annoyance to others caused by the indulgence of your ill-temper. You are
also painfully alive to the doubts which your conduct excites in the
mind of your more worldly associates as to the reality of a vital and
transforming efficacy in religion. You feel that you are not only
disobeying God yourself, but that you are providing others with excuses
for disobeying him, and with examples of disobedience. You mourn over
these considerations in bitterness of heart; you even pray for strength
to resist this, your besetting sin, and then--you leave your room, and
fall into the same sin on the very first opportunity.

If, however, prayer itself does not prove an effectual safeguard from
persistence in sin, you will ask what other means can be hopefully
employed. None--none whatever; that from which real prayer cannot
preserve us is an inevitable misfortune. But think you that any kind of
sin can be among those misfortunes that cannot be avoided? No, my
friend: "He is able to succour them that are tempted;"[26] and we are
also assured that He is willing. Cease, then, from accusing the
All-merciful, even by implication, of being the cause of your continuing
in sin, and examine carefully into the nature of those prayers which you
complain have never been answered. The Scripture reason for such
disappointments is clearly and distinctly given: "Ye ask and receive
not, because ye ask amiss."[27] Examine, then, in the first place,
whether you yourself are asking "amiss?" What is your primary motive for
desiring the removal of this besetting sin? Is it the consideration of
its being so hateful in the sight of God, of its being injurious to the
cause of religion? or is it not rather because you feel that it makes
you unloveable to those around you, and inflicts pain on those who are
very dear to you, at the same time lessening your own dignity and
wounding your self-respect? These are all proper and allowable motives
of action while kept in their subordinate place; but if they become the