“You would have been shocked at such an idea. And now don't you see that all your attempts to prove that he had done wrong, was only the effect of the ill-will you felt towards him at the time. It was malice triumphing over your judgment and your sense of right and wrong. I told you, you know, that your resolutions would not reach the case.”
“Well, mother, I am determined,” said Dwight, very deliberatively and positively, “that I never will tease or trouble Caleb any more.”
“The evil is not so much in teasing and troubling Caleb, as in having a heart capable of taking any pleasure in it. That is the great difficulty.”
“Well, mother, I am determined I never will feel any pleasure in his trouble again.”
“I am afraid that won't depend altogether upon the determination you make. For instance, when you went to Caleb to-day, and kindly tried to persuade him to go down, and offered to carry his rocking-chair for him, your heart was then in a state of love towards him. Do you think you could then, by determination, have changed it from love to hate, and begun to take pleasure in teasing him?”
Dwight remembered how kindly and pleasantly he had felt towards Caleb at that time, and he thought that it would have been impossible for him then to have found any pleasure in tormenting him; and so he said, “No, mother, I could not.”
“And so, when you are angry with a person, and your heart is in a state of ill-will and malice towards him, does it seem to you that you can merely by a determination change it all at once, and begin to be filled with love, so as to feel pleasure in his happiness?”
Dwight was silent at first; he presently answered, faintly, that he could not.
“And if you cannot change your heart by your mere determination at the time, you certainly cannot by making one general determination, now beforehand, for all time to come.”
Dwight saw his helpless condition, and sighed. After a pause, he said,