There is an analogy throughout between the mental and the physical intoxication; and it continues most strikingly, even when we consider both in their most favourable points of view, by supposing the victim to self-indulgence at last willing to retrace her steps. This fearful advantage is granted to our spiritual enemy by wilful indulgence in sin; that it is only when trying to adopt or resume a life of sobriety and self-denial that we become 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."[93] Without profaneness, and in all sincerity, they might have thanked God for the, to them, harmless recreation.
This I suppose possible in the case of some, but for you it is not so. The keen susceptibilities of your excitable nature will prevent your resting contented without sharing in the more exciting pleasures of the ball-room; and your powers of adaptation will easily tempt you forward to make use of at least some of those means of attracting general admiration which seem to succeed so well with others.
"Wherever there is life there is danger;" and the danger is probably in proportion to the degree of life. The more energy, the more feeling, the more genius possessed by an individual, the greater also are the temptations to which that individual is exposed. The path which is safe and harmless for the dull and inexcitable—the mere animals of the human race—is beset with dangers for the ardent, the enthusiastic, the intellectual. These must pay a heavy penalty for their superiority; but is it therefore a superiority they would resign? Besides, the very trials and temptations to which their superior vitality subjects them are not alone its necessary accompaniment, but also the necessary means for forming a superior character into eminent excellence.
Self-will, love of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce any high moral superiority.
There is an analogy between the metaphysical truths above spoken of and that fact in the physical history of the world, that coal-mines are generally placed in the neighbourhood of iron-mines. This is a provision involved in the nature of the thing itself; and we know that, without the furnaces thus placed within reach, the natural capabilities of the useful ore would never be developed.