Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/24

16 replaced her bonnet and shawl, and glided lightly from the room. Never in her life had she enjoyed herself so well among her young companions, as she did during that evening. Need we tell our readers the cause?

We might go on and instance a hundred different ways in which a young girl may be called on to practise self-denial for the good of others. If she have younger brothers and sisters, these calls will be made daily, and almost hourly. But, in obeying them, she will always find a higher and purer pleasure than in disregarding them.

The true spirit of religion, we have said, is the love of being useful to others. This love no one has naturally. We are all lovers of ourselves more than lovers of God, and lovers of the world more than lovers of our neighbor; and it is hard for us to conceive how there is any real pleasure to be found in denying our own selfish desires in order to seek the good of another. A very little experience, however, will make us plainly see that the inward delight arising from the consciousness of having done good to another is the sweetest of all delights we have ever known. But this love of being useful to others does not easily take the place of our natural selfishness. And it never does,