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.