feeling against which it will be vain to struggle. It is one of the
strongest reasons for the necessity of watchful self-control, that no
mind, however powerful, can exercise a direct authority over the
feelings of the heart; they are susceptible of indirect influence alone.
This much increases the necessity of our watchfulness as to the indirect
tendencies of thoughts and words, and our accountability with respect to
them. Our anxiety and vigilance ought to be altogether greater than if
we could exercise over our feelings that direct and instantaneous
control which a strong mind can always assert in the case of words and
actions.

Unless the indirect influence of which I have spoken were practicable,
the warnings and commands of Scripture would be a mockery of our
weakness,--a cruel satire on the helplessness of a victim whose efforts
to fulfil duty must, however strenuous, prove unavailing. The child is
commanded to honour his parent, the wife to reverence her husband; and
you are to observe attentively that there is no exception made for the
cases of those whose parents or husbands are undeserving of love and
reverence. There must, then, be a power granted, to such as ask and
_strive_ to acquire it, of closing the mental eyes resolutely against
those features in the character of the persons to whom we are bound by
the ties of duty, which would unfit us, if much dwelt upon, for
obedience in such important particulars as the love and reverence we are
commanded to feel towards them.

Even where there is such high principle and such uncommon strength of
character as to induce perseverance in the mere external forms of
obedience, how vain are all such while the heart has turned aside from
the appointed path of duty, and broken those commands of God which, we
should always remember, have reference to feeling as well as to