bad habits against which I am now warning you, will be perpetually
refreshing in your mind vivid pictures of past sorrows, wrongs, and
annoyances: your imagination, at the same time, will continually present
to you, under the most exaggerated forms, and in the most striking
colours, every possible unpleasantness that is likely to occur in the
future. You may thus create for yourself a life apart, quite distinct
from the real one, depriving yourself by wilful self-injury of the power
of enjoying whatever advantages, successes, and pleasures, your heavenly
Father may think it safe for you to possess.

Happiness, as far as it can be obtained in the path of duty, is a duty
in itself, and an important one: without that degree of happiness which
most people may secure for themselves, independent of external
circumstances, neither health, nor energy, nor cheerfulness can be
forthcoming to help us through the task of our daily duties.

It is indeed true, that, under the most favourable circumstances, the
thoughtful will never enjoy so much as others of that which is now
generally understood by the word happiness. Anxieties must intrude upon
them which others know nothing of: the necessary business of life, to be
as well executed as they ought to execute it, must at times force down
their thoughts to much that is painful for the present and anxious for
the future. They cannot forget the past, as the light-hearted do, or
life would bring them no improvement; but the same difficulties and
dangers would be rushed into heedlessly to-morrow, that were experienced
yesterday, and forgotten to-day; and not only past difficulties and
dangers are remembered, but sorrows too: these they cannot, for they
would not, forget.

In the contemplation of the future also, they must exercise their