And in this form dancing is detrimental to soul and body. The late hours which it involves are a fatal objection to it. The confined atmosphere in which it is practiced is injurious. The style of the refreshments common on such occasions, and the untimely hour when they are taken, increase the evil. The undue excitement exhausts instead of invigorating the vital powers. The sudden transitions from the heated ball-room to the chill night air are not safe, as many an early grave can testify. These things conspire to make a ball or a dancing party a direct attack upon the health of those who attend it. Instead of invigorating the weak, it requires vigor to endure the exhausting strain. A single night thus spent will make its visible mark upon the face. They who escape with the least injury are languid and dull, and perhaps irritable, for days afterward, while some are totally unfitted for their usual avocations, and require time to recover, as if from an attack of illness. While physical health is thus impaired or imperiled, there is no promise of mental or moral improvement to compensate the injury. There is no time for rational conversation, and any attempt in that direction would be deemed out of place. The liveliest imagination can see no moral good in the performance. The whole thing produces no higher pleasure than engine-boys feel while running in search of the fire; and in the matter of aching heads and low spirits, it is probable that those who run with the engine and those who attend the ball are about alike the next day. 2. _Dancing has had a historic name._ There was, indeed, in ancient times, a solemn religious ceremony, which, through the poverty of human language, was called dancing. When Pharaoh and his host sank into the depths of the sea, while Israel stood safe upon the shore, Miriam and her maidens came forth with timbrels and with dances, and sang to the Lord a lofty anthem of praise and thanksgiving. When David brought home the ark of God he danced before it; but it was a strictly religious ceremony, nothing like the caperings and curvetings of our own day. There is no intimation whatever that Miriam and her maidens, or David, ever danced except on such occasions. Pleasure dances have been almost universally held in bad repute. The daughter of Herodias danced to please Herod, as he sat at the banquet, bewildered with wine; but the performer was one who could lightly ask for the life of an innocent man and a devoted servant of God; and the royal spectator was a tyrant, who could carelessly order his execution. In Rome, and Athens, and Ephesus the dancing was done by the degraded and the vile, who employed it as a means of advertising their profession. The dancers of Egypt and India at the present day are of the same character.