Listen to the conversation of almost any chance gathering of young men, and you will soon hear the double-meaning joke, the attempt of some one to be witty, which serves as much to expose the shallowness of his pate as the corruption and rottenness of his miserable heart. Holy Scripture says that "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." How true this is! But if one were to use this criterion in judging the thoughts that fill the hearts of many amongst us, how debased and pitiable must be their condition! And how shocking it is, my dear brethren, to meet a young man whose dress and manner at first give evidence of respectability and good breeding, but who, when an immodest allusion is made or an impure joke uttered, is the first to shout with laughter! Such a one is well described by our Blessed Lord as "a whited sepulchre? full of dead men's bones." {176} And yet these whited sepulchres are not very rare in the community. You meet them in every walk of life--in the counting-room and in the factory, at the "respectable" club-room as well as in the grog-shop, and alas! must we say it, among Catholics as well as among non-Catholics. Yes, among Catholics, who have been elevated to a supernatural state through the merits and sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ; whose hearts have been sealed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and on whose tongue the Body and Blood of our Lord has often been placed--even these have dared to cherish in their hearts and express with their tongues thoughts and sentiments that would shock the moral sense even of the unregenerate. Are they laboring under the incredible and awful delusion that they commit no great sin when they entertain or give expression to such thoughts? Do they think that they escape mortal sin when their impurity is expressed in the form of a joke or a pun, or when they by a laugh countenance and encourage the like impurity in others? Ah! my dear brethren, it is to be feared that too many consciences have been lulled to sleep by this cunning device of the devil. The first introduction to sin for many a one has been the listening with pleasure to the double-meaning word uttered, perhaps, by a companion, or while in the company of others. He was then put on trial not by the devil alone, but by the one also who uttered it. But the blush of modesty which rose instinctively to his cheek from a pure heart was by an effort suppressed through human respect, and the voice of conscience, that told him to administer a rebuke to the minister of Satan or abandon his company at once, was hushed into silence, and the demon of impurity from that moment took possession. {177} Take warning, then, my dear brethren, from the words of St. Paul, and never countenance by a laugh or in any other way any offence against holy purity, in whatsoever form it may be expressed; "for know ye that no unclean person hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." -------------------