgent attitude of spirit. The man who will not
stand up and brace himself, who is not game for a fight, and will not
endure hardness is never going to make anything fine out of the
splendid but difficult enterprise we call human life. And all the time
he will need to have his sentinels out. All the time he will need to
make sure that he is master in his own house of life, and allows no
interloping thoughts or imaginations to run riot there.

But what about religion! The conventional way in which to end a plain