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.