Nothing is more difficult than the perpetual self-control necessary for this purpose.  Constant watchfulness is required to subdue every feeling of superiority in the contemplation of your own character, and constant watchfulness to look upon the words and actions of others through, as it were, a rose-coloured medium.  The mind of man has been aptly compared to cut glass, which reflects the very same light in various colours as well as different shapes, according to the forms of the glass.  Display then the mental superiority of which you are justly conscious, by moulding your mind into such forms as will represent the words and actions of others in the most favourable point of view.  The same illustration will serve to suggest the best manner of making allowances for those whose minds are unmanageable, because uneducated and undisciplined.  They cannot see things in the same point of view that you do; how unreasonable then is it of you to expect that they should form the same estimate of them.

Let us now enter into the more minute details of this subject, and consider the many opportunities for self-control which may arise in the course of even this one day.  I will begin with moral evil.

You may hear falsehoods asserted, you may hear your friend traduced, you may hear unfair and exaggerated statements of the conduct of others, given to the very people with whom they are most anxious to stand well.  These are trials to which you may be often exposed, even in domestic life; and their judicious management, the comparative advantages to one’s friends or one’s self of silence or defence, will require your calmest judgment and your soundest discretion; qualities which of course cannot be brought into action without complete self-control.  I can hardly expect, or, indeed, wish that you should hear the falsehoods of which I have spoken without some risings of indignation; these, however, must be subdued for your friend’s sake as well as your own.  You would think it right to conquer feelings of anger and revenge if you were yourself unjustly accused, and though the other excitement may bear the appearance of more generosity, you must on reflection admit that it is equally your duty to subdue such feelings when they are aroused by the injuries inflicted on a friend.  The happy safeguard, the instinctive test, by which the well-regulated and comparatively innocent mind may safely try the right or the wrong of every indignant feeling is this:  so far as the feeling is painful, so far is it tainted with sin.  To “be angry and sin not,"[58] there must be no pain in the anger:  pain and sin cannot be separated:  there may indeed be sorrow, but this is to be carefully distinguished from pain.  The above is a test which, after close examination and experience, you will find to be a safe and true one.  Whenever they are thus safe and true, our instinctive feelings ought to be gratefully made use of; thus even our animal nature may be made to come to the assistance of our spiritual nature, against which it is too often arrayed in successful opposition.