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Remedy for Sentimentalism
291
society which was corrupting in its influence. Miss C was a corrupt,
evil-minded woman. Her association with you increased the evil
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which was already upon you. “Evil communications corrupt good
manners.” At the present time your condition is not acceptable in
the sight of God; yet you imagine that you have no desire to live.
But should you be taken at your expressed wish, and your life cease,
your case would be hopeless indeed. You are neither prepared for
this world nor the next.
You imagine that you cannot walk, or ride, or even exercise, and
you settle into a cold, dead apathy. You are a grief and anxiety to
your indulgent parents, and no comfort to yourself. You can rally,
you can work, you can shake off this terrible indifference. Your
mother needs your aid; your father needs the comfort you can give
him; your brothers need a kindly care from their elder sister; your
sisters need your instruction. But here you sit upon the stool of
indolence, dreaming of unrequited love. For your own soul’s sake,
have done with this folly. Read your Bible as you have never read
it before. Engage in home duties, and lighten the cares of your
overburdened, overworked parents. You may not be able to do a
great amount at first, but every day increase the task you set yourself.
This is the surest remedy for a diseased mind and an abused body.
If you possess earnestness and steadiness of purpose, your mind
will come back, in a degree, to dwelling upon more healthful, pure
subjects. Self-indulgence has degenerated by degrees into such a
wantonness of will as knows not how to please itself. Instead of
regulating your actions by reason and principle, you suffer yourself
to be guided by every slight and momentary impulse. This makes
you appear variable and inconstant. It is vain for others to seek to
please you, for you could not please yourself, even if all your wishes
were indulged. You are a capricious child and have become sick of
yourself through very selfishness.
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This wretched state is the result of unwise sympathy and flattery.
You have had a very good mind, but it has become unbalanced by
being directed in a wrong channel. You now amount to little else
than a blank in society. This need not be. You can do for yourself
that which no one else can do for you. You have duties to perform,
but you have so long yielded to a helpless condition that you imagine