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!