This is not, however, the case with you. Ignorant and inexperienced as you are, you must now select, from among all the modes of life placed within your reach, those which you consider the best suited to secure your welfare for time and for eternity. Your decision now, even in very trifling particulars, must have some effect upon your state in both existences. The most unimportant event of this life carries forward a pulsation into eternity, and acquires a solemn importance from the reaction. Every feeling which we indulge or act upon becomes a part of ourselves, and is a preparation, by our own hand, of a scourge or a blessing for us throughout countless ages.
It may seem a matter of comparative unimportance, of trifling influence over your future fate, whether you attend Lady A.'s ball to-night, or Lady H.'s to-morrow. You may argue to yourself that even those who now think balls entirely sinful have attended hundreds of them in their time, and have nevertheless become afterwards more religious and more useful than others who have never entered a ball-room. You might add, that there could be more positive sin in passing two or three hours with two or three people in Lady A's house in the morning than in passing the same number of hours with two or three hundred people in the same house in the evening. This is indeed true; but are you not deceiving yourself by referring to the mere overt act? That is, as you imply, past and over when the evening is past; but it is not so with the feelings which may make the ball either delightful or disagreeable to you; feelings, which may be then for the first time excited, never to be stilled again,—feelings which, when they once exist, will remain with you throughout eternity; for even if by the grace of God they are finally subdued, they will still remain with you in the memory of the painful conflicts, the severe discipline of inward and outward trials, required for their subjugation. Do not, however, suppose that I mean to attribute exclusive or universally injurious effects to the atmosphere of a ball-room. In the innocent smiles and unclouded brow of many a fair girl, the experienced eye truly reads their freedom from any taint of envy, malice, or coquetry; while, on the other hand, unmistakeable and unconcealed exhibitions of all these evil feelings may often be witnessed at a so-called "religious party."
This remark, however, is not to my purpose; it is only made par parenthèse, to obviate any pretence for mistaking my meaning, and for supposing that I attribute positive sin to that which I only object to as the possible, or rather the probable occasion of sin. I always think this latter distinction a very important one to attend to in discussing, in a more general point of view, the subject of amusements of every kind: it is, however, enough merely to notice it here, while we pass on to the question which I urge upon you to apply personally to yourself, namely, whether the ball-room be not a more favourable atmosphere for the first excitement and after-cultivation of many feminine failings than the quieter and more confined scenes of other social intercourse.
It is by tracing the effect produced on our own mind that we can alone form a safe estimate of the expediency of doubtful occupations. This is the primary point of view in which to consider the subject, though by no means the only one; for every Christian ought to exhibit a readiness in his own small sphere to emulate the unselfishness of the great apostle: "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."[89] The fear of the awful threatenings against those who "offend," i.e. lead into sin, any of "God's little ones,"[90] should combine with love for those for whom the Saviour died, to induce us freely to sacrifice things which would be personally harmless, on the ground of their being injurious to others.
This part of the subject is, however, of less importance for our present consideration, as from your youth and inexperience your example cannot yet exercise much influence on those around you.
Let us therefore return to the more personal part of the subject, namely, the effect produced on your own mind. I have spoken of feminine "failings:" I should, however, be inclined to apply a stronger term to the first that I am about to notice—the love of admiration, considering how closely it must ever be connected with the fatal vice of envy. She who has an earnest craving for general admiration for herself, is exposed to a strong temptation to regret the bestowal of any admiration on another. She has an instinctive exactness in her account of receipt and expenditure; she calculates almost unconsciously that the time and attention and interest excited by the attractive powers of others is so much homage subtracted from her own. That beautiful aphorism, "The human heart is like heaven—the more angels the more room for them," is to such persons as unintelligible in its loving spirit as in its wonderful philosophic truth. Their craving is insatiable, once it has become habitual, and their appetite is increased and stimulated, instead of being appeased, by the anxiously-sought-for nourishment.
These observations can only strictly apply to the fatal desire for general admiration. As long as the approbation only of the wise and good is our object, it is not so much that there are fewer opportunities of exciting the feeling of envy at this approbation being granted to others; there is, further, an instinctive feeling of its incompatibility with the very object we are aiming at. The case is altogether different when we seek to attract those whose admiration may be won by qualities quite different from any connected with moral excellence. There is here no restraint on our evil feelings: and when we cannot equal the accomplishments, the beauty, and the graces of another, we may possibly be tempted to envy, and, still further, to depreciate, those of the hated rival—perhaps, worse than all, may be tempted to seek to attract attention by means less simple and less obvious. If the receiving of admiration be injurious to the mind, what must the seeking for it be! "The flirt of many seasons" loses all mental perceptions of refinement by long practice in hardihood, as the hackneyed practitioner unconsciously deepens the rouge upon her cheek, until, unperceived by her blunted visual organs, it loses all appearance of truth and beauty. Some instances of the kind I allude to nave come before even your inexperienced eyes; and from the shrinking surprise with which you now contemplate them, I have no doubt that you would wish to shun even the first step in the same career. Indeed, it is probable that you, under any circumstances, would never go so far in coquetry as those to whom your memory readily recurs. Your innate delicacy, your feminine high-mindedness may, at any future time, as well as at present, preserve you from the bad taste of challenging those attentions which your very vanity would reject as worthless if they were not voluntarily offered.
Nevertheless, even in you, habits of dissipation may produce an effect which to your inmost being may be almost equally injurious. You may possess an antidote to prevent any external manifestations of the poisonous effects of an indulged craving for excitement; but general admiration, however spontaneously offered and modestly received, has nevertheless a tendency to create a necessity for mental stimulants. This, among other ill-effects, will, worst of all, incapacitate you from the appreciative enjoyment of healthy food.
The heart that with its luscious cates
The world has fed so long,
Could never taste the simple food
That gives fresh virtue to the good,
Fresh vigour to the strong.[91]
The pure and innocent pleasures which the hand of Providence diffuses plentifully around us will, too probably, become tasteless and insipid to one whose habits of excitement have destroyed the fresh and simple tastes of her mind. Stronger doses, as in the case of the opium-eater, will each day be required to produce an exhilarating effect, without which there is now no enjoyment, without which, in course of time, there will not be even freedom from suffering.