exposed to the severest temporal punishments
of self-indulgence. As long as a course of this self-indulgence is
continued, if external things should prosper with us, comparative peace
and happiness may be enjoyed--(if indeed the loftier pleasures of
devotion to God, self-control, and active usefulness can be
forgotten,--supposing them to have been once experienced.) It is only
when the grace of repentance is granted that the returning child of God
becomes at the same time alive to the sinfulness of those pleasures
which she has cultivated the habit of enjoying, and to the mournful fact
of having lost all taste for those simple pleasures which are the only
safe ones, because they alone leave the mind free for the exercise of
devotion, and the affections warm and fresh for the contemplation of
"the things that belong to our peace."

Sad and dreary is the path the penitent worldling has to traverse;
often, despairing at the difficulties her former habits have brought
upon her, she looks back, longingly and lingeringly, upon the broad and
easy path she has lately left. Alas! how many of those thus tempted to
"look back" have turned away entirely, and never more set their faces
Zion-ward.

From the dangers and sorrows just described you have still the power of
preserving yourself. You have as yet acquired no factitious tastes; you
still retain the power of enjoying the simple pleasures of innocent
childhood. It now depends upon your manner of spending the intervening
years, whether, in the trying period of middle-age, simple and natural
pleasures will still awaken emotions of joyousness and thankfulness in
your heart.

I have spoken of thankfulness,--for one of the best tests of the
innocence and safety of our pleasures is, the being able to thank God
for them. While we thus look upon them as coming to us from his hand, we
may safely bask in the sunshine of even earthly pleasures:--

The colouring may be of this earth,
The lustre comes of heavenly birth.[92]

Can you feel this with respect to the emotions of pleasurable excitement
with which you left Lady M.'s ball? I am no fanatic, nor ascetic; and I
can imagine it possible (though not probable) that among the visitors
there some simple-minded and simple-hearted people, amused with the
crowds, the dresses, the music, and the flowers, may have felt, even in
this scene of feverish and dangerous excitement, something of "a child's
pure delight in little things."