The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Young Lady's Mentor, by A Lady


This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net





Title: The Young Lady's Mentor
       A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends


Author: A Lady

Release Date: March 28, 2005  [eBook #15490]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG LADY'S MENTOR***


E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, David Newman, Cori Samuel, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page images
generously made available by the Internet Archive Children's Library and
the University of California Library (Davis)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Internet
      Archive Children's Library. See
      http://www.archive.org/details/UF00002046

      Images of pages 244-284 were kindly provided by Special Collections
      at the University of California Library (Davis)





THE YOUNG LADY'S MENTOR

A Guide to the Formation of Character.
In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends

by

A LADY.

Philadelphia:
H.C. Peck & Theo. Bliss.

1852







PREFACE


The work which forms the basis of the present volume is one of the most
original and striking which has fallen under the notice of the editor.
The advice which it gives shows a remarkable knowledge of human
character, and insists on a very high standard of female excellence.
Instead of addressing herself indiscriminately to all young ladies, the
writer addresses herself to those whom she calls her "Unknown Friends,"
that is to say, a class who, by natural disposition and education, are
prepared to be benefited by the advice which she offers. "Unless a
peculiarity of intellectual nature and habits constituted them friends,"
she says in her preface, "though unknown ones, of the writer, most of
the observations contained in the following pages would be
uninteresting, many of them altogether unintelligible."

She continues: "That advice is useless which is not founded upon a
knowledge of the character of those to whom it is addressed: even were
the attempt made to follow such advice, it could not be successful."

"The writer has therefore neither hope nor wish of exercising any
influence over the minds of those who are not her 'Unknown Friends.'
There may, indeed, be a variety in the character of these friends; for
almost all the following Letters are addressed to different persons; but
the general intellectual features are always supposed to be the same,
however the moral ones may differ."

"One word more must be added. All of the rules and systems recommended
in these Letters have borne the test of long-tried and extensive
experience. There is nothing new about them but their publication."

The plan of the writer of the Letters enables her to give specific and
practical advice, applicable to particular cases, and entering into
lively details; whereas, a more general work would have compelled her to
confine herself to vague generalities, as inoperative as they are
commonplace.

The intelligent reader will readily appreciate and cordially approve of
the writer's plan, as well as the happy style in which it is executed.

To the "Letters to Unknown Friends" which are inserted entire, the
editor has added, as a suitable pendant, copious extracts from that
excellent work, "Woman's Mission," and some able papers by Lord Jeffrey,
the late accomplished editor of the Edinburgh Review.

Thus composed, the editor submits the work to the fair readers of
America, trusting that it will be found a useful and unexceptionable
"Young Lady's Mentor."




Contents

Contentment                                   7

Temper                                       31

Falsehood and Truthfulness                   52

Envy                                         61

Selfishness and Unselfishness                74

Self-Control                                 93

Economy                                     117

The Cultivation of the Mind                 137, 164

Amusements                                  193

The Influence of Women on Society           218

The Sphere of Woman's Influence             227

Education of Women                          233

Love--Marriage                              244

Literary Capabilities of Women              256

Ennui, and the Desire to be Fashionable     267

The Influence of Personal Character         270

On the Means of Securing Personal Influence 276




LETTER I.

CONTENTMENT.


It is, perhaps, only the young who can be very hopefully addressed on
the present subject. A few years hence, and your habits of mind will be
unalterably formed; a few years hence, and your struggle against a
discontented spirit, even should you be given grace to attempt it, would
be a perpetually wearisome and discouraging one. The penalty of past sin
will pursue you until the end, not only in the pain caused by a
discontented habit of mind, but also in the consciousness of its
exceeding sinfulness.

Every thought that rebels against the law of God involves its own
punishment in itself, by contributing to the establishment of habits
that increase tenfold the difficulties to which a sinful nature exposes
us.

Discontent is in this, perhaps, more dangerous than many other sins,
being far less tangible: unless we are in the constant habit of
exercising strict watchfulness over our thoughts, it is almost
insensibly that they acquire an habitual tendency to murmuring and
repining.

This is particularly to be feared in a person of your disposition. Many
of your volatile, thoughtless, worldly-minded companions, destitute of
all your holier feelings, living without object or purpose in life, and
never referring to the law of God as a guide for thought or action, may
nevertheless manifest a much more contented disposition than your own,
and be apparently more submissive to the decision of your Creator as to
the station of life in which you have each been placed.

To account for their apparent superiority over you on this point, it
must be remembered that it is one of the dangerous responsibilities
attendant on the best gifts of God,--that if not employed according to
his will, they turn to the disadvantage of the possessor.

Your powers of reflection, your memory, your imagination, all calculated
to provide you with rich sources of gratification if exercised in proper
directions, will turn into curses instead of blessings if you do not
watchfully restrain that exercise within the sphere of duty. The natural
tendency of these faculties is, to employ themselves on forbidden
ground, for "every imagination of man's heart is evil continually." It
is thus that your powers of reflection may only serve to give you a
deeper and keener insight into the disadvantages of your position in
life; and trivial circumstances, unpleasant probabilities, never dwelt
on for a moment by the gay and thoughtless, will with you acquire a
serious and fatal importance, if you direct towards them those powers of
reasoning and concentrated thought which were given to you for far
different purposes.

And while, on the one hand, your memory, if you allow it to acquire the
bad habits against which I am now warning you, will be perpetually
refreshing in your mind vivid pictures of past sorrows, wrongs, and
annoyances: your imagination, at the same time, will continually present
to you, under the most exaggerated forms, and in the most striking
colours, every possible unpleasantness that is likely to occur in the
future. You may thus create for yourself a life apart, quite distinct
from the real one, depriving yourself by wilful self-injury of the power
of enjoying whatever advantages, successes, and pleasures, your heavenly
Father may think it safe for you to possess.

Happiness, as far as it can be obtained in the path of duty, is a duty
in itself, and an important one: without that degree of happiness which
most people may secure for themselves, independent of external
circumstances, neither health, nor energy, nor cheerfulness can be
forthcoming to help us through the task of our daily duties.

It is indeed true, that, under the most favourable circumstances, the
thoughtful will never enjoy so much as others of that which is now
generally understood by the word happiness. Anxieties must intrude upon
them which others know nothing of: the necessary business of life, to be
as well executed as they ought to execute it, must at times force down
their thoughts to much that is painful for the present and anxious for
the future. They cannot forget the past, as the light-hearted do, or
life would bring them no improvement; but the same difficulties and
dangers would be rushed into heedlessly to-morrow, that were experienced
yesterday, and forgotten to-day; and not only past difficulties and
dangers are remembered, but sorrows too: these they cannot, for they
would not, forget.

In the contemplation of the future also, they must exercise their
imagination as well as their reason, for the discovery of those evils
and dangers which such foresight may enable them to guard against: all
this kind of thoughtfulness is their wisdom as well as their instinct;
which makes it more difficult for them than it is for others to fulfil
the reverse side of the duty, and to "be careful for nothing."[1]

To your strong mind, however, a difficulty will be a thing to be
overcome, and you may, if you only will it, be prudent and sagacious,
far-sighted and provident, without dwelling for a moment longer than
such duties require on the unpleasantnesses, past, present, and future,
of your lot in life.

Having thus seen in what respects your superiority of mind is likely to
detract from your happiness, in the point of the colouring given by your
thoughts to your life, let us, on the other hand, consider how this same
superiority may be so directed as to make your thoughts contribute to
your happiness, instead of detracting from it.

I spoke first of your reasoning powers. Let them not be exercised only
in discovering the dangers and disadvantages likely to attend your
peculiar position in life; let them rather be directed to discover the
advantages of those very features of your lot which are most opposed to
your natural inclinations. Consider, in the first place, what there may
be to reconcile you to the secluded life you so unwillingly lead.
Withdrawn, indeed, you are from society,--from the delightful
intercourse of refined and intellectual minds: you hear of such
enjoyments at a distance; you hear of their being freely granted to
those who cannot appreciate them as you could, (safely granted to them
for perhaps this very reason.) You have no opportunity of forming those
friendships, so earnestly desired by a young and enthusiastic mind; of
admiring, even at a reverential distance, "emperors of thought and
hand." But then, as a compensation, you ought to consider that you are,
at the same time, freed from those intrusions which wear away the time,
and the spirits, and the very powers of enjoyment, of those who are
placed in a more public position than your own. When you do, at rare
intervals, enjoy any intercourse with congenial minds, it has for you a
pleasurable excitement, a freshness of delight, which those who mix much
and habitually in literary and intellectual society have long ceased to
enjoy: while the powers of your own mind are preserving all that
originality and energy for which no intellectual experience can
compensate, you are saved the otherwise perhaps inevitable danger of
adopting, parrot-like, the tastes and opinions of others who may indeed
be your superiors, but who, in a copy, become wretchedly inferior to
your real self. Time you have, too, to cultivate your mind in such a
manner, and to such a degree, as may fit you to grace any society of
the kind I have described; while those who are early and constantly
engaged in this society are often obliged, from mere want of this
precious possession, to copy others, and resign all identity and
individuality. To you, nobly free as you are from the vice of envy, I
may venture to suggest another consideration, viz. the far greater
influence you possess in your present small sphere of intellectual
intercourse, than if you were mixed up with a crowd of others, most of
them your equals, many your superiors.

If you have few opportunities of forming friendships, those few are
tenfold more valuable than many acquaintance, among a crowd of whom,
whatever merits you or they might possess, little time could be spared
to discover, or experimentally appreciate them. The one or two friends
whom you now love, and know yourself beloved by, might, in more exciting
and busy scenes, have gone on meeting you for years without discovering
the many bonds of sympathy which now unite you. In the seclusion you so
much deplore, they and you have been given time to "deliberate, choose,
and fix:" the conclusion of the poet will probably be equally
applicable,--you will "then abide till death."[2] Such friends are
possessions rare and valuable enough to make amends to you for any
sacrifices by which they have been acquired.

Another of your grievances, one which presses the more heavily on those
of graceful tastes, refined habits, and generous impulses, is the very
small proportion of this world's goods which has fallen to your lot.
You are perpetually obliged to deny yourself in matters of taste, of
self-improvement, of charity. You cannot procure the books, the
paintings, you wish for--the instruction which you so earnestly desire,
and would so probably profit by. Above all, your eyes are pained by the
sight of distress you cannot relieve; and you are thus constantly
compelled to control and subdue the kindest and warmest impulses of your
generous nature. The moral benefits of this peculiar species of trial
belong to another part of my subject: the present object is to find out
the most favourable point of view in which to contemplate the
unpleasantness of your lot, merely with relation to your temporal
happiness. Look, then, around you; and, even in your own limited sphere
of observation, it cannot but strike you, that those who derive most
enjoyment from objects of taste, from books, paintings, &c., are exactly
those who are situated as you are, who cannot procure them at will. It
is certain that there is something in the difficulty of attainment which
adds much to the preciousness of the objects we desire; much, too, in
the rareness of their bestowal. When, after long waiting, and by means
of prudent management, it is at last within your power to make some
long-desired object your own, does it not bestow much greater pleasure
than it does on those who have only to wish and to have?

In matters of charity this is still more strikingly true--the pleasure
of bestowing ease and comfort on the poor and distressed is enhanced
tenfold by the consciousness of having made some personal sacrifice for
its attainment. The rich, those who give of their superfluities, can
never fully appreciate what the pleasures of almsgiving really are.

Experience teaches that the necessity of scrupulous economy is the very
best school in which those who are afterwards to be rich can be
educated. Riches always bring their own peculiar claims along with them;
and unless a correct estimate is early formed of the value of money and
the manner in which it can be laid out to the best advantage, you will
never enjoy the comforts and tranquillity which well-managed riches can
bestow. It is much to be doubted whether any one can skilfully manage
large possessions, unless, at some period or other of life, they have
forced themselves, or been forced, to exercise self-denial, and
resolutely given up all those expenses the indulgence of which would
have been imprudent. Those who indiscriminately gratify every taste for
expense the moment it is excited, can never experience the comforts of
competency, though they may have the name of wealth and the reality of
its accompanying cares.

Still further, let your memory and imagination be here exercised to
assist in reconciling you to your present lot. Can you not remember a
time when you wanted money still more than you do now?--when you had a
still greater difficulty in obtaining the things you reasonably desire?
To those who have acquired the art of contentment, the present will
always seem to have some compensating advantage over the past, however
brighter that past may appear to others. This valuable art will bring
every hidden object gradually into light, as the dawning day seems to
waken into existence those objects which had before been unnoticed in
the darkness.

Lastly, your imagination, well employed, will make use of your partial
knowledge of other people's affairs to picture to you how much worse off
many of those are,--how much worse off you might yourself be. You, for
instance, can still accomplish much by the aid of self-denial; while
many, with hearts as warm in charities, as overflowing as your own, have
not more to give than the "cup of cold water," that word of mercy and
consolation.

You may still further, perhaps, complain that you have no object of
exciting interest to engage your attention, and develop your powers of
labour, and endurance, and cleverness. Never has this trial been more
vividly described than in the well-remembered lines of a modern poet:--

    "She was active, stirring, all fire--
    Could not rest, could not tire--
    To a stone she had given life!
    --For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife,
    Never in all the world such a one!
    And here was plenty to be done,
    And she that could do it, great or small,
    She was to do nothing at all."[3]

This wish for occupation, for influence, for power even, is not only
right in itself, but the unvarying accompaniment of the consciousness of
high capabilities. It may, however, be intended that these cravings
should be satisfied in a different way, and at a different time, from
that which your earthly thoughts are now desiring. It may be that the
very excellence of the office for which you are finally destined
requires a greater length of preparation than that needful for ordinary
duties and ordinary trials. At present, you are resting in peace,
without any anxious cares or difficult responsibilities, but you know
not how soon the time may come that will call forth and strain to the
utmost your energies of both mind and body. You should anxiously make
use of the present interval of repose for preparation, by maturing your
prudence, strengthening your decision, acquiring control over your own
temper and your own feelings, and thus fitting yourself to control
others.

Or are you, on the contrary, wasting the precious present time in vain
repinings, in murmurings that weaken both mind and body, so that when
the hour of trial comes you will be entirely unfitted to realize the
beautiful ideal of the poet?--

    "A perfect woman, nobly plann'd
    To warn, to counsel, to command:
    The reason firm, the temperate will,
    Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill."[4]

Then, again, I would ask you to make use of your powers of reflection
and memory. Reflect what trials and difficulties are, in the common
course of events, likely to assail you; remember former difficulties,
former days or weeks of trial, when all your now dormant energies were
developed and strained to the utmost. You felt then the need of much
greater powers of mind and body than those which you now complain are
lying dormant and useless. Further imagine the future cases that may
occur in which every natural and acquired faculty may be employed for
the great advantage of those who are dear to you, and when you will
experience that this long interval of repose and preparation was
altogether needful.

Such reflections, memories, and imaginations must, however, be carefully
guarded, lest, instead of reconciling you to the apparent uselessness of
your present life, they should contribute to increase your discontent.
This they might easily do, even though such reflections and memories
related only to trials and difficulties, instead of contemplating the
pleasures and the importance of responsibilities. To an ardent nature
like yours, trials themselves, even severe ones, which would exercise
the powers of your mind and the energies of your character, would be
more welcome than the tame, uniform life you at present lead.

The considerations above recommended can, therefore, be only safely
indulged in connection with, and secondary to, a most vigilant and
conscientious examination into the truth of one of your principal
complaints, viz. that you have to do, like the Duke's wife, "nothing at
all."[5] You may be "seeking great things" to do, and consequently
neglecting those small charities which "soothe, and heal, and bless."
Listen to the words of a great teacher of our own day: "The situation
that has not duty, its _ideal_, was never yet occupied by man. Yes,
here, in this poor, miserable, pampered, despised actual, wherein thou
even now standest, here, or nowhere, is thy _ideal_; work it out,
therefore, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in
thyself; the impediment, too, is in thyself: thy condition is but the
stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of--what matters whether the
stuff be of this sort or of that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be
poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest
bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this
of a truth,--the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here, or
nowhere,' couldst thou only see."

When you examine the above assertions by the light of Scripture, can you
contradict their truth?

Let us, however, ascend to a still higher point of view. Have we not
all, under every imaginable circumstance, a work mighty and difficult
enough to develope our strongest energies, to engage our deepest
interests? Have we not all to "work out our own salvation with fear and
trembling?"[6] Professing to believe, as we do, that the discipline of
every day is ordered by Infinite Love and Infinite Wisdom, so as best to
assist us in this awfully important task, can we justly complain of any
mental void, of any inadequacy of occupation, in any of the situations
of life?

The only work that can fully satisfy an immortal spirit's cravings for
excitement is the work appointed for each of us. It is one, too, that
has no intervals of repose, far less of languor or _ennui_; the labour
it demands ought never to cease, the intense and engrossing interest it
excites can never vary or lessen in importance. The alternative is a
more awful one than human mind can yet conceive: those who have not
fulfilled their appointed work, those who have not, through the merits
of Christ, obtained the "holiness without which no man shall see the
Lord,"[7] "must depart into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and
his angels."[8]

With a hell to avoid, and a heaven to obtain, do you murmur for want of
interest, of occupation!

In the words of the old story, "Look below on the earth, and then above
in heaven:" remember that your only business here is to get there; then,
instead of repining, you will be thankful that no great temporal work is
given you to do which might, as too often happens, distract your
attention and your labours from the attainment of life eternal. Having
been once convinced of the awful and engrossing importance of this "one
thing" we have to "do,"[9] you will see more easily how many minor
duties may be appointed you to fulfil, on a path that before seemed a
useless as well as an uninteresting one. For you would have now learned
to estimate the small details of daily life, not according to their
insignificance, not as they may influence your worldly fate, but as they
may have a tendency to mould your spirit into closer conformity to the
image of the Son.[10] You will now no longer inquire whether you have
any work to do which you might yourself consider suitable to your
capabilities and energies; but whether there is within your reach any,
the smallest, humblest work of love, contemned or unobserved before,
when you were more proud and less vigilant.

Look, then, with prayer and watchfulness into all the details of your
daily life, and you will assuredly find much formerly-unnoticed "stuff,"
out of which "your ideal" may be wrought.

You may, for instance, have no opportunity of teaching on an enlarged
scale, or even of taking a class at a Sunday-school, or of instructing
any of your poor neighbours in reading or in the word of God. Such
labours of love may, it is possible, though not probable, be shut out of
your reach: if, however, you are on the watch for opportunities, (and we
are best made quick-sighted to their occurrence in the course of the
day, by the morning's earnest prayer for their being granted to us,) you
may be able to help your fellow-pilgrims Zion-ward in a variety of small
ways. "A word in season, how good is it!" the mere expression of
religious sympathy has often cheered and refreshed the weary traveller
on his perhaps difficult and lonely way. A verse of Scripture, a hymn
taught to a child, only the visitor of a day, has often been blessed by
God to the great spiritual profit of the child so taught. Are not even
such small works of love within your reach?

Again, with respect to family duties, I know that in some cases, when
there are many to fulfil such duties, it is a more necessary and often a
more difficult task to refrain altogether from interfering in them. They
ought to be allowed to serve as a safety-valve for the energies of those
members of the family who have no other occupations: of these there will
always be some in a large domestic circle. Without, however,
interfering actively and habitually, which it may not be your duty to
do, are you always ready to help when you are asked, and to take trouble
willingly upon yourself, when the excitement and the credit of the
arrangement will belong exclusively to others? This is a good sign of
the humility and lovingness of your spirit: how is the test borne?

Further, you may complain that your conversation is not valued, and that
therefore you have no excitement to exertion for the amusement of
others; that your cheerfulness and good temper under sorrows and
annoyances are of no consequence, as you are not considered of
sufficient importance for any display of feeling to attract attention.
When I hear such complaints, and they are not unfrequent from the
younger members of large families, I have little doubt that the sting in
all these murmurs is infixed by their pride. They assure me, at the same
time, that if there was any one to care much about it, to watch
anxiously whether they were vexed or pleased, they would be able to
exercise the strictest control over their feelings and temper,--and I
believe it, for here their pride and their affection would both come to
the assistance of duty. What God requires of us, however, is its
fulfilment when all these things are against us. The effort to control
grief, to conceal depression, to conquer ill-temper, will be a far more
acceptable offering in his eyes, when they alone are expected to witness
it. That which now his eyes alone see will one day be proclaimed upon
the housetop.[11]

I must, besides, remind you that your proud spirit may deceive you when
it suggests, that because your sadness or your ill-humour attracts no
expressed notice or excites no efforts to remove it, it does not
therefore affect those around you. This is not the case; even the gloom
and ill-humour of a servant, who only remains a few minutes in
attendance, will be depressing and annoying to the most unobservant
master and mistress, though they might make no efforts to remove it. How
much more, then, may your want of cheerfulness and sweet temper affect,
though it may be insensibly, the peace of your family circle. Here you
are again seeking great things for yourself, and neglecting your
appointed work, because it does not to you appear sufficiently worthy of
your high capabilities. Your proud spirit needs being humbled, and
therefore, probably, it is that you will not be allowed to do great
things. No, you must first learn the less agreeable task of doing small
things, of doing what would perhaps be called easy things by those who
have never tried them. To wear a contented look when you know that,
perhaps, the effort will not be observed, certainly not appreciated,--to
take submissively the humblest part in the conversation, and still bear
cheerfully that part,--to bear with patience every hasty word that may
be spoken, and so to forget it that your future conduct may be
uninfluenced by it,--to remove every difficulty, the removal of which is
within your reach, without expecting that the part you have taken will
be acknowledged or even observed,--to be always ready with your
sympathy, encouragement, and counsel, however scornfully they may have
before been rejected; these are all acts of self-renunciation which are
peculiarly fitted to a woman's sphere of duty, and have a direct
tendency to cherish the difficult and excellent grace of humility; they
may, however, help to foster rather than to subdue a spirit of
discontent, if they are performed from a motive of obtaining any, even
the most exalted, human approbation. They must be done to God alone, and
then the promise is sure, "thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward
thee openly."[12] Thus, too, the art of contentment may be much more
easily learnt. Disappointment will surely sour your temper if you look
forward to human appreciation of a self-denying habit of life; but when
the approbation of God is the object sought for, no neglect from others
can excite discontent or much regret. For here there can be no
disappointment: that which comes to us through the day has all been
decreed by him, and as it must therefore give us opportunities of
fulfilling his will, and gaining his approbation, we must necessarily
"be content."

It must, indeed, be always owing to some deficiency in religious
principle, that one discontented thought is suffered to dwell in the
mind. If our heart and our treasure were in heaven,[13] should we be
easily excited to regret and irritation about the inconveniences of our
position on earth? If we sought "first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness,"[14] should we have so much energy remaining to waste on
petty worldly annoyances? If we obeyed the injunction, "have faith in
God," should we daily and hourly, by our sinful murmuring, imply such
doubts of the divine attributes of wisdom, love, and power? This is a
want of faith you do not manifest towards men. You would trust yourself
fearlessly to the care of some earthly physician; you would believe that
he understood how to adapt his strengthening or lowering remedies to
each varying feature of your case; you would even provide yourself with
remedies, which, on the faith of his skill, you would trustingly use to
meet every symptom that might arise on future occasions. But when the
Great Physician manifests a still greater watchfulness to adapt his
daily discipline to your varying temper and the different stages of your
Christian growth, you murmur--you believe not in his wisdom as you do in
that of the sons of earth.

Do not, then, take his wisdom on faith alone; you must indeed believe,
you must believe or perish; but it may be as yet too difficult a lesson
for you to believe against sense, against feeling. What I would urge
upon you is, to strengthen your weak faith by the lessons of experience,
to seek anxiously, and to pray to be enabled to see distinctly, the
peculiar manner in which each trial of your daily lot is adapted to your
own individual case.

I do not speak now of great trials, of such afflictions as crush the
sufferer in the dust. When the hand of God is so plainly seen, it is
comparatively easy to submit, and his Holy Spirit, ever fulfilling the
promise "as thy day is, so shall thy strength be,"[15] sometimes makes
the riven heart strong to bear that which, in prospective, it dares not
even contemplate. You, however, have had no trial of this nature; yours
are the petty irritations, the small vexations which "smart more because
they hold in Holy Writ no place."[16] Even at more peaceful times, when
you can contemplate with resignation the general features of your lot in
life, you cannot subdue your spirit to patience under the hourly varying
annoyances and temptations with which you are beset. The peculiar
sensitiveness of your disposition, your affectionate, generous nature,
your refinement of mind, and quick tact, all expose you to suffer more
severely than others from the selfishness, the coarse-mindedness, the
bluntness of perception of those around you. You often say, in the
bitterness of your heart, Any other trial but this I could have borne;
every other chastisement would have been light in comparison. But why
have you so little faith? Why do you not see that it is because all
these petty trials are so severe to you, therefore are they sent? All
these amiable qualities that I have enumerated, and the love which they
win for you, would make you admire and value yourself too much, unless
your system were reduced, so to speak, by a series of petty but
continued annoyances. As I said before, you must seek to strengthen your
faith by tracing the close connection between these annoyances and the
"needs be" for them. It is probably exactly at the time when you are too
much elated by praise and admiration that you are sent some
counterbalancing annoyance, or perhaps suffered to fall into some fault
of temper which will lessen you in your own eyes, as well as in those of
others. You are often troubled by some annoyance, too, when you have
blamed others for being too easily overcome by an annoyance of the very
same kind. "Stand upon" an anxious "watch," and you will see how
constantly severe judgments of others are punished by falling ourselves
into temptations similar to those which we had treated as light ones
when sitting in judgment upon others. If you would acquire the habit of
exercising faith with respect to the smallest details of your every-day
life, by such faith the light itself might be won, and your eyes be
opened to see how wondrously all things, even those which appear the
most needlessly worrying, are made to work together for your good.[17]
These are, however, but the first lessons in the school of faith, the
first steps on the road which leads to "rest in God."

Severer trials are hastening onward, for which your present petty trials
are serving as a preparatory discipline. According to the manner in
which these are met and supported, will be your patience in the hour of
deep darkness and bitter desolation. Waste not one of your present petty
sorrows: let them all, by the help of prayer, and watchfulness, and
self-control, work their appointed work in your soul. Let them lead you
each day more and more trustingly to "cast all your care upon Him who
careth for you."[18] In the present hours of tranquillity and calm, let
the light and infrequent storms, the passing clouds that disturb your
peace, serve as warnings to you to find a sure refuge before the clouds
of affliction become so heavy, and its storms so violent, that there
will be no power of seeking a haven of security. That must be sought and
found in seasons of comparative peace. Though the agonized soul may
finally, through the waves of sorrow, make its way into the ark, its
long previous struggles, and its after harrowing doubts and fears, will
shatter it nearly to pieces before it finds a final refuge. It may,
indeed, by the free grace of God, be saved at the last, but during the
remainder of its earthly pilgrimage there is no hope for it of joy and
peace in believing.

But when the hour of earthly desolation comes to those who have long
acknowledged the special providence of God in "all the dreary
intercourse of daily life," "they knew in whom they have believed,"[19]
and no storms can shake that faith. They know from experience that all
things work together for good to them that love God. In the loving,
child-like confidence of long-tried and now perfecting faith, they are
enabled to say from the depths of their heart, "It is the Lord, let him
do what seemeth him good."[20] They seek not now to ascertain the "needs
be" for this particular trial. It might harrow up their human heart too
much to trace the details of sorrows such as these, in the manner in
which they formerly examined into the details of those of daily life.
"It is the Lord;" these words alone not only still all complaining, but
fill the soul with a depth of peace never experienced by the believer
until all happiness is withdrawn but that which comes direct from God.
"It is the Lord," who died that we might live, and can we murmur even
if we dared? No; the love of Christ constrains us to cast ourselves at
his feet, not only in submission, but in grateful adoration. It is
through his redeeming love that "our light affliction, which is but for
a moment, will work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory."

Even the very depth of mystery which may attend the sorrowful
dispensation, will only draw forth a stronger manifestation of the
Christian's faith and love. She will be enabled to rejoice that God does
not allow her to see even one reason for the stroke that lays low all
her earthly happiness; as thus only, perhaps, can she experience all the
fulness of peace that accompanies an unquestioning trust in the wisdom
and love of his decrees. For such unquestioning trust, however, there
must be a long and diligent preparation: it is not the growth of days or
weeks; yet, unless it is begun even this very day, it may never be begun
at all. The practice of daily contentment is the only means of finally
attaining to Christian resignation.

I do not appeal to you for the necessity of immediate action, because
this day may be your last. I do not exhort you "to live as if this day
were the whole of life, and not a part or section of it,"[21] because it
may, in fact, be the whole of life to you. It may be so, but it is not
probable, and when you have certainties to guide you, they are better
excitements to immediate action than the most solemn possibilities.

The certainty to which I now appeal is, that every duty I have been
urging upon you will be much easier to you to-day than it would be, even
so soon as to-morrow. One hour's longer indulgence of a discontented
spirit, of rebellious and murmuring thoughts, will stamp on your mind an
impression, which, however slight it may be, will entail upon you a
lifelong struggle against it. Every indulged thought becomes a part of
ourselves: you have the awful freedom of will to make yourself what you
will to be. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,"[22] "Quench"
the Spirit[23] and the holy flame will never be rekindled. Kneel, then,
before God, even now, to pray that you may be enabled to will aright.

Before you opened these pages, some of your daily irritations were
probably preying on your mind. You have often, perhaps, recurred to the
annoyance, whatever it may be, while you read on and on. Make this
annoyance your first opportunity of victory, the first step in the path
of contentment. Pray to an ever-present God, that he may open your eyes
to see how large may have been the portion of blame to yourself in the
annoyance you complain of,--in how far it may be the due and inevitable
chastisement of some former sin; how, finally, it may turn to your
present profit, by giving you a keener insight into the evils of your
own heart, and a more indulgent view of the often imaginary wrongs of
others towards you.

Let not this trial be lost to you; by faith and prayer, this cloud may
rain down blessings upon you. The annoyance from which you are suffering
may be a small one, casting but a temporary shadow, even like the

    "Cloud passing over the moon;
    'Tis passing, and 'twill pass full soon."[24]

But ere that shadow has passed away, your fate may be as decided as that
of the renegade in poetic fiction. During the time this cloud has rested
upon you, the first link of an interminable chain of habits, for good or
for ill, may have been fastened around you. Who can tell what "Now" it
is that "is the accepted time?" We know from Scripture that there is
this awful period, and your present temptation to murmuring and
rebellion against the will of God (for it is still his will, though it
may be manifested through a created instrument) may be to you that
"Now." Pray earnestly before you decide what use you will make of it.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Phil. iv. 6.

[2] Young's Night Thoughts.

[3] "The Flight of the Duchess." Browning.

[4] Wordsworth.

[5] See page 15.

[6] Phil. ii. 12.

[7] Heb. xii. 14.

[8] Matt. xxv. 41.

[9] Phil. iii. 13.

[10] Rom. viii. 29.

[11] Luke xii. 3.

[12] Matt. vi. 18.

[13] Matt. vi. 20, 21.

[14] Matt. vi. 33.

[15] Deut. xxxiii. 25.

[16] Lyra Apostolica.

[17] Rom. viii. 28.

[18] 1 Pet. v. 7.

[19] 2 Tim. i. 12.

[20] 1 Sam. iii. 18.

[21] Jean Paul Richter.

[22] 1 Pet. v. 8, 9.

[23] Thess. v. 19.

[24] The Siege of Corinth.




LETTER II.

TEMPER.


The subject proposed for consideration in the following letter has been
already treated of in perhaps all the different modes of which it
appears susceptible. Every religious and moral motive has been urged
upon the victim of ill-temper, and it is scarcely necessary to add that
each has, in its turn, been urged in vain. This failing of the character
comes gradually to be considered as one over which the rational will has
no control; it is even supposed possible that a Christian may grow in
grace and in the knowledge of the Saviour while the vice of ill-temper
is still flourishing triumphantly.

It is, indeed, a certain fact that, unless the temper itself is
specially controlled, and specially watched over, it may deteriorate
even when the character in other respects improves; for the habit of
defeat weakens the exercise of the will in this particular direction,
and gradually diminishes the hope or the effort of acquiring a victory
over the indulged failing. It is a melancholy consideration, if it be,
as I believe, really the case, that a Christian may increase in love to
God and man, while at the same time perpetually inflicting severe wounds
on the peace and happiness of those who are nearest and dearest to her.
Worse than all, she is, by such conduct, wounding the Saviour "in the
house of his friends,"[25] bringing disgrace and ridicule upon the Holy
Name by which she is called.

In the compatibility which is often tacitly inferred between a bad
temper and a religious course of life, there seems to be an instinctive
recognition of this peculiar vice being so much the necessary result of
physical organization, that the motives proving effectual against other
sins are ineffectual for the extirpation of this. Perhaps, if this
recognition were distinct, and the details of it better understood, a
new and more successful means might be made use of to effect the cure of
ill-temper.

As an encouragement to this undertaking, there can be no doubt, from
some striking instances within your own knowledge, that there are
certain means by which, if they could only be discovered, the vice in
question may be completely subdued. Even among heathen nations, we know
that the art of self-control was so well understood, and so successfully
practised, that Plato, Socrates, and other philosophers were able to
bring their naturally fiery and violent tempers into complete subjection
to their will. Can it be that this secret has been lost along with the
other mysteries of those distant times, that the mode of controlling the
temper is now as undiscoverable as the manner of preparing the Tyrian
dye and other forgotten arts? It is surely a disgrace to those cowardly
Christians who, having in addition to all the natural powers of the
heathen moralist the freely-offered grace of God to work with them and
in them, should still walk so unworthy of the high vocation wherewith
they are called, as to shrink hopelessly from a moral competition with
the ignorant worshippers of old.

My sister, these things ought not so to be; you feel they ought not, yet
day after day you break through the resolutions formed in your calmer
moments, and repeat, probably increase, your manifestations of
uncontrolled ill-temper. This is not yet, however, in your case, a
wilful sin; you still mourn bitterly over the shame to yourself and the
annoyance to others caused by the indulgence of your ill-temper. You are
also painfully alive to the doubts which your conduct excites in the
mind of your more worldly associates as to the reality of a vital and
transforming efficacy in religion. You feel that you are not only
disobeying God yourself, but that you are providing others with excuses
for disobeying him, and with examples of disobedience. You mourn over
these considerations in bitterness of heart; you even pray for strength
to resist this, your besetting sin, and then--you leave your room, and
fall into the same sin on the very first opportunity.

If, however, prayer itself does not prove an effectual safeguard from
persistence in sin, you will ask what other means can be hopefully
employed. None--none whatever; that from which real prayer cannot
preserve us is an inevitable misfortune. But think you that any kind of
sin can be among those misfortunes that cannot be avoided? No, my
friend: "He is able to succour them that are tempted;"[26] and we are
also assured that He is willing. Cease, then, from accusing the
All-merciful, even by implication, of being the cause of your continuing
in sin, and examine carefully into the nature of those prayers which you
complain have never been answered. The Scripture reason for such
disappointments is clearly and distinctly given: "Ye ask and receive
not, because ye ask amiss."[27] Examine, then, in the first place,
whether you yourself are asking "amiss?" What is your primary motive for
desiring the removal of this besetting sin? Is it the consideration of
its being so hateful in the sight of God, of its being injurious to the
cause of religion? or is it not rather because you feel that it makes
you unloveable to those around you, and inflicts pain on those who are
very dear to you, at the same time lessening your own dignity and
wounding your self-respect? These are all proper and allowable motives
of action while kept in their subordinate place; but if they become the
primary actuating principle, instead of a conscientious hatred of sin
because it is the abominable thing that God hates,[28] if pleasing man
be your chief object, you have no reason to complain that your prayers
are unanswered. The word of God has told you that it must be so. You
have asked "amiss." There is also a secondary sense in which we may "ask
amiss:" when we pray without corresponding effort. Some worthy people
think that prayer alone is to obtain for them all the benefits they can
desire, and that the influences of the Holy Spirit will, unassisted by
human effort, produce a transforming change in the temper and the
conduct. This they call magnifying the grace of God, as if it could be
supposed that his gracious help would ever be granted for the purpose of
slackening, instead of encouraging and exciting, our own exertions. Do
not the Scriptures abound in exhortations, warnings, and threatenings on
the subject of individual watchfulness, diligence, and unceasing
conflicts? "To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according
to this word, it is because there is no light in them."[29] Perhaps you
have prayed under the mental delusion I have above described; you have
expected the work should be done _for_ you, instead of _with_ you; that
the constraining love of Christ would constrain you necessarily to
abandon your sinful habits, while, in fact, its efficacy consists in
constraining you to carry on a perpetual struggle against them.

Look through the day that is past, or watch yourself through that which
is to come, and observe whether any violent conflict takes place in your
mind whenever you are tempted to sin. I fear, on the contrary, that you
expect the efficacy of your prayers to be displayed in preserving you
from any painful conflict whatever. It is strange, most strange, how
generally this perversion of mind appears practically to exist.
Notwithstanding all the opposing assertions of the Bible, people imagine
that the Christian's life, after conversion, is to be one of freedom
from temptation and from all internal struggles. The contrary fact is,
that they only really begin when we ourselves begin the Christian course
with earnestness and sincerity.

If you would possess the safety of preparation, you must look out for
and expect constant temptations and perpetual conflicts. By such means
alone can your character be gradually forming into "a meetness for the
inheritance of the saints in light."[30] Whenever your conflicts cease,
you will enter into your glorious rest. You will not be kept in a world
of sin and sorrow one moment after that in which you have attained to
sufficient Christian perfection to qualify you for a safe freedom from
trials and temptations: but as long as you remain in a temporal school
of discipline, "your only safety is to feel the stretch and energy of a
continual strife."[31]

If I have been at all successful in my endeavours to alter your views of
the _manner_ in which you are first to set about acquiring a permanent
victory over your besetting sin, you will be the more inclined to bestow
your attention on the means which I am now going to recommend for your
consequent adoption. They have been often tried and proved effectual:
experience is their chief recommendation. They may indeed startle some
pious minds, as seeming to encroach too far on what they think ought to
be the unassisted work of the Spirit upon the human character; but you
are too intelligent to allow such assertions, unfounded as they are on
Scripture, to prove much longer a stumbling-block in your way. I would
first of all recommend to you a very strict inquiry into the nature of
the things that affect your temper, so that you may be for the future on
your guard to avoid them, as far as lies in your power. Avoidance is
always the safest plan when it involves no deviation from the
straightforward path of duty; and there will be enough of inevitable
conflicts left, to keep up the habits of self-control and watchfulness.
Indeed, the avoidance which I recommend to you involves in itself the
necessity of so much vigilance, that it will help to prepare you for
measures of more active resistance. On this principle, then, you will
shrink from every species of discussion, on either practical or abstract
subjects, which is likely to excite you beyond control, and disable you
from bearing with gentleness and calmness the triumph, either real or
imaginary, of your opponent. The time will come, I trust, when no
subject need be forbidden to you on these grounds, but at present you
must submit to an invalid regimen, and shun every thing that has even a
tendency to excitement.

This system of avoidance is of the more importance, because every time
your ill-temper acquires the mastery over you, its strength is tenfold
increased for the next conflict, at the same time that your hopes of the
power of resistance, afforded either by your own will or by the
assisting grace of God, are of course weakened. You find, at each fall
before the power of sin, a greater difficulty in exercising faith in
either human or divine means of improvement. You do not, indeed, doubt
the power of God, but a disbelief steals over you which has equally
fatal tendencies. You allow yourself to indulge vague doubts of his
willingness to help you, or a suspicion insinuates itself that the God
whom you so anxiously try to please would not allow you to fall so
constantly into error, if this error were of a very heinous nature. You
should be careful to shun any course of conduct possibly suggestive of
such dangerous doubts. You should seek to establish in your mind the
habitual conviction that, victory being placed by God within your reach,
you must conquer or perish! None but those who by obedience prove
themselves children of God, shall inherit the kingdom prepared for them
from the foundation of the world.[32]

I have spoken of the vigilance and self-control required for the
avoidance of every discussion on exciting subjects; but this difficulty
is small indeed when compared with those unexpected assaults on the
temper which we are exposed to at every hour of the day. It is to meet
these with Christian heroism that the constant exertion of all our
inherent and imparted powers is perpetually required. Every device that
ingenuity can suggest, every practice that others have by experience
found successful, is at least worth the trial. One plan of resistance
suits one turn of mind; an entirely opposite one proves more useful for
another. To you I should more especially recommend the habitual
consideration that every trial of temper throughout the day is an
opportunity for conflict and for victory. Think, then, of every such
trial as an occasion of triumphing over your animal nature, and of
increasing the dominion of your rational will over the opposing
temptations of "the world, the flesh, and the devil." Consider each
vexatious annoyance as coming, through human instruments, from the hand
of God himself, and as an opportunity offered by his love and his wisdom
for strengthening your character and bringing your will into closer
conformity with his. You should cultivate the general habit of
considering every trial in this peculiar point of view; thinking over
the subject in your quiet hours especially, that you may thus have your
spirit prepared for moments of unexpected excitement.

To a person of your reflective turn of mind, the prudent management of
the thoughts is one of the principal means towards the proper government
of the temper. As some insects assume the colour of the plant they feed
on, so do the thoughts on which the mind habitually nourishes itself
impart their own peculiar colouring to the mental and moral
constitution. On your thoughts, when you are alone, when you wander
through the fields, or by the roadside, or sit at your work in useful
hours of solitude, depends very much the spirit you are of when you
again enter into society. If, for instance, you think over the trials of
temper which you are inevitably exposed to during the day as indications
of the unkindness of your fellow-creatures, you will not fail to
exaggerate mere trifles into serious offences, and will prepare a sore
place, as it were, in your mind, to which the slightest touch must give
pain. On the contrary, if you forcibly withdraw yourself from any
thought respecting the human instrument that has inflicted the wounds
from which you suffer or are likely to suffer,--if you look upon the
annoyance only as an opportunity of improvement and a message of mercy
from God himself,--you will then gradually get rid of all mental
irritation, and feel nothing but pity for your tormentors, feeling that
you have in reality been benefited instead of injured. When you have
acquired greater power of controlling your thoughts, it will be
serviceable to you to think over all the details of the annoyance from
which you are suffering, and to consider all the extenuating
circumstances of the case; to imagine (this will be good use to make of
your vivid imagination) what painful chord you may have unconsciously
struck, what circumstances may possibly have led the person who annoys
you to suppose that the provocation originated with yourself instead of
with her. It may be possible that some innocent words of yours may have
appeared to her as cutting insinuations or taunts, referring to some
former painful circumstance, forgotten or unknown by you, but
sorrowfully remembered by her, or a wilful contradiction of her known
opinion and known wishes, for mere contradiction's sake.

By the time you have turned over in your mind all these possible or
probable circumstances, you will generally see that the person offending
may really be not so much (if at all) to blame; and then the candid and
generous feelings of your nature will convert your anger into regret for
the pain you have unintentionally inflicted. I do not, however,
recommend you to venture upon this practice _yet_. Under present
circumstances, any indulged reflection upon the minute features of the
offence, and the possible feelings of the offender, will be more likely
to increase your irritation than to subdue it; you will not be able to
view your own case through an unprejudiced medium, until you have
acquired the power of compelling your thoughts to dwell on those
features only of an annoyance which may tend to soften your feelings,
while you avoid all such as may irritate them.

A much lower stage of self-control, and one in which you may immediately
begin to exercise yourself, is the prevention of your thoughts from
dwelling for one moment on any offence against you, looking upon such
offence in this point of view alone, that it is one of those
divinely-sent opportunities of Christian warfare without which you could
make no advance in the spiritual life. The consideration of the subject
of temper, as connected with habits of thought, on which I have dwelt so
long and in so much detail, is of the greatest importance. It is
absolutely impossible that you can exercise control over your temper, or
charitable and forgiving feelings toward those around you, if you suffer
your mind to dwell on what you consider their faults and your own
injuries. Are you, however, really aware that you are in the habit of
indulging such thoughts? I doubt it. Few people observe the direction in
which their thoughts are habitually exercised until they have practised
for some little time strict watchfulness over those shadowy and fleeting
things upon which most of the realities of life depend. Watch yourself,
therefore, I entreat you, even during this one day. I ask only for one
day, because I know that, in a character like yours, such an
examination, once begun in all earnestness, will only cease with life.
It is of sins of ignorance and carelessness alone that I accuse you; not
of wilfully harbouring malicious and revengeful thoughts. You have
never, probably, observed their existence: how, then, could you be aware
of their tendency? Perhaps the following illustration may serve to
suggest to you proofs of the danger of the practice I have been warning
you against. If one of your acquaintance had offended another, you would
feel no doubt as to the sinfulness and the cruelty to both of dwelling
on all the aggravating circumstances of the offence, until the temper of
the offended one was thoroughly roused and exasperated, though, before
the interference of a third person, the subject may have been passed
over unnoticed. Is not this the very process you are continually
carrying on in your own mind, to your own injury, indeed, far more than
to any one else's? These habits of thought must be altered, or no other
measures of self-control can prosper with you, though, in connection
with this primary one, many others must be adopted.

One practice that has been found beneficial is that of offering up a
short prayer, even as your hand is upon the door which is to admit you
into family intercourse, an intercourse which, more than any other,
involves duties and responsibilities as well as privileges and
pleasures. This practice could insure your never entering upon a scene
of trial, without having the subject of difficulty brought vividly
before your mind. David's prayer--"Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth;
keep the door of my lips"[33]--would be very well suited to such
occasions as these. This prayer would, at the same time, bring you down
help from Heaven, and, by putting you on your guard, rouse your own
energies to brave any temptation that may await you.

There is another plan which has often been tried with success,--that of
repeating the Lord's prayer deliberately through to oneself, before
venturing to utter one word aloud on any occasion that excites the
temper. The spirit of this practice is highly commendable, as, there
being no direct petition against the sin of ill-temper, it is
principally by elevating the spirit "into a higher moral atmosphere,"
that the experiment is expected to be successful. You will find that a
scrupulous politeness towards the members of your family, and towards
servants, will be a great help in preserving your temper through the
trials of domestic intercourse. You are very seldom even tempted to
indulge in irritable answers, impatient interruptions, abrupt
contradictions, while in the society of strangers. The reason of this is
that the indulgence of your temper on such occasions would oblige you to
break through the chains of early and confirmed habits From infancy
those habits have been forming, and they impel you almost unconsciously
to subdue even the very tones of your voice, while strangers are
present. Have you not sometimes in the middle of an irritable
observation caught yourself changing and softening the harsh
uncontrolled tones of your voice, or the roughness of your manner, when
you have discovered the unexpected presence of a stranger in the family
circle? You have still enough of self-respect to feel deep shame when
such things have happened; and the very moment when you are suffering
from these feelings of shame is that in which you ought to form, and
begin to execute, resolutions of future amendment. While under the
influence of regretful excitement, you will have the more strength to
break through the chains of your old habits, and to begin to form new
ones. If the same courtesy, which until now you have only observed
towards strangers, were habitually exercised towards the members of your
domestic circle, it would, in time, become as difficult to break through
the forms of politeness by indulging ill-temper towards them, as towards
strangers or mere acquaintance.

This is a point I wish to urge on you, even more strongly with regard to
servants. There is great meanness in any display of ill-temper towards
those who will probably lose their place and their character, if they
are tempted by your provocation (and without your restraints of
good-breeding and good education) to the same display of ill-temper that
you yourself are guilty of. On the other hand, there is no better
evidence of dignity, self-respect, and refined generosity of
disposition, than a scrupulous politeness in requiring and requiting
those services for which the low-minded imagine that their money is a
sufficient payment. You will not alone receive as a recompense the love
and the grateful respect of those who serve you, but you will also be
forming habits which will offer a powerful resistance to the temptations
of ill-humour.

You will not surely object to any of the precautions or the practices
recommended above, that they are too trifling or too troublesome; you
have suffered so much from your besetting sin, that I can suppose you
willing to try every possible means of cure.

You should, however, to strengthen your desire of resistance and of
victory, look much further than the unpleasant 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 power cannot be more effectually weakened. This is,
however, an invariable feature throughout all the dispensations of God,
and you would do well to examine carefully into it, that you may add
experience to your faith in the Scripture assertion, "What a man soweth,
that shall he also reap."[34] May you be given grace to sow such present
seed as may bring forth a harvest of peace to yourself, and peace to
your friends!

I must not forget to make some observations with respect to those
physical influences which affect the temper and spirits. It is true that
these are, at some times, and for a short period, altogether
irresistible. This is, however, only in the case of those whose
character was not originally of sufficient force and strength to require
much habitual self-control, as long as they possessed good health and
spirits. When this original good health is altered in any way that
alters their natural temper, (all diseases, however, have not this
effect,) not having had any previous practice in resisting the new and
unaccustomed evil, they yield to it as hopelessly as they would do to
the pain attending the gout and the rheumatism. If, however, such
persons as those above described are sincere in their desire to glorify
God, and to avoid disturbing the peace of those around them, they will
soon learn to make use of all the means within their reach to remove the
moral disease, as assiduously and as vigorously as they would labour to
remove the physical one. Their newly-acquired self-control will be blest
to them in more ways than one, for the grace of God is always given in
proportion to the need of those who are willing to work themselves, and
who have not incurred the evil they now struggle against, by wilful and
deliberate sin. I have spoken of only a few cases of ill-temper being
irresistible, and even these few only to be considered so at first,
before proper means of cure and prevention are used. Under other
circumstances, though the ill-temper mourned over may be strongly
influenced by physical causes, the sin must still remain the same as if
the causes were strictly moral ones. For instance, if you know that by
sitting up at night an hour or two later than usual, or by not taking
regular exercise, or by eating of indigestible food, you will put it out
of your power to avoid being ill-tempered and disagreeable on the
following day, the failure is surely a moral one. That the immediate
causes of your ill-humour may be physical ones, does not at all affect
the matter, seeing that such causes are, in this case, completely under
your own control. From this it follows that it must be a duty to watch
carefully the effects produced on your temper by every habit of your
life. If you do not abandon such of these as produce undesirable
effects, you deserve to experience the consequences in the gradual
diminution of the respect and affection of those who surround you.

Should the habits producing irritation of temper be such as you cannot
abandon without loss or detriment to yourself or others, the object in
view will be equally attained by exercising a more vigilant self-control
while you are exposed to a dangerous influence. For instance, you have
often heard it remarked, and have perhaps observed in your own case,
that poetry and works of fiction excite and irritate the temper. You may
know some people who exhibit this influence so strongly that no one will
venture to make them a request or even to apply to them about necessary
business, while they are engaged in the perusal of any thing
interesting. I know more than one excellent person, who, in consequence
of observing the effect produced on their temper, by novels, &c., have
given up this style of reading altogether. So far as the sacrifice was
made from a conscientious motive, they doubtless have their reward. From
the consequences, however, I should be rather inclined to think that
they were in many cases not only mistaken in the nature of the
precautions they adopted, but also in their motives for adopting them.
Such persons too frequently seem to have no more control over their
temper when exposed to other and entirely inevitable temptations, than
they had before the cultivation of their imagination was given up. They
do not, in short, seem to exercise, under circumstances that cannot be
escaped, that vigilant self-control which would be the only safe test
of the conscientiousness of their intellectual sacrifice.

For you, I should consider any sacrifice of the foregoing kind
especially inexpedient. Your deep thoughtfulness of mind, and your
habitual delicacy of health, make it impossible for you to give up light
literature with any degree of safety; even were it right that you should
abandon that species of mental cultivation which is effected by this
most important branch of study. People who never read difficult books,
and who are not of reflective habits of mind, can little understand the
necessity that at times exists for entire repose to the higher powers of
the mind--a repose which can be by no means so effectually procured as
by an interesting work of fiction. A drive in a pretty country, a
friendly visit, an hour's work in the garden, any of these may indeed
effect the same purpose, and on some occasions in a safer way than a
novel or a poem. The former, however, are means which are not always
within one's reach, which are impossible at seasons when entire rest to
the mind is most required,--viz. during days and weeks of confinement to
a sick and infected room. At such periods, it is true that the more idle
the mind can be kept the better; even the most trifling story may excite
a dangerous exertion of its nervous action; at times, however, when it
is sufficiently strong and disengaged to feel a craving for active
employment, it is of great importance that the employment should be such
as would involve no exercise of the higher intellectual faculties. I
have known serious evils result to both mind and body from an imprudent
engagement in intellectual pursuits during temporary, and as it may
often appear trifling, illness. Whenever the body is weak, the mind also
should be allowed to rest, if the invalid be a person of thought and
reflection; otherwise Butler's Analogy itself would not do her any harm.
It is _only_ "Lorsqu'il y a vie, il y a danger." This is a long
digression, but one necessary to my subject; for I feel the importance
of impressing on your mind that it can never be your duty to give up
that which is otherwise expedient for you, on the grounds of its being a
cause of excitement. You must only, under such circumstances, exercise a
double vigilance over your temper. Thus you must try to avoid speaking
in an irritated tone when you are interrupted; you must be always ready
to help another, if it be otherwise expedient, however deep may be the
interest of the book in which you are engaged; and, finally, if you are
obliged to refuse your assistance, you should make a point of expressing
your refusal with gentleness and courtesy.

You should show others, as well as be convinced of it yourself, that the
refusal to oblige is altogether irrespective of any effect produced on
your temper by the studies in which you are engaged. Perhaps during the
course of even this one day, you may have an opportunity of experiencing
both the difficulty and advantage of attending to the foregoing
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 your
conscientious friends observe a daily-growing disregard of absolute
truth in your statement of indifferent things, and, _a plus forte
raison_, in your statement of your own side of the question as opposed
to that of another. There are, unfortunately, a thousand opportunities
and temptations to the exaggerated mode of expression for which I blame
you; and these temptations are generally of so trifling a nature, that
the whole energies of the conscience are never awakened to resist them,
as might be the case were the evil to others and the disgrace to
yourself more strikingly manifest. Few people seem to be at all aware of
the difficulties that really attend speaking the _exact_ truth, or they
would shrink from indulging in any habits that immeasurably increase
these difficulties,--increase it, indeed, to such a degree, that some
minds appear to have lost the very power of perceiving truth; so that,
even when they are extremely anxious to be correct in their statement,
there is a total incapacity of transmitting a story to another in the
way that they themselves received it. This is one of the most striking
temporal punishments of sin,--one of those that are the inevitable
consequences of the sin itself, and quite independent of the other
punishments which the revealed will of God attaches to it. The persons
of whom I speak must sooner or later perceive that no dependence is
placed on their statements, that even when respect and affection for
their other good qualities may prevent a clear recognition of the
falsehood of their character, yet that they are now never applied to for
information on any matters of importance. Perhaps, to those who have any
sensitiveness of observation, such doubts are even the more painful the
more vaguely they are implied. For myself, I have long acquired the
habit of translating the assertions and the stories of the persons of
whom I speak into the language in which I judge they originally existed.
By the aid of a small degree of ingenuity, it is not very difficult to
ascertain, from the nature of the refracting medium, the degree and the
direction of the change that has taken place in the pure ray of truth.

Yet such people as these often deserve pity as much as blame: they are,
perhaps, unconscious of the degree in which habit has made them
insensible to the perversion of truth in their statements; and even now
they scarcely believe that what seems to them so true should appear and
really be false to others. The intellectual effects of such habits are
equally injurious with the moral ones. All natural clearness and
distinctness of intellect becomes gradually obscured; the memory becomes
perplexed; the very style of writing acquires the taint of the
perverted mind. Truth is impressed upon every line of Dr. Arnold's
vigorous diction, while other writers of equal, perhaps, but less
respectable eminence, betray, even in their mode of expression, the
habitual want of honesty in their character and in their statements.

In your case, none of the habits of which I have spoken are, as yet,
firmly implanted. A warm temper, ardent feelings, and a vivid
imagination are, as yet, the only causes of your errors. You have still
time and power to struggle against them, as the chains of habit have not
been added to those of nature. But, before the struggle begins, you must
be convinced of its necessity; and this is probably the point on which
you are entirely incredulous. Listen to me, then, while I help you to
discover the hidden mysteries of a heart that "is deceitful above all
things," and let the self-examination I urge upon you be prompt, be
immediate. Let it be exercised through the day that is coming; watch the
manner in which you express yourself on every subject; observe,
especially those temptations which will assail you to venture upon
greater deviations from truth than those which you think you may
harmlessly indulge in, under the sanction of vivid imagination, poetic
fancy, &c. This latter part of the examination may throw great light on
the subject: people are not assailed frequently and strongly by
temptations that have never, at any former time, been yielded to.

I have reason to believe that, as one of the preparations for such
self-examination, you entertain a deep sense of the exceeding sinfulness
of sin, and feel an anxious desire to approve yourself as a faithful
servant to your heavenly Master. I do not, therefore, suppose that at
present any temptation would induce you to incur the guilt of a
deliberate falsehood. The perception of moral evil may, however, be so
blunted by habits of mere carelessness, that I should have no dependence
on your adhering for many future years to even this degree of plain,
downright truth, unless those habits are decidedly broken through. But
do not, from this, imagine that I consider a distinct, decided falsehood
more, but rather less, dangerous for the future of your character than
those lighter errors of which I have spoken. Though you may sink so far,
in course of time, as to consider even a direct lie a very small
transgression of the law of God, you will never be able to persuade
yourself that it is entirely free from sin. The injury, too, to our
neighbour, of a direct lie, can be so much more easily guarded against,
that, for the sake of others, I am far more earnest in warning you
against equivocation than against decided falsehood. It is sadly
difficult for the injured person to ward off the effects of a deceitful
glance, a misleading action, an artful insinuation. No earthly defence
is of any avail here, as the sorrows of many a wounded heart can
testify; but for such injured ones there is a sure, though it may be a
long-suffering, Defender. He is the Judge of all the earth; and even in
this world he will visit, with a punishment inevitably involved in the
consequences of their crime, those who have in any manner deceived their
neighbour to his hurt.

I do not, however, accuse you of exaggerating or equivocating from
malice alone: no,--more frequently it is for the sake of mere
amusement, or, at the worst, in cowardly self-defence; that is, you
prefer throwing the blame by insinuation upon an innocent person to
bearing courageously what you deserve yourself. In most cases, indeed,
you can plead in excuse that the blame is not of any serious nature;
that the insinuated accusation is slight enough to be entirely harmless:
so it may appear to you, but so it frequently happens not to be. This
insinuated accusation, appearing to you so unimportant, may have some
peculiar relations that make it more injurious to the slandered one than
the original blame could have been to yourself. It may be the means of
separating her from her chief friend, or shaking her influence in
quarters where perhaps it was of great importance to her that it should
be preserved unimpaired. When we lay sinful hands on the complicated
machinery of God's providence, it is impossible for us to see how far
the derangement may extend.

You may, during the course of this coming day, have an opportunity of
giving your own version of a matter in which another was concerned with
you, and in which, if the blame is thrown on her, she will have no
opportunity of defending herself. Be on your guard, then; have a noble
courage; fear nothing but the meanness and the wickedness of accusing
the absent and the defenceless. The opportunity offered you to-day of
speaking conscientiously, however trifling it may in itself appear, may
possibly be the turning point of your life; may lead you on to future
habits of cowardice and deceit, or may impart to you new vigilance and
energy for future victories over temptation.

You may, also, during the course of this day, be strongly tempted as to
the mode of repeating what another has said in conversation: the
slightest turn in the expression of the sentence, the insertion or
omission of one little word, the change of a weaker to a stronger
expression, may exactly adapt to your purpose the sentence you are
tempted to repeat. You may also often be able to say to yourself that
you are giving the impression of the real meaning of the speaker, only
withheld by herself because she had not courage to express it.
Opportunities such as these are continually offering themselves to you,
and you have ingenuity enough to make the desired change in the repeated
sentence so effectual, that there will be no danger of contradiction,
even if the betrayed person should discover that she is called upon to
defend herself. I have heard this so cleverly done, that the success was
complete, and the poor slandered one lost, in consequence, her admirer
or her friend, or at least much of her influence over them. You, too,
may in like manner succeed: but what is the loss of others in comparison
of the penalty of your success? The punishment of successful sin is not
to be escaped.

In any of the cases I here bring forward as illustrations, as helps to
your self-examination, I am not supposing that there is any tangible,
positive, wilful deceit in your heart, or that you deliberately
contemplate any very serious injury being inflicted on the persons whose
conversations and actions you misrepresent. On the contrary, I know that
you are not thus hardened in sin. With regard, however, to the deceit
not assuming any tangible form in your own eyes, you ought to remember
the solemn words, "Thou, O God I seest me;" and what is sin in his eyes
can only fail to be so in ours from the neglect of strict
self-examination and prayer that the Spirit of the Lord may search the
very depths of the heart. Sins of ignorance seem to assume even a deeper
dye than others, when the ignorance only arises from wilful neglect of
the means of knowledge so abundantly and freely bestowed. When you once
begin in right earnest to try to speak the truth from your heart, in the
smallest as well as in the greatest things, you will be surprised to
find how difficult it is. Carelessness, false shame, a desire for
admiration, a vanity that leads you to disclaim any interest in that
which you cannot obtain,--these are all temptations that beset your
path, and ought to terrify you against adding the chains of habit to so
many other difficulties.

There is one more point of view in which I wish you to consider this
subject; that, namely, of "honesty being the best policy." There is no
falsehood that is not found out in the end, and so turned to the shame
of the person who is guilty of it. You may perpetually dread, even at
present, the eye of the discriminating observer; she can see through
you, even at the very moment of your committal of sin; she quickly
discovers that it is your habit to depreciate people or things, only
because you are not in your turn valued by them, or because you cannot
obtain them; she can see, in a few minutes' conversation, that it is
your habit to say that you are admired and loved, that your society is
eagerly sought for by such and such people, whether it be the case or
not. Quick observers discover in a first interview what others will not
fail to discover after a time. They will then cease to depend upon you
for information on any subject in which your own interest or your vanity
is concerned. They will turn up their eyes in wonder, from habit and
politeness, not from belief. They will always suspect some hidden motive
for your words, instead of the one you put forward; nay, your giving one
reason for your actions will, by itself alone, set them on the search to
discover a different one. All this, perhaps, will in many cases take
place without their accusing you, even in their secret thoughts, of
being a liar. They have only a vague consciousness that you are, it may
be involuntarily, quite incapable of giving correct information.

The habitual, the known truth-speaker, occupies a proud position. Alas!
that it should be so rare. Alas! that, even among professedly religious
people, there should be so few who speak the truth from the heart; so
few to whom one can turn with a fearless confidence to ask for
information on any points of personal interest. I need not to be told
that it is during childhood that the formation of strict habits of
truthfulness is at once most sure and most easy. The difficulty is
indeed increased ten thousandfold, when the neglect of parents has
suffered even careless habits on this point to be contracted. The
difficulties, however, though great, are not insuperable to those who
seek the freely-offered grace of God to help them in the conflict. The
resistance to temptation, the self-control, will indeed be more
difficult when the effort begins later in life; but the victory will be
also the more glorious, and the general effects on the character more
permanent and beneficial. Not that this serves as any excuse for the
cruel neglect of parents, for they can have no certainty that future
repentance will be granted for those habits of sin, the formation of
which they might have prevented.

Dwelling, however, even in thought, on the neglect of our parents can
only lead to vain murmurings and complainings, and prevent the
concentration of all our energies and interest upon the extirpation of
the dangerous root of evil.

In this case, as in all others, though the sin of the parent is surely
visited on the children, the very visitation is turned into a blessing
for those who love God. To such blessed ones it becomes the means of
imparting greater strength and vigour to the character, from the
perpetual conflicts to which it is exposed in its efforts to overcome
early habits of evil.

Thus even sin itself is not excepted from the "all things" that "work
together for good to them that love God."[36]


FOOTNOTES:

[36] Rom. viii. 28.




LETTER IV.

ENVY.


It is, perhaps, an "unknown friend" only who would venture to address a
remonstrance to you on that particular sin which forms the subject of
the following pages; for it seems equally acknowledged by those who are
guilty of it, and those who are entirely free from its taint, that there
is no bad quality meaner, more degrading, than that of envy. Who,
therefore, could venture openly to accuse another of such a failing,
however kind and disinterested the motive, and still be admitted to rank
as her friend?

There is, besides, a strong impression that, where this failing does
exist, it is so closely interwoven with the whole texture of the
character, that it can never be separated from it while life and this
body of sin remain. This is undoubtedly thus far true, that its
ramifications are more minute, and more universally pervading, than
those of any other moral defect; so that, on the one hand, while even an
anxious and diligent self-examination cannot always detect their
existence, so, on the other, it is scarcely possible for its victims to
be excited by an emotion of any nature with which envy will not, in some
manner or other, connect itself. It is still further true, that no vice
can be more difficult of extirpation, the form it assumes being seldom
sufficiently tangible to allow of the whole weight of religious and
moral motives being brought to bear upon it. But the greatest
difficulty of all is, in my mind, the inadequate conception of the
exceeding evil of this disposition, of the misery it entails on
ourselves, the danger and the constant annoyance to which it exposes all
connected with us. Few would recognise their own picture, however strong
the likeness in fact might be, in the following vivid description of
Lavater's:--"Lorsque je cherche a representer Satan, je me figure une
personne que les bonnes qualites d'autrui font souffrir, et qui se
rejouit des fautes et des malheurs du prochain."

Analyze strictly, however, during even this one day, the feelings that
have given you the most annoyance, and the contemplated or executed
measures of deed or word to which those feelings have prompted you, and
you must plead guilty to the heinous charge of "rejoicing at your
brother's faults and misfortunes." It is not so much, indeed, with
relation to important matters that this feeling is excited within you.
If you hear of your friends being left large fortunes, or forming
connections calculated to promote their happiness, you are not annoyed
or grieved: you may even, perhaps, experience some sensations of
pleasure. If, however, the circumstances of good fortune are brought
more home to yourself, perhaps into collision with yourself, by being of
a more trifling nature, you often experience a regret or annoyance at
the success or the happiness of others, which would be ludicrous, if it
were not so wicked. Neither is there any vice which displays itself so
readily to the keen eye of observation: even when the guarded tongue
restrains the disclosure, the expression of the lip and eye is
unmistakeable, and gradually impresses a character on the countenance
which remains at times when the feeling itself is quite dormant. Only
contemplate your case in this point of view: is it not, when
dispassionately considered, shocking to think, that when a stranger
hopes to gratify you by the praise, the judicious and well-merited
praise, of your dearest friend, a pang is inflicted on you by the very
words that ought to sound as pleasant music in your ears? I have even
heard some persons so incautious, under such circumstances, as to
qualify the praise that gives them pain, by detracting from the merits
of the person under discussion, though that person be their particular
friend. This is done in a variety of ways: her merits and advantages may
be accounted for by the peculiarly favouring circumstances in which she
has been placed; or different disparaging opinions entertained of her,
by other people better qualified to judge, may also be mentioned. Now,
many persons thus imprudent are by no means utterly foolish at other
times; yet, in the moment of temptation from their besetting sin, they
do not observe how inevitable it is that the stranger so replied to
should immediately detect their unamiable motives, and estimate them
accordingly.

You will not, perhaps, fall into so open a snare, for you have
sufficient tact and quickness of perception to know that, under such
circumstances, you must, on your own account, bury in your bosom those
emotions of pain which I much fear you will generally feel. It is not,
however, the outward expression of such emotions, but their inward
experience, which is the real question we are considering, both as
regards your present happiness and your eternal interest. Ask yourself
whether it is a pleasurable sensation, or the contrary, when those you
love (I am still putting a strong case) are admired and appreciated, ire
held up as examples of excellence? If you love truly, if you are free
from envy, such praise will be far sweeter to your ears than any
bestowed on yourself could ever be. Indeed, it might be considered a
sufficient punishment for this vice, to be deprived of the deep and
virtuous sensation of delight experienced by the loving heart when
admiration is warmly expressed for the objects of their affection.

There has been a time when I should have scornfully rejected the
supposition that such a failing as envy could exist in companionship
with aught that was loveable or amiable. More observation of character
has, however, given me the unpleasant conviction that it occasionally
may be found in the close neighbourhood of contrasting excellences.
Alas! instead of being concealed or gradually overgrown by them, it, on
the contrary, spreads its deadly blight over any noble features that may
have originally existed in the character. Nothing but the severest
discipline, external and internal, can arrest this, its natural course.

When you were younger, the feelings which I now warn you against were
called jealousy, and even now some indulgent friends may continue to
give them this false name. Do not you suffer the dangerous delusion!
Have the courage to place your feelings in all their natural deformity
before you, and this sight will give you energy to pursue any regimen,
however severe, that may be required to subdue them.

I do really believe that it is the false name of jealousy that prevents
many an early struggle against the real vice of envy. I have heard young
women even boast of the jealousy of their disposition, insinuating that
it was to be considered as a proof of warm feelings and an affectionate
heart. Perhaps genuine jealousy may deserve to be so considered: the
anxious watching over even imaginary diminution of affection or esteem
in those we love and respect, the vigilance to detect the slightest
external manifestation of any diminution in their tenderness and regard,
though proving a deficiency in that noble faith which is the surest
safeguard and the firmest foundation of love and friendship, may, in
some cases, be an evidence of affection and warmth in the disposition
and the heart. So close, however, is the connection between envy and
jealousy, that the latter in one moment may change into the former. The
most watchful circumspection, therefore, is required, lest that which
is, even in its best form, a weakness and an instrument of misery to
ourselves and others, should still further degenerate into a meanness
and a vice;--as, for instance, when you fear that the person you love
may be induced, by seeing the excellences of another, to withdraw from
you some of the time, admiration, and affection you wish to be
exclusively bestowed upon yourself. In this case, there is a strong
temptation to display the failings of the dreaded rival, or, at the
best, to feel no regret at their chance display. Under such
circumstances, even the excusable jealousy of affection passes over into
the vice of envy. The connection between them is, indeed, dangerously
close; but it is easy to trace the boundary line, if we are inclined to
do so. Jealousy is contented with the affection and admiration of those
it loves and respects; envy is in despair, if those whom it despises
bestow the least portion of attention or admiration on those whom
perhaps she despises still more. Jealousy inquires only into the
feelings of the few valued ones; envy makes no distinction in her
cravings for universal preference. The very attentions and admiration
which were considered valueless, nay, troublesome, as long as they were
bestowed on herself, become of exceeding importance when they are
transferred to another. Envy would make use of any means whatever to win
back the friend or the admirer whose transferred attentions were
affording pleasure to another. The power of inflicting pain and
disappointment on one whose superiority is envied, bestows on the object
of former indifference, or even contempt, a new and powerful attraction.
This is very wicked, very mean, you will say, and shrink back in horror
from the supposition of any resemblance to such characters as those I
have just described. Alas! your indignation may be honest, but it is
without foundation. Already those earlier symptoms are constantly
appearing, which, if not sternly checked, must in time grow into
hopeless deformity of character. There is nothing that undermines all
virtuous and noble qualities more surely or more insidiously than the
indulged vice of envy. Its unresisting victims become, by degrees,
capable of every species of detraction, until they lose even the very
power of perceiving that which is true. They become, too, incapable of
all generous self-denial and self-sacrifice; feelings of bitterness
towards every successful rival (and there are few who may not be our
rivals on some one point or other) gradually diffuse themselves
throughout the heart, and leave no place for that love of our neighbour
which the Scriptures have stated to be the test of love to God.[37]

Unlike most other vices, envy can never want an opportunity of
indulgence; so that, unless it is early detected and vigilantly
controlled, its rapid growth is inevitable.

Early detection is the first point; and in that I am most anxious to
assist you. Perhaps, till now, the possibility of your being guilty of
the vice of envy has never entered your thoughts. When any thing
resembling it has forced itself on your notice, you have probably given
it the name of jealousy, and have attributed the painful emotions it
excited to the too tender susceptibilities of your nature. Ridiculous as
such self-deception is, I have seen too many instances of it to doubt
the probability of its existing in your case.

I am not, in general, an advocate for the minute analysis of mental
emotions: the reality of them most frequently evaporates during the
process, as in anatomy the principle of life escapes during the most
vigilant anatomical examination. In the case, however, of seeking the
detection of a before unknown failing, a strict mental inquiry must
necessarily be instituted. The many great dangers of mental anatomy may
be partly avoided by confining your observations to the external
symptoms, instead of to the state of mind from whence they proceed. This
will be the safer as well as the more effectual mode of bringing
conviction home to your mind. For instance, I would have you watch the
emotions excited when enthusiastic praise is bestowed upon another, with
relation to those very qualities you are the most anxious should be
admired in yourself. When the conversation or the accomplishments of
another fix the attention which was withheld from your own,--when the
opinion of another, with whom you fancy yourself on an equality, is put
forward as deserving of being followed in preference to your own, I can
imagine you possessed of sufficient self-respect to restrain any
external tokens of envy: you will not insinuate, as meaner spirits would
do, that the beauty, or the dress, or the accomplishments so highly
extolled are preserved, cherished, and cultivated at the expense of
time, kindly feelings, and the duty of almsgiving--that the conversation
is considered by many competent judges flippant, or pedantic, or
presuming--that the opinion cannot be of much value when the conduct has
been in some instances so deficient in prudence.

These are all remarks which envy may easily find an opportunity of
insinuating against any of its rivals; but, as I said before, I imagine
that you have too much self-respect to manifest openly such feelings, to
reveal such meanness to the eyes of man. Alas! you have not an equal
fear of the all-seeing eye of God. What I apprehend most for you is the
allowing yourself to cherish secretly all these palliative
circumstances, that you may thus reconcile yourself to a superiority
that mortifies you. If you habitually allow yourself in this practice,
it will be almost impossible to avoid feeling pleasure instead of pain
when these same circumstances happen to be pointed out by others, and
when you have thus all the benefit, and none of the guilt or shame, of
the disclosure. When envy is freely allowed to take these two first
steps, a further progress is inevitable. Self-respect itself will not
long preserve you from outward demonstrations of that which is inwardly
indulged, and you are sure to become in time the object of just contempt
and ridicule. It will soon be well known that the surest way to inflict
pain upon you is to extol the excellences or to dwell on the happiness
of others, and your failings will be considered an amusing subject for
jesting observation to experimentalize upon. I have often watched the
downward progress I have just described; and, unless the grace of God,
working with your own vigorous self-control, should alter your present
frame of mind, I can see no reason why you should escape when others
inevitably fall.

The circumstance in which this vice manifests itself most painfully and
most dangerously is that of a large family. How deplorable is it, when,
instead of making each separate interest the interest of the whole, and
rejoicing in the love and admiration bestowed on each separate
individual, as if it were bestowed on the whole, such love and such
admiration excite, on the contrary, irritation and regret.

Among children, this evil seldom attracts notice; if one girl is praised
for dancing or singing much better than her sister, and the sister
taunted into further efforts by insulting comparisons, the poor mistaken
parent little thinks that, in the pain she inflicts on the depreciated
child, she is implanting a perennial root of danger and sorrow. The
child may cry and sob at the time, and afterward feel uncomfortable in
the presence of one whose superiority has been made the means of
worrying her; and, if envious by nature, she will probably take the
first opportunity of pointing out to the teachers any little error of
her sister's. The permanent injury, however, remains to be effected when
they both grow to woman's estate; the envious sister will then take
every artful opportunity of lessening the influence of the one who is
considered her superior, of insinuating charges against her to those
whose good opinion they both value the most. And she is only too easily
successful; she is successful, that success may bring upon her the
penalty of her sin, for Heaven is then the most incensed against us when
our sin appears to prosper. Various and inexhaustible are the mere
temporal punishments of this sin of envy; of the sin which deprives
another of even one shade of the influence, admiration, and affection,
they would otherwise have enjoyed.

If the preference of a female friend excites angry and jealous feelings,
the attentions of an admirer are probably still more envied. In some
unhappy families, one may observe the beginning of any such attentions
by the vigilant depreciation of the admirer, and the anxious
manoeuvres to prevent any opportunities of cultivating the detected
preference. What prosperity can be hoped for to a family in which the
supposed advantage and happiness of one individual member is feared and
guarded against, instead of being considered an interest belonging to
the whole? You will be shocked at such pictures as these: alas! that
they should be so frequent even in domestic England, the land of happy
homes and strong family ties. You are of course still more shocked at
hearing that I attribute to yourself any shade of so deadly a vice as
that above described; and as long as you do not attribute it to
yourself, my warning voice will be raised in vain: I am not, however,
without hope that the vigilant self-examination, which your real wish
for improvement will probably soon render habitual, may open your eyes
to your danger while it can still be easily averted. Supposing this to
be the case, I would earnestly suggest to you the following means of
cure. First, earnest prayer against this particular sin, earnest prayer
to be brought into "a higher moral atmosphere," one of unfeigned love to
our neighbour, one of rejoicing with all who do rejoice, "and weeping
with those who weep." This general habit is of the greatest importance
to cultivate: we should strive naturally and instinctively to feel
pleasure when another is loved, or praised, or fortunate; we should try
to strengthen our sympathies, to make the feelings of others, as much as
possible, our own. Many an early emotion of envy might be instantly
checked by throwing one's self into the position of the envied one, and
exerting the imagination to conceive vividly the pleasure or the pain
she must experience: this will, even at the time, make us forgetful of
self, and will gradually bring us into the habit of feeling for the pain
and pleasure of others, as if we really believed them to be members of
the same mystical body.[38] We should, in the next place, attack the
symptoms of the vice we wish to eradicate; we should seek by reasonable
considerations to realize the absurdity of our envy: for this, nothing
is more essential than the ascertaining of our own level, and fairly
making up our minds to the certain superiority of others. As soon as
this is distinctly acknowledged, much of the pain of the inferior
estimation in which we are held will be removed: "There is no disgrace
in being eclipsed by Jupiter." Next, let us examine into the details of
the law of compensation--one which is never infringed; let us consider
that the very superiority of others involves many unpleasantnesses, of a
kind, perhaps, the most disagreeable to us. For instance, it often
involves the necessity of a sacrifice of time and feelings, and almost
invariably creates an isolation,--consequences from which we, perhaps,
should fearfully shrink. On the brilliant conversationist is inflicted
the penalty of never enjoying a rest in society: her expected employment
is to amuse others, not herself; the beauty is the dread of all the
jealous wives and anxious mothers, and the object of a notice which is
almost incompatible with happiness: I never saw a happy beauty, did you?
The great genius is shunned and feared by, perhaps, the very people whom
she is most desirous to attract; the exquisite musician is asked into
society _en artiste_, expected to contribute a certain species of
amusement, the world refusing to receive any other from her. The woman
who is surrounded by admirers is often wearied to death of attentions
which lose all their charm with their novelty, and which frequently
serve to deprive her of the only affection she really values. Experience
will convince you of the great truth, that there is a law of
compensation in all things. The same law also holds good with regard to
the preferences shown to those who have no superiority over us, who are
nothing more than our equals in beauty, in cleverness, in
accomplishments. If Ellen B. or Lydia C. is liked more than you are by
one person, you, in your turn, will be preferred by another; no one who
seeks for affection and approbation, and who really deserves it, ever
finally fails of acquiring it. You have no right to expect that every
one should like you the best: if you considered such expectations in the
abstract, you would be forced to acknowledge their absurdity. Besides,
would it not be a great annoyance to you to give up your time and
attention to conversing with, or writing to, the very people whose
preference you envy for Ellen B. or Lydia C.? They are suited to each
other, and like each other: in good time, you will meet with people who
suit you, and who will consequently like you; nay, perhaps at this
present moment, you may have many friends who delight in your society,
and admire your character: will you lose the pleasure which such
blessings are intended to confer, by envying the preferences shown to
others? Bring the subject distinctly and clearly home to your mind.
Whenever you feel an emotion of pain, have the courage to trace it to
its source, place this emotion in all its meanness before you, then
think how ridiculous it would appear to you if you contemplated it in
another. Finally, ask yourself whether there can be any indulgence of
such feelings in a heart that is bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ,--whether there can be any room for them in a
temple of God wherein the spirit of God dwelleth.[39]


FOOTNOTES:

[37] 1 John iii.

[38] 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26.

[39] Cor. iii. 16.




LETTER V.

SELFISHNESS AND UNSELFISHNESS.


This is a difficult subject to address you upon, and one which you will
probably reject as unsuited to yourself. There are few qualities that
the possessor is less likely to be conscious of than either selfishness
or unselfishness; because the actions proceeding from either are so
completely instinctive, so unregulated by any appeal to principle, that
they never, in the common course of things, attract any particular
notice. We go on, therefore, strengthening ourselves in the habits of
either, until a double nature, as it were, is formed, overlaying the
first, and equally powerful with it. How unlovely is this in the case of
selfishness, even where there are, besides, fine and striking features
in the general character, and how lovely in the case of unselfishness,
even when, as too frequently happens, there is little comparative
strength or nobleness in its intellectual and moral accompaniments!

You are now young, you are affectionate, good-natured, obliging,
possessed of gay and happy spirits, and a sweetness of temper that is
seldom seen united with so much sparkling wit and lively sensibilities.
Altogether, then, you are considered a very attractive person, and, in
the love which all those qualities have won for you from those around
you, may bring forward strong evidence against my charge of selfishness.
But is not this love more especially felt by those who are not brought
into daily and hourly collision with you. They only see you bright with
good-humour, ready to talk, to laugh, and to make merry with them in any
way they please. They therefore, in all probability, do not think you
selfish. Are you certain, however, that the estimate formed of you by
your nearest relatives will not be the estimate formed of you by even
acquaintance some years hence, when lessened good-humour and
strengthened habits of selfishness have brought out into more striking
relief the natural faults of your character?

The selfishness of the gay, amusing, good-humoured girl is often
unobserved, almost always tolerated; but when youth, beauty, and
vivacity are gone, the vice appears in its native deformity, and she who
indulges it becomes as unlovely as unloved. It is for the future you
have cause to fear,--a future for which you are preparing gloom and
dislike by the habits you are now forming in the small details of daily
life, as well as in the pleasurable excitements of social intercourse.
As I said before, these, at present almost imperceptible, habits are
unheeded by those who are only your acquaintance: but they are not the
less sowing the seeds of future unhappiness for you. You will,
assuredly, at some period or other, reap in dislike what you are now
sowing in selfishness. If, however, the warning voice of an "unknown
friend" is attended to, there is yet time to complete a comparatively
easy victory over this, your besetting sin; while, on the contrary,
every week and every month's delay, by riveting more strongly the chains
of habit, increases at once your difficulties and your consequent
discouragement.

This day, this very hour, the conflict ought to begin: but, alas! how
may this be, when you are not yet even aware of the existence of that
danger which I warn you. It is most truly "a part of sin to be
unconscious of itself."[40] It will also be doubly difficult to effect
the necessary preliminary of convincing you of selfishness, when I am so
situated as not to be able to point out to you with certainty any
particular act indicative of the vice in question. This obliges me to
enter into more varied details, to touch a thousand different strings,
in the hope that, among so many, I may by chance touch upon the right
one.

Now, it is a certain fact, that in such inquiries as the present, our
enemies may be of much more use to us than our friends. They may, they
generally do, exaggerate our faults, but the exaggeration gives them a
relief and depth of colouring which may enable the accusation to force
its way through the dimness and heavy-sightedness of our self-deception.
Examine yourself, then, with respect to those accusations which others
bring against you in moments of anger and excitement; place yourself in
the situation of the injured party, and ask yourself whether you would
not attach tho blame of selfishness to similar conduct in another
person. For instance, you may perhaps be seated in a comfortable chair
by a comfortable fire, reading an interesting book, and a brother or
sister comes in to request that you will help them in packing something,
or writing something that must be finished at a certain time, and that
cannot be done without your assistance: the interruption alone, at a
critical part of the story, or in the middle of an abstruse and
interesting argument, is enough to irritate your temper and to
disqualify you for listening with an unprejudiced ear to the request
that is made to you. You answer, probably, in a tone of irritation; you
say that it is impossible, that the business ought to have been attended
to earlier, and that they could then have concluded it without your
assistance; or perhaps you rise and go with them, and execute the thing
to be done in a most ungracious manner, with a pouting lip and a surly
tone, insinuating, too, for days afterwards, how much you had been
annoyed and inconvenienced. The case would have been different if a
stranger had made the request of you, or a friend, or any one but a near
and probably very dear relative. In the former case, there would have
been, first, the excitement which always in some degree distinguishes
social from mere family intercourse; there would have been the wish to
keep up their good opinion of your character, which they may have been
deluded into considering the very reverse of unselfish. Lastly, their
thanks would of course be more warm than those which you are likely to
receive from a relative, (who instinctively feels it to be your duty to
help in the family labours,) and thus your vanity would have been
sufficiently gratified to reconcile you to the trouble and interruption
to which you had been exposed.

Still further, it is, perhaps, only to your own family that you would
have indulged in that introductory irritation of which I have spoken.
We have all witnessed cases in which inexcusable excitement has been
displayed towards relatives or servants who have announced unpleasant
interruptions, in the shape of an unwelcome visitor; while the moment
afterwards the real offender has been greeted with an unclouded brow and
a warm welcome, she not having the misfortune of being so closely
connected with you as the innocent victim of your previous ill-temper.

I enter into these details, not because they are necessarily connected
with selfishness, for many unselfish, generous-minded people are the
unfortunate victims of ill-temper, to which vice the preceding traits of
character more peculiarly belong; but for the purpose of showing you
that your conduct towards strangers can be no test of your
unselfishness. It is only in the more trying details of daily life that
the existence of the vice or the virtue can be evidenced. It is,
nevertheless, upon qualities so imperceptible to yourself as to require
this close scrutiny that most of the happiness and comfort of domestic
life depends.

You know the story of the watch that had been long out of order, and the
cause of its irregularity not to be discovered. At length, one
watchmaker, more ingenious than the rest, suggested that a magnet might,
by some chance, have touched the mainspring. This was ascertained by
experiment to have been the case; the casual and temporary neighbourhood
of a magnet had deranged the whole complicated machinery: and on equally
imperceptible, often undiscoverable, trifles does the healthy movement
of the mainspring of domestic happiness depend. Observe, then,
carefully, every irregularity in its motion, and exercise your
ingenuity to discover the cause in good time; the derangement may
otherwise soon become incurable, both by the strengthening of your own
habits, and the dispositions towards you which they will impress on the
minds of others.

Do let me entreat you, then, to watch yourself during the course of even
this one day,--first, for the purpose of ascertaining whether my
accusation of selfishness is or is not well founded, and afterwards, for
the purpose of seeking to eradicate from your character every taint of
so unlovely, and, for the credit of the sex, I may add, so unfeminine a
failing.

Before we proceed further on this subject, I must attempt to lay down a
definition of selfishness, lest you should suppose that I am so mistaken
as to confound with the vice above named that self-love, which is at
once an allowable instinct and a positive duty.

Selfishness, then, I consider as a perversion of the natural and
divinely-impressed instinct of self-love. It is a desire for things
which are not really good for us, followed by an endeavour to obtain
those things to the injury of our neighbour.[41] Where a sacrifice which
benefits your neighbour can inflict no _real_ injury on yourself, it
would be selfishness not to make the sacrifice. On the contrary, where
either one or the other must suffer an equal injury, (equal in all
points of view--in permanence, in powers of endurance, &c.,) self-love
requires that you should here prefer yourself. You have no right to
sacrifice your own health, your own happiness, or your own life, to
preserve the health, or the life, or the happiness of another; for none
of these things are your own: they are only entrusted to your
stewardship, to be made the best use of for God's glory. Your health is
given you that you may have the free disposal of all your mental and
bodily powers to employ them in his service; your happiness, that you
may have energy to diffuse peace and cheerfulness around you; your life,
that you may "work out your salvation with fear and trembling." We read
of fine sacrifices of the kind I deprecate in novels and romances: we
may admire them in heathen story; but with such sacrifices the real
Christian has no concern. He must not give away that which is not his
own. "Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body,
and in your spirit, which are God's."[42]

In the case of a sacrifice of life--one which, of course, can very
rarely occur,--the dangerous results of thus, as it were, taking events
out of the hand of God cannot be always visible to our sight at present:
we should, however, contemplate what they might possibly be. Let us,
then, consider the injury that may result to the self-sacrificer,
throughout the countless ages of eternity, from the loss of that
working-time of hours, days, and years, wilfully flung from him for the
uncertain benefit of another. Yes, uncertain, for the person may at that
time have been in a state of greater meetness for heaven than he will
ever again enjoy: there may be future fearful temptations, and
consequent falling into sin, from which he would have been preserved if
his death had taken place when the providence of God seemed to will it.
Of course, none of us can, by the most wilful disobedience, dispose
events in any way but exactly that which his hand and his counsel have
determined before the foundation of the world;[43] but when we go out of
the narrow path of duty, we attempt, as far as in us lies, to reverse
his unchangeable decrees, and we "have our reward;" we mar our own
welfare, and that of others, when we make any effort to take the
providing for it out of the hands of the Omnipotent.

It is, however, only for the establishment of a principle that it could
be necessary to discuss the duties involved in such rare emergencies. I
shall therefore proceed without further delay to the more common
sacrifices of which I have spoken, and explain to you what I mean by
such sacrifices.

I have alluded to those of health and happiness. We have all known the
first wilfully thrown away by needless attendance on such sick friends
as would have been equally well taken care of had servants or hired
nurses shared in the otherwise overpowering labour. Often is this labour
found to incapacitate the nurse-tending friend for fulfilling towards
the convalescent those offices in which no menial could supply her place
--such as the cheering of the drooping spirit, the selection and patient
perusal of amusing books, an animated, amusing companionship in their
walks and drives, the humouring of their sick fancy--a sickness that
often increases as that of the body decreases. For all these trying
duties, during the often long and always painfully tedious period of
convalescence, the nightly watcher of the sick-bed has, it is most
likely, unfitted herself. The affection and devotion which were useless
and unheeded during days and nights of stupor and delirium have probably
by this time worn out the weak body which they have been exciting to
efforts beyond its strength, so that it is now incapable of more useful
demonstrations of attachment. Far be it from me to depreciate that fond,
devoted watching of love, which is sometimes even a compensation to the
invalid for the sufferings of sickness, at periods, too, when hired
attendance could not be tolerated. Here woman's love and devotion are
often brightly shown. The natural impulses of her heart lead her to
trample under foot all consideration of personal danger, fatigue, or
weakness, when the need of her loved ones demands her exertions.

This, however, is comparatively easy; it is only following the instincts
of her loving nature never to leave the sick room, where all her
anxiety, all her hopes and fears are centred,--never to breathe the
fresh air of heaven,--never to mingle in the social circle,--never to
rest the weary limbs, or close the languid eye. The excitement of love
and anxiety makes all this easy as long as the anxiety itself lasts: but
when danger is removed, and the more trying duties of tending the
convalescent begin, the genuine devotion of self-denial and
unselfishness is put to the test.

Nothing is more difficult than to bear with patience the apparently
unreasonable depression and ever-varying whims of the peevish
convalescent, whose powers of self-control have been prostrated by long
bodily exhaustion. Nothing is more trying than to find anxious exertions
for their comfort and amusement, either entirely unnoticed and useless,
or met with petulant contradiction and ungrateful irritation. Those who
have themselves experienced the helplessness caused by disease well know
how bitterly the trial is shared by the invalid herself. How deeply she
often mourns over the unreasonableness and irritation she is without
power to control, and what tears of anguish she sheds in secret over
those acts of neglect and words of unkindness her own ill-humour and
apparent ingratitude have unintentionally provoked.

Those who feel the sympathy of experience will surely wish, under all
such circumstances, to exercise untiring patience and unremitting
attention; but, however strong this wish may be, they cannot execute
their purpose if their own health has been injured by previous
unnecessary watchings, by exclusion from fresh air and exercise. Those
whose nervous system has been thus unstrung will never be equal to the
painful exertion which the recovering invalid now requires. How much
better it would have been for her if walks and sleep had been taken at
times when an attentive nurse would have done just as well to sit at the
bedside, when absence would have been unnoticed, or only temporarily
regretted! This prudent, and, we must remember, generally self-denying
care of one's self, would have averted the future bodily illness or
nervous depression of the nurse of the convalescent, at a time too when
the latter has become painfully alive to every look and word, as well as
act, of diminished attention and watchfulness; you will surely feel
deep self-reproach if, from any cause, you are unable to control your
own temper, and to bear with cheerful patience the petulance of hers.

I have dwelt so long on this part of my subject, because I think it very
probable that, with your warm affections, and before your selfishness
has been hardened by habits of self-indulgence, you might some time or
other fall into the error I have been describing. In the ardour of your
anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in
such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own
health, and unfit you for more useful, and certainly more self-denying
exertion afterwards. How much easier is it to spend days and nights by
the sick-bed of one from whom we are in hourly dread of a final
separation, whose helpless and suffering state excites the strongest
feelings of compassion and anxiety, than to sit by the sofa, or walk by
the side, of the same invalid when she has regained just sufficient
strength to experience discomfort in every thing;--when she never finds
her sofa arranged or placed to her satisfaction; is never pleased with
the carriage, or the drive, or the walk