cording to the word:

"Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing." [13]

Is such glad thankfulness so rare in our days that people have
forgotten how it acts? And would such dancing be possible now? I do
not know. But answer this question, and you settle at once the other
perplexity whether Christians may dance. For there is no other sort of
dancing permitted to them, than this which springs up out of the
mercies of the Lord, and is all consecrated to his praise.

it is not quite the only sort mentioned in the Bible; but the others do
not look attractive upon paper. One of them indeed comes more properly
under another head, and the rest are all idolatrous; in the service and
honour of that biggest idol, the world; whether any special graven
image was set up or not. Dances indulged in only by heathen, or by
nominal Christians who had swerved from their allegiance.

When Moses tarried long in the mount, receiving his orders, the people,
you remember, grew tired and restless,--in want of recreation, we
should call it now,--and then they "quickly corrupted themselves."
Weary of waiting, impatient of the monotony of their life, out of their
own possessions they made themselves an idol, and then--danced before
it! conducting themselves as well became those who had chosen a god
that could neither hear nor see.

"The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." [14]

And you will find this is always just what people do after unhallowed
recreation: they _never_ rise up to do good work. Test your amusements
by that. Recreation _should_ be a re-creation to every noble end.

Neither joy, nor thankfulness, nor the unbending from labour, was there
among those poor Israelites--those people of the Lord in name; but only
lawless mirth and unhallowed indulgence.

"He saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger waxed hot." [15]

You think I am very hard upon dancing; and I have reason. "Two years
ago," said a young girl to me, "you told me that if I went on doing
these things I should myself change; that I _could_ not do them, and
keep myself. I was almost angry then, but do you know it has come
true? I _have_ changed. Things that I minded and shrank from then, I
never notice now. I have got used to them, as you said. It frightens
me when I think of it." Poor child!--neither fright nor warning have
stayed her course since then. A ceaseless thirst for excitement, an
endless round of unsatisfyin