'The only way to have

The only way to have a pure and noble life

A lady lost a little daughter, her only child. Her sorrow was very great, and to keep her hands busied in something about the child, she took a photograph of her that she had, and with rare skill painted it until the sweet face seemed to live before her eyes.

When the work was completed, she laid the picture away in a drawer. In a few days she looked at it again, and it was covered with ugly blotches. The eyes and the features were sadly marred.

Again, with loving patience, she went over the photograph with her brush until it was as beautiful as before, with all the fascination of life. Then she laid it away again, but when she went to it, she found it a second time covered with marring spots. It was altogether ruined.

There was something wrong with the paper. Some chemical ingredient in it, mingling with the paint, produced the spots. No matter how beautiful the picture was made on its surface — up ever out of the heart of the paper, would come the ooze of decay, spoiling it all.

So it is with human lives. While the heart is wrong — it is no use to try to make the character right. Evermore up out of the evil heart — comes the pollution of sin, and spots and blotches everything! The only way to have a pure and noble life — is by having a clean, holy heart.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances." Ezekiel 36:26-27

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