I have spoken of the exceeding difficulty of exercising self-control under such trying circumstances as those above described, and this difficulty will, I candidly confess, be likely to increase in proportion to your own honesty and generosity.  Be comforted, however, by this consideration, that, conflict being the only means of forming the character into excellence, and your natural amiability averting from you many of the usual opportunities for exercising self-control, you would be in want of the former essential ingredient in spiritual discipline did not your very virtues procure it for you.

While, however, I allow you full credit for these virtues, I must insist on a careful distinction between a mere virtue and a Christian grace.  Every virtue becomes a vice the moment it overpasses its prescribed boundaries, the moment it is given free power to follow the bent of animal nature, instead of being, even though a virtue, kept under the strict control of religious principle.

I must now suggest to you some means by which I have known self-control to be successfully exhibited and perpetuated, with especial reference to that annoyance which we have last considered.  Instead, then, of dwelling on the deviations from truth of which I have spoken, even when they are to the injury of a friend, try to banish the subject from your mind and memory; or, if you are able to think of it in the very way you please, try to consider how much the original formation of the speaker’s mind, careless habits, and want of any disciplining education, may each and all contribute to lessen the guilt of the person who has annoyed you.  No one knows better than yourself that tho original nature of the mind, as well as its implanted habits, modifies every fact presented to its notice.  Still further, the point of view from which the fact or the character has been seen may have been entirely different from yours.  These other persons may absolutely have seen the thing spoken of in a position so completely unlike your mental vision of it, that they are as incapable of understanding your view as you may be of understanding theirs.  If sincere in your wish for improvement, you had better prove the truth of the above assertion by the following process.  Take into your consideration any given action, not of a decidedly honourable nature—­one which, perhaps, to most people would appear of an indifferent nature,—­but to your lofty and refined notions deserving of some degree of reprehension.  You have a sufficiently metaphysical head to be able to abstract yourself entirely from your own view of the case, and then you can contemplate it with a total freedom from prejudice.  Such a contemplation can only be attempted when no feeling is concerned,—­feeling giving life to every peculiarity of moral sentiment, as the heat draws out those characters which would otherwise have passed unknown and unnoticed.  I would then have you examine carefully into all the considerations which might qualify and alter, even your own view of the case.  Dwell long and carefully upon this part of the process.  It is astonishing (incredible indeed until it is tried) how much our opinions of the very same action may alter if we determinately confine ourselves to the favourable aspect in which it may be viewed, keeping the contrary side entirely out of sight.