"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 ensue. 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 persons are 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 and earnestly religious a person is, the more important it is that he should be agreeable." "But, uncle," said Helen, "what does that text mean that we began with? What are idle words?"