very weak and silly, may write many pages which shall do good to
his fellow men, or which shall at the least amuse them. But as you
carefully drive an unsound horse, walking him at first starting,
not trotting him down hill, making play at parts of the road which
suit him; so you must manage many men, or they will break down or
bolt out of the path. Above all, so you must manage your own mind,
whose weaknesses and wrong impulses you know best, if you would
keep it cheerful, and keep it in working order. The showy, unsound
horse can go well perhaps, but it must be shod with leather, otherwise
it would be dead-lame in a mile. And just in that same fashion we
human beings, all more or less of screws mentally and morally, need
all kinds of management, on the part of our friends and on our own
part, or we should go all wrong. There is something truly fearful
when we find that clearest-headed and soberest-hearted of men,
the great Bishop Butler, telling us that all his life long he was
struggling with horrible morbid suggestions, devilish is what he
calls them, which, but for being constantly held in check with the
sternest effort of his nature, would have driven him mad. Oh, let
the uncertain, unsound, unfathomable human heart be wisely and
tenderly driven! And as there are things which with the unsound
horse you dare not venture on at all, so with the fallen mind. You
who know your own horse, know that you dare not trot him hard down
hill. And you who know your own mind and heart, know that there are
some things of which you dare not think; thoughts on which your
only safety is resolutely to turn your back. The management needful
here is the management of utter avoidance. How often we find poor
creatures who have passed through years of anxiety and misery,
and experienced savage and deliberate cruelty which it is best to
forget, lashing themselves up to wrath and bitterness by brooding
over these things, on which wisdom would bid them try to close