XIII.

SENTIMENT _versus_ SENTIMENTALITY.

FREEDOM from sentimentality opens the way for true sentiment.

An immense amount of time, thought, and nervous force is wasted in
sentimentalizing about "being good." With many, the amount of talk
about their evils and their desire to overcome them is a thermometer
which indicates about five times that amount of thought Neither the
talk nor the thought is of assistance in leading to any greater
strength or to a more useful life; because the talk is all talk, and
the essence of both talk and thought is a selfish, morbid pleasure
in dwelling upon one's self. I remember the remark of a young girl
who had been several times to prayer-meeting where she heard the
same woman say every time that she "longed for the true spirit of
religion in her life." With all simplicity, this child said: "If she
longs for it, why doesn't she work and find it, instead of coming
every week and telling us that she longs?" In all probability the
woman returned from every prayer-meeting with the full conviction
that, having told her aspirations, she had reached the height
desired, and was worthy of all praise.

Prayer-meetings in the old, orthodox sense are not so numerous as
they were fifty years ago; but the same morbid love of telling one's
own experiences and expressing in words one's own desires for a
better life is as common as ever.

Many who would express horror at these public forms of