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Underneath may be a desire for self-gratification, ease, or luxury. If you are troubled by a lack of sensible devotion in worship, examine your affections. Possibly you may find some tiny roots twining around something of this world. Spiritual dryness may be the result of sloth. "Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep." Prov. 19:15. Spiritual idleness soon results in spiritual dryness.
The only danger is, that, the individual being alone and having all the means for self-gratification in his or her own hands, so to speak, it is quite possible to indulge in the action too freely, which, of course, leads to bad results. But the act itself is not bad. On the contrary, when kept within bounds, it is healthful and wholesome.
From that time forward it was with ever increasing malevolence and rancour that he hungered for the enjoyments of which he was deprived. His lowly position exasperated him; the paltry hundred and fifty francs which he received every month seemed to him an irony of fate. Never did man burn with such desire for self-gratification.
At times, too, he remembered that she had talked a sort of pensive sentimentalism, of a slightly religious nature; but the least idea of a moral purpose in life of self-denial, and devotion to something higher than immediate self-gratification seemed never to have entered her head. What is more, John had found his attempts to introduce such topics with her always unsuccessful.
Can we doubt that he said, in substance if not in actual words: "As this man has arisen from the grave, so you must also arise from your old childish life of amusement and self-gratification and, ENTER INTO the life of the tribe, the life of the Spirit of the tribe." Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to find him. They cry out Yi!
Ah! happiness, he saw, did not consist in self-gratification, but in giving up for others. Then he closed his eyes like a child who has wept but is comforted; and it was then that he heard the little brown mouse talking with the flowers. Now the mouse was at the mill, as we know, so this was very odd. "Why is the miller so sad?" asked a tall lily.
Evelyn, Wollaston and herself, three known quantities, and an unknown quantity of happiness, and perhaps life itself, which must be evolved from them. She eliminated herself and her own happiness not with any particular realization of self-sacrifice. She came of a race of women to whom self-sacrifice was more natural than self-gratification.
Self-gratification controlled him, the desire that men should once again know how useless it was to attempt rivalry with him. He had a reputation to maintain, and he would maintain it at all hazards. He had begun to weigh carefully in his mind the plans he had formed, when the door opened. "Ah! you loveable little trickster!" he exclaimed as Harriet Payne entered. "Come and let me thank you.
Now, with a clearer vision, he could see faults where, before, every defect was thrown into shadow by an all-obscuring beauty. On the next morning, as we have said, Mr. Alexander entered his library, to take another look at his purchase. He did not feel very happy. Many thousands of dollars had he spent in order to secure the means of self-gratification; but the end was not yet gained.
A girlhood of uncontrolled power, such as hers, could lead but to one result. Self-gratification is the worst form of selfishness, and never can work good to any one.
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