"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Roscoe, "I hope you will; your father and I have had much conversation together on the subject, and we both think you can do it and be very religious too. You know that religion is not to deprive us of any enjoyments. Indeed, I think when such religious people as we have always been indulge ourselves in these fashionable amusements, we do more to recommend religion than such austere professors as our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens."
To which Miss Roscoe replied: "I certainly think that religious people ought to recommend religion by their cheerfulness and their pleasantry, as well as by their strict moral deportment; but I do not see how that religion, which requires us to avoid a conformity to the vain customs of the world, can be recommended by a compliance with them. If we do as others do, we shall be thought like them; and I am sure, from my personal knowledge, that those who find pleasure in balls and theatrical amusements are as averse to the religion of the Bible as those who openly and avowedly reject it."
"My dear," said Mrs. Roscoe, "I hope you do not intend to say that all who avail themselves of such recreations are destitute of religion. I do not like such sweeping charges. You would condemn some of the most amiable and virtuous persons living!"
"A person may be amiable without being religious, and virtuous, even while he rejects as fabulous that scheme of salvation which we admit to be true. If, then, we admit it to be true, does it not become us, if we wish to preserve consistency, to conform ourselves to its _preceptive_ parts? And does it not require us to become a peculiar people? And in what can that peculiarity be manifested but by an entire avoidance of the habits and customs which the world sanctions? You know, mamma, that I often acted a most prominent part in these scenes of fashionable gaiety, and that I intermingled with the indiscriminate throng, participating in the glow of feeling enkindled in their breast, and am, therefore, intimately familiar with the moral qualities and the religious sentiments of those who derive their highest gratification from such sources; and while I would proceed with great caution in invading the province of the heart, yet it is my decided opinion that no person who has ever felt the transforming influence of divine truth can sanction them."