Pleasures of the Most Excellent Kind

[Because this is a rather long section in the book, I'm only including the main points Jonathan Edwards makes on the topic.]

By embracing religion and virute, young people may obtain the greatest beauty and most excellent ornaments. One way in which young people are wont to seek pleasure is in adorning themselves, endeavoring to recommend themselves in a fine appearance. Youth is a time wherein nature is in its bloom,and young people are often wont to value themselves by their beauty and place their happiness much in outward ornaments. But by embracing true religion and virtue, they would have the graces of God's Spirit, the beauty and ornaments of angels, and the love image of God. They might obtain that which would render them far more lovely than the greatest outward beauty possible; they might obtain that beauty which would render them lovely in the eyes of all wise men, the angels of heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the great God Himself. They would have those ornaments of the mind that are more beautiful and glorious than the robes of princes.

By walking in the ways of true religion and virtue, young people will obtain the sweetest pleasures, the sweetest delights of love and friendship. A life of true religion and virtue is a life of divine love, a life of love to God, a love which affords greater pleasures by far than that of earthly lovers. A life of love is the sweetest life in the world; but no love affords such pleasures as love to God. Divine love is an affection that is of a more sublime and excellent nature than love to an earthly object; it is a purer flame, and the pleasure it affords is a purer stream.

Young people, by walking in the ways of true piety, obtain the sweetest gratification of appetite, not of carnal, sensual appetites, but of those that are more excellent, of spiritual and divine appetites, holy desires and inclinations; those that, as they are more excellent in themselves, are more suitable to the nature of man and are far more extensive, so are capable of gratification and enjoyments more exquisite, sweet and delightful.

Those young people that walk in the ways of religion and virtue have the most pleasant company. Young people commonly seek pleasure in company, and oftentimes spend much of their time in mirth among their companions. But none have such delightful company as those who live in the exercise of holiness and virtue, for they have their conversation in heaven (Philippians 3:20). The Lord Jesus Christ has become their Friend and Companion. Oftentimes, when they are alone and seem to the world to spend their time solitarily, they indeed have company enough; it is their delight to withdraw from all the world the more freely and intimately to converse with Jesus Christ. When someone has a dear friend that he greatly sets his affection upon, he does not much want other company; it will be a pleasure to him to be withdrawn from others and the more fully and freely to enjoy intercourse and conversation with him.

Thus young people, by walking in the ways of religion and virtue, obtain pleasures of the excellent kind.