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