If, during your present enjoyment of mental and bodily health, you do
not acquire a mastery over your temper, it will be almost impossible to
do so when the effects of disease are added to the influences of nature
and habit. On the other hand, from Galen down to Sir Henry Halford,
there is high medical authority for the important fact that self-control
acquired in health may be successfully exercised to subdue every
external sign, at least, of the irritation and depression often
considered inevitably attendant on many peculiar maladies. There are few
greater temporal rewards of obedience than the consciousness, under such
trying circumstances, of still possessing the power of procuring peace
for oneself, love from one's neighbour, and glory to God.

Remember, finally, that every day and every hour you pause and hesitate
about beginning to control your temper, may probably expose you to years
of more severe future conflict. "Now is the accepted time, now is the
day of salvation," is fully as true when asserted of the beginning of
the slow moral process by which our own conformity "to the image of the
Son" is effected, as of the saving moment in which we "arise and go to
our Father."[35]


FOOTNOTES:

[25] Zach. xiii. 6.

[26] Heb. ii. 18.

[27] James iv. 3.

[28] Jer. xliv. 4.