does it do, uncle?"

"Do you not often complain of coldness and deadness in your religious
feelings? of lifelessness and want of interest?"

"Yes, uncle."

"Well, this coldness and lifelessness is the result of forcing your mind
to one set of thoughts and feelings. You become worn out--your feelings
exhausted--deadness and depression ensues. Now, turn your mind off from
these subjects--divert it by a cheerful and animated conversation, and
you will find, after a while, that it will return to them with new life
and energy."

"But are not foolish talking and jesting expressly forbidden?"

"That text, if you will look at the connections, does not forbid jesting
in the abstract; but jesting on immodest subjects--which are often
designated in the New Testament by the phraseology there employed. I
should give the sense of it--neither filthiness, nor foolish talking,
nor indelicate jests. The kind of sprightly and amusing conversation to
which I referred, I should not denominate foolish, by any means, at
proper times and places."

"Yet people often speak of gayety as inconsistent in Christians--even
worldly people," said Miss B.

"Yes, because, in the first place, they often have wrong ideas as to
what Christianity requires in this respect, and suppose Christians to be
violating their own principles in indulging in it. In the second place,
there are some, especially among young people, who never talk in any
other way--with whom this kind of conversation is not an amusement, but
a habit--giving the impression that they never think seriously at all.
But I think, that if persons are really possessed by the tender,
affectionate, benevolent spirit of Christianity--if they regulate their
temper and their tongue by it, and in all their actions show an evident
effort to conform to its precepts, they will not do harm by occasionally
indulging in sprightly and amusing conversation--they will not make the
impression that they are not sincerely Christians."

"Besides," said Helen, "are not people sometimes repelled from religion
by a want of cheerfulness in its professors?"

"Certainly," replied her uncle, "and the difference is just this: if a
person is habitually trifling and thoughtless, it is thought that they
have _no_ religion; if they are ascetic and gloomy, it is attributed
_to_ their religion; and you know what Miss E. Smith says--that 'to be
good and disagreeable is high treason against virtue.' The more
sincerely an