just in proportion as they are overruled by our own watchfulness and care, operating in connexion with the work of religion in the heart.
It would require volumes, rather than pages, to give any distinct analysis of temper, so various are the characteristics it assumes, so vast its influence upon social and domestic happiness. We will, therefore, in the present instance, confine our attention to a few important facts, in connexion with this subject, which it is of the utmost consequence that the young should bear in mind.
In the first place, ill-temper should always be regarded as a disease, both in ourselves and others; and as such, instead of either irritating or increasing it, we should rather endeavour to subdue the symptoms of the disease by the most careful and unremitting efforts. A bad temper, although the most pitiable of all infirmities, from the misery it entails upon its possessor, is almost invariably opposed by harshness, severity, or contempt. It is true, that all symptoms of disease exhibited by a bad temper, have a strong tendency to call forth the same in ourselves; but this arises in great measure from not looking at the case as it really is. If a friend or a relative, for instance, is afflicted with the gout, how carefully do we walk past his footstool, how tenderly do we remove everything which can increase his pain, how softly do we touch the affected part. And why should we not exercise the same kind feeling towards a brother or a sister afflicted with a bad temper, which of all human maladies is unquestionably the greatest?
I know it is difficult—nay, almost impossible, to practise this forbearance towards a bad temper, when not allied to a generous heart—when no atonement is afterwards offered for the pain which has been given, and when no evidence exists of the offender being so much as conscious of deserv-
