directions.

In conclusion, I would remind you, that it may, some time or other, be
the will of God to afflict you with heavy and permanent sickness,
habitually affecting your temper, generating despondency, impatience,
and irritation, and making the whole mind, as it were, one vast sore,
shrinking in agony from every touch. If such a trial should ever be
allotted to you, (and it may be sent as a punishment for the neglect of
your present powers of self-control,) how will you be able to avoid
becoming a torment to all around you, and at the same time bringing
doubt and ridicule on your profession of religion?

If, during your present enjoyment of mental and bodily health, you do
not acquire a mastery over your temper, it will be almost impossible to
do so when the effects of disease are added to the influences of nature
and habit. On the other hand, from Galen down to Sir Henry Halford,
there is high medical authority for the important fact that self-control
acquired in health may be successfully exercised to subdue every
external sign, at least, of the irritation and depression often
considered inevitably attendant on many peculiar maladies. There are few
greater temporal rewards of obedience than the consciousness, under such
trying circumstances, of still possessing the power of procuring peace
for oneself, love from one's neighbour, and glory to God.

Remember, finally, that every day and every hour you pause and hesitate
about beginning to control your temper, may probably expose you to years
of more severe future conflict. "Now is the accepted time, now is the
day of salvation," is fully as true when asserted of the beginning of
the slow moral process by which our own conformity "to the image of the
Son" is effected, as of the saving moment in which we "arise and go to
our Father."[35]

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Zach. xiii. 6.

[26] Heb. ii. 18.

[27] James iv. 3.

[28] Jer. xliv. 4.

[29] Isa. viii. 20.

[30] Col. i. 12.

[31] Archdeacon Manning.

[32] Matt. xxv. 24.

[33] Ps. cxli. 3.

[34] Gal. vi. 7.

[35] Luke xv.

LETTER III.

FALSEHOOD AND TRUTHFULNESS.

I do not accuse you of being a liar--far from it; on the contrary, I
believe that if truth and falsehood were distinctly placed before you,
and the opportunity of a deliberate choice afforded you, you would
rather expose yourself to serious injury than submit to the guilt of
falsehood. It is, therefore, with the more regret that