Purity

“ This pledge of ours does not hinge upon those two words, Purity and Temperance, merely in their ordinary narrow acceptation. Really the terms represent for us, as they ought to, many a noble virtue, such as veracity, sincerity, integrity, fair-mindedness, dutifulness and a good many other traits blended into that homogeneous whole, a sound character. Purity does not imply merely the averting of the eye, the closing of the ear and the bridling ,of the tongue. It is the cementing factor in the whole life. Realise the 'mother' all over the world. ”

“ Blessed art thou, most favored of God, whose THOUGHTS are chastened; whose imagination will not breathe or fly in tainted air, and whose path hath been measured by the golden reed of purity."
To be pure in heart is the youth's first great commandment. Do not listen to men who tell you that "vice is a necessity." Nothing is a necessity that is wrong,—that debauches self-respect. "All wickedness is weakness." Vice and vigor have nothing in common. Purity is strength, health, power.
Do not imagine that impurity can be hidden! ”

“ The best place of purity praise we, the shining, endued with all brightness." (113) "This Earth, together with the women, we praise Which bears us, which are the women, Ahura Mazda Whose wishes arise from purity, these we praise— Fullness, readiness, questioning, wisdom." ”

“ Their purity is an affirmative state; something strong, clean, and crystalline, capable of a wholeness of adjustment to the wholeness of a God-inhabited world. The pure soul is like a lens from which all irrelevancies and excrescences, all the beams and motes of egotism and prejudice, have been removed; so that it may reflect a clear image of the one Transcendent Fact within which all others facts are held. ”

“ And then the other side of this second picture is 'Righteousness shall look down from heaven,' not in its judicial aspect merely, but as the perfect moral purity that belongs to the divine Nature, which shall bend down a loving eye upon the men beneath, and mark the springings of any imperfect good and thankfulness in our hearts; joyous as the husbandman beholds the springing of his crops in the fields that he has sown. ”

“ And shall Perfect Goodness contemplated move no goodness in us? Shall His Holiness and Purity raise in us no desire to be holy and pure?—His infinite Love towards His creatures kindle no spark of love in us towards our fellow-creatures! ”

“ Every man, says he, that hath this hope, purifieth himself as he is pure. And our Saviour applies this purity to the heart, to shew how that ought to be disposed for happiness. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. O infinite purity, what heart will be fit to see thee, if thou dost not purge and cleanse it? O purify us by thy grace, and so fit us for thy glory! ”

“ However, although I consider it wise very seldom to speak of these two virtues, it is wise to practise them unceasingly, humility being one of the most excellent virtues of the soul, and purity that fair white adornment of the body which is its honour, and which, like a lily growing among thorns, brings forth a wonderful flower, whose fruit is honour and riches. ”

“ Such must be the purity of your character and the degree of your renunciation, that the people of the earth may through you recognise and be drawn closer to the heavenly Father who is the Source of purity and grace. ”

“ You who seek purity, and would have your fellow-men also seek it, spend not your labour on the stony ground of their intellect, endeavouring to explain what purity is; give their imagination the one pure man ”

“ In her greatest sayings, and in her actual life, Purity is found to be Love, and this Love is exercised, not only in the inward, home-coming, recollective movement,—in the purifying of the soul’s dispositions, but also in the outgoing, world-visiting, dispersive movement,—in action towards fellow-souls. ”

“ For His claim springs from His nature, even from that love which is the very essence of God. His love to us moves Him to claim our devotion; for only by absolute devotion to Him can we attain our highest happiness.’
‘Though without purity we cannot be subjectively holy, yet holiness is much more than purity. Purity is a mere negative excellence; holiness implies the most intense mental and bodily activity of which we are capable. ”

“ And first, there is the career of honesty and worldly prudence, which makes the duty of the citizen. Secondly, there is the progress in purity which casts earthly things behind, and reaches the angelic height of passionless serenity. ”

“ My message, O men, shall be a plea for purity. If you would seek to make your world the better for your visit here, teach men everywhere to be pure, a hard lesson to learn, but one that will bring a rich reward. ”

“ If, then, I regard purity as the best symbol of such a moral ideal, it is because the word connotes, together with freedom from discordant passion, a frankly unconstrained recognition of the simplicity of our relation to God. ”

“ For the more things a man desires, the more he will be engaged to think on; and the more he thinks on at once, the more languid and confused will his conceptions be. But purity, by composing the passions, contracts the desires, and by contracting these, it contracts also the thoughts; whereby a man is reduced to a greater unity, simplicity and recollection of mind; and having but few thoughts to divide him, is the better able to think clearly.
10. Purity of heart serves to the acquirement of knowledge, secondly, by the divine blessing. ”

“ Remember that purity is what is required—purity, at no matter what sacrifice of inclination. As you read this, your good angel stands at your right side, and your evil one at your left, nearest your heart ”

“ And it added to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of purity, of courtesy, of uprightness, of peace and of a universal love far reaching, grown great and beyond measure." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 29.) ”

“ Purity is free from a burdensome sense of shame, and is full of an invigorating courage which is wide away from all necessity of making and loving those things which the Bible calls ‘lies.’ Because a robust healthfulness fills with courage those who habitually practice the scientific law of purity. So that, in the character of a Right Honorable, purity, courage and truth knit each other up into a triuned power against which nothing can prevail. ”

“ So that I conceive the whole use of the terms purity, spotlessness, etc., in moral subjects, to be merely metaphorical, and that it is rather that we illustrate these virtues by the desirableness of material purity, than that we desire material purity because it is illustrative of these virtues. ”

“ At the root of his moral being we find—a key to the understanding of his character—that same profound need of purity which drove him to the sources of sacred science. Purity in the material and the moral sense is what he desires for himself and others, always and in all things. ”

“ I need not quote the words. I need only remind you that purity must have its home in the heart, if it is to be the glory of the life. "Blessed are the pure in heart," is the Master's beatitude. "You are pure, you say ”

“ And, on the other hand, the truest inducements, motives, and powers for purity are found in that great word which is all 'according to godliness,' and is meant much rather to make us good than to make us wise. ”

“ We shall be safe, however, when we are conscious of the fineness of our achievements, the purity of our intentions, the dignity of our actions, or the mere joy of our feelings, in permitting criticism to do its work and pursuing our way. ”

“ Such spiritual operations required the greatest purity and piety, real purity and true piety, without disguise or subterfuge, for man had to face himself and his God, before whom no disguise was possible. ”

“ Purity knows how to deal in an offhand way with its own nature and needs, being full of the courage of its own convictions as to what it wants to do and be.
“The courage of purity is full of simplicity and high achievement ”

“ Do what comes to your hand to do with all honesty and completeness, and you will make your life noble. Subdue your passions, master your evil thoughts, observe the laws of temperance and purity, be truthful, be firm, be honest, and keep ever before you the law of Christ as the law of your daily work, and you will make your life noble. ”

“ The lessons of truth and piety, of purity and virtue, of charity and benevolence, of sincerity and self-forgetfulness, would be taught by example. A whole people could here find in illustration the sacredness of the family and the holiness of home. ”

“ What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude has become possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it. ”

“ Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. “A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind’s approximation to God.” ”

“ Therefore purity bears no likeness to acts (af`ál) , nor can the human nature be destroyed by means of effort. The quality of purity is unrelated to acts and states, and its name is unconnected with names and nicknames—purity is characteristic of the lovers (of God) , who are suns without cloud—because purity is the attribute of those who love, and the lover is he that is dead (fání) in his own attributes and living (báqí) in the attributes of his Beloved, and their “states” resemble the clear sun in the opinion of mystics (arbáb-i ḥál) . ”

“ If we are true to ourselves, and true to our Lord, and true to the relation between us, the purity of character, which is popularly supposed to be the meaning of holiness, will come. Not without effort, not without set-backs, not without slow advance, but it will come; for he that is consecrated to the Lord is 'separated' from iniquity. ”

“ In this way a possibility of unlimited moral progress was secured, since the cause of purity was indissolubly bound to the general and irresistible advance of religious and moral enlightenment in the chosen people. ”

“ His life is nothing else but pure and sincere love to God and men. It is composed of humanity and kindness, of meekness and patience, of humility and obedience even unto death, of mercy and righteousness, of truth and simplicity, of purity and holiness, of contempt of the world, its honors, wealth, and pleasures ”

“ Not to count themselves pure when they are not. Oh, no! We are told, over and over again, that God wants His people to be pure, and THAT PURITY IN THEIR HEARTS IS THE VERY CENTRAL IDEA AND END AND PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST ”

“ The virtue of purity, for example, attains in this way a fairly exact definition: purity in a man is that course of conduct which makes him to be a good husband and father, in a woman that which makes her to be a good wife and mother, or which helps other people so to prepare and keep themselves. ”

“ Men comprehend the inner life by what they see and do. They come to God through ceremonies and forms.
18. And so when you would make men know that sins are washed away by purity in life, a rite symbolic may be introduced.
19. In water wash the bodies of the people who would turn away from sin and strive for purity in life.
20. This rite of cleansing is a preparation rite and they who thus are cleansed comprise the Church of Purity. ”

“ Wherefore, we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, and our uncleanliness, and our nakedness, and the righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment and their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even with the robe of righteousness. ”

“ It exhibits them as, in the main, poor, uninstructed, not unfrequently fanatical, enthusiasts, the purity of whose lives, the sincerity of whose belief, and the cheerfulness of whose endurance of privation and rough usage, in what they consider a just cause, command sincere respect. ”

“ Whence, by a good conscience, we are authorized to understand a mind, conscious to itself of beneficent actions. And thus the Apostle’s intention will be, to insinuate to us, that, to be free from depraved affections, we must be actively virtuous; and that we must be zealous 122 in good works, if we would attain to that purity of heart, which is proper to beget the genuine virtue of Christian charity. ”

“ And as purity thus clears the medium, so it also assists the faculty. And that by the same general way, by composing the passions, which otherwise not only trouble and thicken the medium, but also divide and disperse the faculty. ”

“ This consciousness tends to give a new value to all the "moralities": it awakens a [243] new percipiency as to good and evil; in particular, the great duty of purity in relation to the man himself, and to others, acquires a new sacredness. ”

“ Purity.—The shifting of the emotional centre brings with it, first, increase of purity. The sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: the saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world. In some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless severity. ”

“ Purity, as the earthly type of holiness, forms the foundation for glory. In the actual performance of the matter, therefore, the putting on of the clean mitre is mentioned first, and then the clothing with festal robes. ”