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.