SCRIPTURE PHOTOGRAPH OF PURITY.

The word "photograph" means "light-writing" — the delicate and accurate penmanship of sunbeams. The Bible is truly written with the light-beams of the Holy Spirit. Let us look at its photograph of heart purity.

1. Soul whiteness. "Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." "Purified, made white, tried;" "arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of the saints;" "Washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

The pure white light of the sun is but an outer, visible representation of the uncreated bright luminosity of the Divine nature. Sin is dark, gloomy, lowering; holiness is bright, shining, transparent. It is the very nature of sin to hide itself; it is the very nature of truth and holiness to be clear, light, open. God has provided a baptism of whiteness which is the great essential need of our natures.

2. Cleanness is a prominent idea of the picture of Bible holiness. "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean." "From all your idols and filthiness will I cleanse you." "Be ye clean." There is in sin a filthiness: even the least sin will defile. Uncleanness has two branches to it: "filthiness of the flesh and spirit." Filthiness of the flesh embraces fornication, licentiousness, wine, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, opium, gluttony, slovenliness, laziness, etc. Filthiness of the Spirit embraces pride, anger, retaliation, pomp, display, malice, back biting, covetousness, deceit, flattery, self-praise, boasting, self-seeking, love of place, love of money, fear of man, fear of death, unbelief, jealousy, bitterness, etc. The purging away of all such filthiness of the flesh and spirit constitutes true Scriptural cleanness.

3. Softness of heart is an essential feature of purity. "I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh." "God maketh my heart soft." "My heart is like wax, it is melted." Ps. xxii: 14. "Be gentle, tender-hearted, forgiving one another."

We each form an individual, mental conception of Christian purity. It is to be feared that many, in formulating the idea of heart purity, have not fully included this trait of heart softness in their "mind-picture" of holiness. Sin inevitably hardens; it incrusts the affections with an icy coldness and toughness; it benumbs the con science. Some may have intense conceptions of moral cleanness, and yet have a degree of over-strictness, of hardness and inflexibility of affection. How painful it is to see professing Christians, and sometimes professors of perfect love, show a domineering, overbearing spirit to their servants or others. We must be freed from harshness, coldness, stiffness, irony, biting sarcasm, overbearing, dictatorialness, etc. A pure heart is a soft, tender, gentle, lowly, affectionate, child-like heart.

The world is not only full of blackness and filthiness, but it is full of icy, metallic-heartedness, and it is sad to find so few Christians that really show a soft, loving, child-like heart. In seeking for a pure heart, let us get the full Bible view of it, and never rest till we have all its whiteness, its cleanness and its tenderness.