Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/291

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The Capacity of Enjoyment.
289

of recipients, the deeper, purer, and more ineffable the joy experienced by the communicator. Can angels know a higher felicity than the bliss of initiating the redeemed into their own states of beatitude?

Happiness would not be so rare, so fleeting, nor should we pursue the fugitive through so many forbidden paths, if the healthy eapacity for enjoyment were cultivated as an actual, essential virtue. The mental powers would be preserved in perennial freshness, the poetry of existence would not be stripped away with the blossoms of youth, Ennui would not be the presiding genius in so many households, nor ingratitude for simple blessings the dominant sin of so many hearts.