To make serious reply to this deceitful, deceptive and empty pretence,
is a little hard to do. To see a person who can not go three squares
to the house of God on foot, especially if it should be a little
unpleasant, who can dance till midnight, “for amusement,” speaking of
its being _healthful_, is ridiculous in the extreme. It may be, for
anything we know, that for any person who has become so useless as
to sit, day after day, and not move enough to circulate their blood,
dancing would prove healthful. But there are a thousand things better
for them. A visit to the sick, to the poor and the distressed, with
something for their necessities, would be vastly better for both soul
and body. Almost any kind of useful labor would be more healthful, and
leave vastly less remorse of conscience. But if a person has such an
aversion to labor to visiting the sick, the poor and needy, or doing
anything useful, they deserve no health, and the world will only be the
better off when they are out of it. More health, permanent happiness
and real enjoyment are found in an industrious and useful life than all
the seekers of pleasure ever knew. The man of useful life has no time
for pleasure and amusement. His time is taken up, wholly taken up,
and he is so happy in it, that it appears short, in constant acts of
usefulness. But pleasure-seekers are constantly devising how to while
away time, to pass it off or murder it. Time appears the greatest
burthen they have, through their whole life, and, at death, the trouble
is, that they have not more time. The good man appears pressed through
life to do the good he desires to do, but when death comes, his work
is done, well done, and he dies in hope of hearing the Lord say, “Well
done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joys of thy Lord.”