Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/174



I hope I can bear ingratitude and ill treatment to myself; and may heaven preserve me from returning the same to others. Any misery is supportable but the consciousness of having deliberately broken the good law of duty. Sins against light, and against love, are a heavy weight to the spirit, and leave a wound which the hand of divine grace only can heal; a stain which nothing less than the blood of the Son of God can wipe away.

The disagreeable occurrences of life require us to watch strictly over our hasty spirits. When we are fatigued with exertion, when our hearts are joyless, and our arms nerveless, and we find ourselves annoyed by vexation, perplexity, or contradiction, then is the time for us to double our mental guard, to hold strict sway over the mutinous powers, and to reflect deeply upon the precept "He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down—without walls."

The more we encourage plans of earthly employment, emolument, or happiness, the more we put out of view the things unseen and eternal. In this there is a warfare.—"The flesh standeth