temper and a religious course of life, there seems to be an instinctive
recognition of this peculiar vice being so much the necessary result of
physical organization, that the motives proving effectual against other
sins are ineffectual for the extirpation of this. Perhaps, if this
recognition were distinct, and the details of it better understood, a
new and more successful means might be made use of to effect the cure of
ill-temper.

As an encouragement to this undertaking, there can be no doubt, from
some striking instances within your own knowledge, that there are
certain means by which, if they could only be discovered, the vice in
question may be completely subdued. Even among heathen nations, we know
that the art of self-control was so well understood, and so successfully
practised, that Plato, Socrates, and other philosophers were able to
bring their naturally fiery and violent tempers into complete subjection
to their will. Can it be that this secret has been lost along with the
other mysteries of those distant times, that the mode of controlling the
temper is now as undiscoverable as the manner of preparing the Tyrian
dye and other forgotten arts? It is surely a disgrace to those cowardly
Christians who, having in addition to all the natural powers of the
heathen moralist the freely-offered grace of God to work with them and
in them, should still walk so unworthy of the high vocation wherewith
they are called, as to shrink hopelessly from a moral competition with
the ignorant worshippers of old.

My sister, these things ought not so to be; you feel they ought not, yet
day after day you break through the resolutions formed in your calmer
moments, and repeat, probably increase, your manifestations of
uncontrolled ill-temper. This is not yet, however, in your case, a
wilful sin; you still mourn bitterly over the shame to yourself and the