npleasant consequences of
ill-temper in your own case alone. You are still young, life has gone
prosperously with you, the present is fair and smiling, and the future
full of bright hopes; you have, comparatively speaking, few occasions
for irritation or despondency. A naturally warm temper is seen in you
under the least forbidding aspect, combined, as it is, with gay animal
spirits, strong affections, and ready good nature. You need only to look
around, however, to see the probability of things being quite different
with you some years hence, unless a thorough present change is effected.
Look at those cases (only too numerous and too apparent) in which
indulged habits of ill-temper have become stronger by the lapse of time,
and are not now softened in their aspect by the modifying influences of
youth, of hope, of health. See those victims to habitual ill-humour, who
are weighed down by the cares of a family, by broken health, by
disappointed hopes, by the inevitably accumulating sorrows of life. Do
you not know that they bestow wretchedness instead of happiness, even on
those who are dearest and nearest to them? Do you not know that their
voice is dreaded and unwelcome, as it sounds through their home,
deprived through them of the lovely peace of home? Is not their step
shunned in the passage, or on the stairs, in the certainty of no kind or
cheerful greeting? Do you not observe that every subject but the most
indifferent is avoided in their presence, or kept concealed from their
knowledge, in the vain hope of keeping away food for their excitement of
temper? Deprived of confidence, deprived of respect, their society
shunned even by the few who still love them, the unfortunate victims of
confirmed ill-temper may at last make some feeble efforts to shake off
their voluntarily imposed yoke.

But, alas! it is too late; in feeble health, in advanced years, in
depressed spirits, their powers of "working together with God" are
altogether broken. They may be finally saved indeed, but in this life
they can never experience the peace that religion bestows on its
faithful self-controlling followers. They can never bestow happiness,
but always discomfort on those whom they best love; they can never
glorify God by bringing forth the fruits of "a meek and quiet spirit."
This is sad, very sad, but it is not the less true. Strange also it is,
in some respects, that when sin is deeply mourned over and anxiously
prayed against, its pow