want to speak of a matter which is smaller, and not by any means so
sinful: and which yet in practice is often more tormenting to a
truly tender conscience, because it is more common and more
continual.

How often, when one examines oneself, whether one be in love and
charity with all men, one must recollect that there are many people
whom one does not like. I do not mean that one hates them. Not in
the least: but they do not suit one. There is something in them
which we cannot get on with, as the saying is. Something in their
opinions, manners, ways of talking; even--God forgive us--merely in
their voice, or their looks, or their dress, which frets us, and
gives us what is called an antipathy to them. And one dislikes
them; though they never have harmed us, or we them; and we know
them, perhaps, to be better people than ourselves. Now, are we in
love and charity with these people? I am afraid not.

I know one is tempted to answer; but I am afraid the answer is worth
very little--Why not? We cannot help it. You cannot expect us to
like people who do not suit us: any more than you can expect us to
like a beetle or a spider. We know the beetle or the spider will
not harm us. We know that they are good in their places, and do
good, as all God's creatures are and do; and there is room enough in
the world for them and us: but we have a natural dislike to them,
and cannot help it; and so with these people. We mean no harm in
disliking them. It is natural to us; and why blame us for it.

Now what is the mistake here? Saying that it is _natural_ to us.
We are not meant to live according to nature, but according to
grace; and grace must conquer nature, my friends, if we wish to save
our souls alive. It is nature, brute nature, which makes some dogs
fly at every strange dog they meet. It is nature, brute nature,
which makes a savage consider every strange savage as his enemy, and
try to kill him. But unless nature be conquered in that savage, it
will end, where following brute nature always ends, in death; and
the savages will (as all savages are apt to do) destroy each other
off the face of the earth, by continual war and murder. It is brute
nature which makes low and ignorant persons hate foreign people,
because their dress and language seem strange. But unless that
natural feeling had been in most of us conquered by the grace of
God, which is the spirit of justice and of love, then England would
ha