I am sure you have experimentally understood the subject on which I have
been writing. I am sure you have often risen from the teaching of the
poet with enthusiasm in your heart, ready to trample upon all those
temptations and difficulties which had, perhaps an hour before, made the
path of self-denial and self-control apparently impracticable.

Receive such intervals of excitement as heaven-sent aids, to help you
more easily over, it may be, a wearying and dreary path. They are most
probably sent in answer to prayer--in answer to the prayers of your own
heart, or to those of some pious friend.

Our Father in heaven works constantly by earthly means, and moulds the
weakest, the often apparently useless instrument to the furtherance of
his purposes of mercy, one of which you know is your own sanctification.
It is not his holy word only that gives you appointed messages and helps
exactly suited to your need. The flower growing by the way-side, the
picture or the poem, the works of God's own hand, or the works of the
genius which he has breathed into his creature Man, may all alike bear
you messages of love, of warning, of assistance.

Listen attentively, and you will hear--clearer still and clearer--every
day and hour. It is not by chance you take up that book, or gaze upon
that picture; you have found, because you are on the watch for it, in
the first, a suggestion that exactly suits your present need, in the
latter an excitement and an inspiration which makes some difficult
action you may be immediately called on to perform comparatively easy
and comparatively welcome.

There is a deep and universal meaning in the vulgar[63] proverb, "Strike
while the iron is hot." If it be left to cool without your purpose being