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.

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:—­