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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 till 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 witchery 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, good heart.