e wife to reverence her husband; and
you are to observe attentively that there is no exception made for the
cases of those whose parents or husbands are undeserving of love and
reverence. There must, then, be a power granted, to such as ask and
_strive_ to acquire it, of closing the mental eyes resolutely against
those features in the character of the persons to whom we are bound by
the ties of duty, which would unfit us, if much dwelt upon, for
obedience in such important particulars as the love and reverence we are
commanded to feel towards them.

Even where there is such high principle and such uncommon strength of
character as to induce perseverance in the mere external forms of
obedience, how vain are all such while the heart has turned aside from
the appointed path of duty, and broken those commands of God which, we
should always remember, have reference to feeling as well as to
action:--"Honour thy father and thy mother;"[59] "Let the wife see that
she reverence her husband."[60]

In the habitual exercise of that self-control which I now urge upon you,
you will experience an ample fulfilment of that promise,--"The work of
righteousness shall be peace."[61] Instead of becoming daily further and
further severed from those who are indeed your inferiors, but towards
whom God has imposed duties upon you, you will daily find that, in
proportion to the difficulty of the task, will be the sweetness and the
peace rewarding its fulfilment. No affection resulting from the most
perfect sympathy of mind and heart will ever confer so deep a pleasure,
or so holy a peace, as the blind, unquestioning, "unsifting"[62]
tenderness which a strong principle of duty has cherished into
existence.

Glorious in every way will be the final result to those who are capable
(alas! few are so) of such a course of conduct. Far different in its
effects from the blind tenderness of infatuated passion is the noble
blindness of Christian self-control. While the one warms into existence,
or at least into open manifestation, all the selfishness and wilfulness
of the fondled plaything, the other creates a thousand virtues that were
not known before. Flowers spring up from the hardest rocks, the coldest,
sternest natures are gradually softened into gentleness, the faults of
temper or of character that never meet with worrying opposition, or
exercise unforgiving influence, gradually die away, and fade from the
memory of both. The very atmosphere alon