at length another time; at present I wish to call your attention to the danger which lurks in the too great familiarity with persons of the other sex under any circumstance.
Such familiarity, though it may begin in a harmless way with a pure feeling of friendly liking, too frequently degenerates into a passion which blinds the understanding and leads to the committal of a thousand sins of impurity, first in thought, then in words, and later also in actions. Alas! how many young persons in this way succumb to the enemy of chastity in human form.
2. Before ail else, avoid clandestine and nocturnal meetings.
Martinian, who is honored as a saintly anchorite, led a pious life upon a mountain for a long series of years. On one occasion there came to him a woman who had lost her way in the wilderness, and implored him, in most affecting language, to give her shelter and protection. What did he do? Remembering his own weakness, he refused to 9 How her to set foot in his hut. He justly feared that in the form of this woman the enemy of chastity might appear, and bring about his fall. " Fire and straw do not do well together," was his fitting reply.
If, therefore, this holy man, who by years of penance had practised and confirmed himself in virtue, avoided an apparently necessary meeting with a woman, how much more has a young man, m whom sensuality is
