Mr. Speer's Address.

Mr. Robert E. Speer's address in the Union yesterday evening was a plea for ignorance of all uncleanness. The proverb that "knowledge is power," he said, is only half true. Some knowledge is indeed a source of power, but some is a source of weakness and death, or worse. And of those things of which knowledge may be worse than death, a man should have the courage and the will to remain absolutely ignorant.

While there are comparatively few men who do not wish to take a clean and decent attitude in life, there are many who choose the right, and yet think it is not necessary to draw a perfectly sharp line between good and evil. They think they may toy a little with sin without harm to themselves; indeed they often believe that every well-educated man should have some knowledge of the prurient and unclean.

Phillips Brooks said that every man's stock of knowledge should be such that he would not be ashamed to expose it to the full view of all men. And when one stops to consider it, there are sufficient reasons why one's attitude towards what is unclean should be the attitude of whole-souled, strong-willed ignorance.

The first reason is that ignorance is power. It is often said that the spotless man cannot help and sympathize with the man who has sinned, because of his own inexperience in sin-as if a doctor should not set a broken arm unless his own arm had been fractured. A man does not need to soil his won life to help to purify the lives of others. The great power in life belongs not to the man who is tarnished but to the man who is innocent. It is Jesus Christ, the unstained, who is the most powerful figure in the New Testament.

Another reason is that ignorance of uncleanness is the secret of freedom. There is something terrible about the grip of evil. The more a man tries to forget it, the more it grips him. Even the purest man knows something of its slavery and shame.

A third reason is that this ignorance holds the secret of freshness and interest in life. There is nothing new about sin. The man who knows the unclean side of life is the man who loses his vivacity and enthusiasm. It is only along the lines of the good that freshness and interest lie.

Another reason for maintaing this ignorance is that the whole beauty of life hangs upon it. There is a fascination about the sinner who has repented but he does not appeal to us as a little child appeals to us. The life which has been spotted with evil can never be as fair as it might have been.

A last reason for remaining ignorant of evil is that this ignorance is the only possible basis for honest whole-souled fellowship and friendship. The slightest introduction of evil into the relations of life make the best and noblest friendship impossible.