If we had a disagreeable habit which we wanted to conquer and asked a
friend to remind us with a pinch every time he saw the habit, wouldn't
it seem very strange if when he pinched us, according to agreement, we
jumped and turned on him, rubbing our arm with indignation that he
should have pinched? Or would it not be even funnier if we made the
pinch merely a reminder to go on with the habit?

The Lord is pinching us in that way all the time, and we respond by
being indignant at or complaining at our fate, or reply by going more
deeply into our weaknesses of character by allowing them to be positive
and the pinches only to emphasize them to us.

One trouble is that we do not recognize that there is an agreement
between us and the Lord, or that we recognize and then forget it; and
yet there should be--there is--more than an agreement, there is a
covenant. And the Lord is steadily, unswervingly doing His part, and we
are constantly failing in ours. The Lord in His loving kindness
pinches--that is, reminds us--and we in our stupid selfishness do not
use His reminders.

As an example of making our faults positive and our effort to conquer
them negative, one very common form is found in a woman I know, who has
times of informing her friends quite seriously and with apparent regret
of her very wrong attitudes of mind. She tells how selfish she is and
she gives examples of the absolute selfishness of her thoughts when she
is appearing to do unselfish things. She tells of her efforts to do
better and confesses what she believes to be the absolute futility of
her effort. At first I was quite taken in by these confessions, and
attracted by what seemed to be a clear understanding of herself and her
own motives, but after a little longer acquaintance with her, made the
discovery, which was at first surprising to me, that her confessions of
evil came just as much from conceit as if she had been standing at the
mirror admiring her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found
quite as much in mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy.
Finally this woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her
contemplation of her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to
be positive while her attitude against them is negative; she has
actually nursed them and been positive herself with their positiveness.
Her attitude against them was therefore more than ordinarily negative.

The more common way of being negative while