, Who can bring a clean
thing out of an unclean?

Societies, especially young societies, are very impressible, and their
character--the quality, that is, of their life--is fixed by prevailing
influences, which show themselves in fashions, habits, and tendencies, in
the common types of thought, or taste, or behaviour, or conduct.

This is obvious enough to every one; but what we do not seem always to
consider is the extent to which these influences or fashions have their
origin, so far as our own society is concerned, in our own lives. They
are, in fact, in the main the general outcome of our separate lives.

Do you, then, think of yourselves--this is the practical question to
which these considerations lead up--as sources or centres of such
influence, contributing your personal share to this common life?

It may make an immense difference to all your thoughts about your common
habits, and your standards of daily conduct and duty, if you remember
this ancient saying, that no man can bring a clean thing out of an
unclean. And so I have to ask you to consider a little how the common
life of this society is dependent upon your life.

Every individual acts upon the life of the community around him as a
power or influence in it. This seems so obvious when mentioned as hardly
to deserve the mentioning, and yet in practice we are very apt to
overlook it.

You and I, all of us, without any exception, are endowed with some share
of this power.

In this respect, as in other ways, there is, of course, every possible
difference in degree between one and another, between the strong and the
weak, between those who are conspicuous and those who are obscure; but
there is no other difference.

Every one of you possesses some share of this mysterious, and undefined,
and immeasurable gift of influencing his neighbour's life. Every sin
that may have a root in your heart is acting, though you may not think of
it or intend it, as a pestilent influence outside your own life; every
virtue you exercise may be causing similar virtues to take root and grow
in some one near to you.

The tone of the society or life around you is, in fact, just the sum and
expression of such individual influences as these.

We may not be able to trace all the various and multitudinous germs or
seeds of such influence as they flow out from us in our daily round of
common life; but we are conscious that each and every single soul, all
through its earth