Serious Hours of a Young Lady | Page 6

of thoughts and images
which will be the torment of your conscience and the bane of your life.
That sentiment to which you imprudently pandered is perhaps the
source of countless fears, regrets, remorse and sorrows. That imprudent
glance is perhaps the first spark of a conflagration which nothing can
extinguish, and which will destroy your brightest hopes.
If, as yet, you are ignorant of all the evil of which an imprudent glance
may be productive, recall to mind the example furnished us by the
Sacred Scriptures in the person of David, who, for his imprudent glance
at the wife of Urias, committed two crimes, the names of which you
should ignore, and suffered a life of sorrow, repentance, bitterness and
anguish: a life which even yet serves to express the sorrow and
repentance of imprudent souls who have yielded to the allurements of
the senses. And, nevertheless, David had attained the age of discretion
when the mind is firm and the will is strong; David was the cherished
one of God; he was just and virtuous, one on whom God had special
designs of mercy. What a terrible example! What a severe, but at the
same time instructive, lesson!
Young Christian soul, may it never be your sad experience to learn the

effect of an imprudent glance which would exact from you the bitter
wages of countless tears and regrets. Is there anything in the material
world so beautiful, so beneficent as the light and heat that we receive
from the sun; is there among material things a livelier image of the
goodness of God towards us? And, nevertheless, let the sun shine upon
the young and tender flower or vine immediately after a shower of rain,
and it will cause them to droop and wither. The reason is quite obvious,
for at no time is a being so frail and delicate as at the moment of its
formation. There is a critical period for all beings, during which the
greatest possible care is necessary. In this relation, what is said of the
body may be said of the soul; character is formed and developed
according to the same laws which regulate the development of the
physical constitution.
Are you not aware of the extraordinary care that must be taken of those
organs that are the chief motors of the body, while they are under
process of development? Are you not aware that the fresh air which
you inhale and which purifies and invigorates the blood contains for
you the germ of death, which justifies in your good parents the anxious
care they take of your health, but which you perhaps regard as entirely
unnecessary?
Now, what the lungs are to the human body, that the heart is to the soul.
It is by the heart that we breathe the spiritual and divine atmosphere
that sustains our moral life. This atmosphere is composed of three
elements,--truth, goodness and beauty, which envelop and penetrate the
soul's substance; as it is the respiratory organ of the mind it follows that
for the heart, as well as for the lungs, there is an epoch of development
which is dangerous, and which, consequently, demands the greatest
possible care; it is the epoch of your age at present. An emotion too
vivid, an indiscreet thought, an imprudent glance, is quite sufficient to
imperil the interesting and delicate process by which your moral
constitution is formed, to accelerate the development of the heart, and
thus give to this most important organ a pernicious precocity or a false
direction.
Your mother, anxious and always trembling for your welfare, guards it
with tender solicitude from all the dangers to which it might be exposed.
But her vigilance cannot equal that of your guardian angel, nor the care
with which he removes you from contact with all that might in any way

tarnish the purity of your soul, or trouble its peace and harmony. It is to
you that the Holy Ghost addresses these words of the Proverbs: With
all watchfulness keep thy heart, because life issueth out from it.
[Footnote: Proverbs iv 23.]
The heart is, therefore, the seat of the moral life, and as the source is
known by the waters that flow from it, so will the moral life partake of
the character and bear the impress of the heart whence it proceeds. This
is true of youth in general, but more particularly so of young ladies.

CHAPTER III
.
THE HEART OF WOMAN; THE NECESSITY OF REGULATING
IT DURING YOUTH.
The most humble, most chaste, most holy of women, Blessed Mary
ever Virgin, she who is the ornament and glory of her sex who, in
consequence of her privilege of being the mother of God, merited to be
elevated so high above all creatures, revealed