It will further, be a great help to our efforts, as well as our desires, for the government of the temper, if we consider frequently and seriously the natural consequences of hasty resentments, angry replies, rebukes impatiently given or impatiently received, muttered discontents, sullen looks, and harsh words. It may safely be asserted that the consequences of these and other ways in which ill-temper may show itself, are entirely evil. The feelings, which accompany them in ourselves, and those which they excite in others, are unprofitable as well as painful. They lessen our own comfort, and tend often rather to prevent than to promote the improvement of those with whom we find fault. If we give even friendly and judicious counsels in a harsh and pettish tone, we excite against them the repugnance naturally felt to our manner. The consequence is, that the advice is slighted, and the peevish adviser pitied, despised, or hated.
When we cannot succeed in putting a restraint on our feelings of anger or dissatisfaction, we can at least check the expression of those feelings. If our thoughts are not always in our power, our words and actions and looks may be brought under our command; and a command over these expressions of our thoughts and feelings will be found no mean help towards obtaining an increase of power over our thoughts and feelings themselves. At least, one great good will be effected: time will be gained; time for reflection; time for charitable allowances and excuses.
Lastly, seek the help of religion. Consider how you may most certainly secure the approbation of God. For a good temper, or a well-regulated temper, may be the constant homage of a truly religious man to that God, whose love and long-suffering forbearance surpass all human love and forbearance.
MANLY GENTLENESS.
WHO is the most wretched man living? This question might constitute a very fair puzzle to those of our readers whose kind hearts have given them, in their own experience, no clue to the true answer. It is a species of happiness to be rich; to have at one's command an abundance of the elegancies and luxuries of life. Then he, perhaps, is the most miserable of men who is the poorest. It is a species of happiness to be the possessor of learning, fame, or power; and therefore, perhaps, he is the most miserable man who is the most ignorant, despised, and helpless. No; there is a man more wretched than these. We know not where he may be found; but find him where you will, in a prison or on a throne, steeped in poverty or surrounded with princely affluence; execrated, as he deserves to be, or crowned with world-wide applause; that man is the most miserable whose heart contains the least love for others.
It is a pleasure to be beloved. Who has not felt this? Human affection is priceless. A fond heart is more valuable than the Indies. But it is a still greater pleasure to love than to be loved; the emotion itself is of a higher kind; it calls forth our own powers into more agreeable exercise, and is independent of the caprice of others. Generally speaking, if we deserve to be loved, others will love us, but this is not always the case. The love of others towards us, is not always in proportion to our real merits; and it would be unjust to make our highest happiness dependent on it. But our love for others will always be in proportion to our real goodness; the more amiable, the more excellent we become, the more shall we love others; it is right, therefore, that this love should be made capable of bestowing upon us the largest amount of happiness. This is the arrangement which the Creator has fixed upon. By virtue of our moral constitution, to love is to be happy; to hate is to be wretched.
Hatred is a strong word, and the idea it conveys is very repulsive. We would hope that few of our readers know by experience what it is in its full extent. To be a very demon, to combine in ourselves the highest possible degree of wickedness and misery, nothing more is needful than to hate with sufficient intensity. But though, happily, comparatively few persons are fully under the influence of this baneful passion, how many are under it more frequently and powerfully than they ought to be? How often do we indulge in resentful, revengeful feelings, with all of which hatred more or less mixes itself? Have we not sometimes entertained sentiments positively malignant towards those who have wounded our vanity or injured our interests, secretly wishing them ill, or not heartily wishing them happiness? If so, we need only consult our own experience to ascertain that such feelings are both sinful and foolish; they offend our Maker, and render us wretched.
We know a happy man; one who in the midst of the vexations and crosses of this changing world, is always happy. Meet him anywhere, and at any time, his features beam with pleasure. Children run to meet him, and contend for the honour of touching his hand, or laying hold of the skirt of his coat, as he passes by, so cheerful and benevolent does he always look. In his own house he seems to reign absolute, and yet he never uses any weapon more powerful than a kind word. Everybody who knows him is aware, that, in point of intelligence, ay, and in physical prowess, too—for we know few men who can boast a more athletic frame—he is strong as a lion, yet in his demeanour he is gentle as a lamb. His wife is not of the most amiable temper, his children are not the most docile, his business brings him into contact with men of various dispositions; but he conquers all with the same weapons. What a contrast have we often thought he presents to some whose physiognomy looks like a piece of harsh handwriting, in which we can decipher nothing but self, self, self; who seem, both at home and abroad, to be always on the watch against any infringement of their dignity. Poor men! their dignity can be of little value if it requires so much care in order to be maintained. True manliness need take but little pains to procure respectful recognition. If it is genuine, others will see it, and respect it. The lion will always be acknowledged as the king of the beasts; but the ass, though clothed in the lion's skin, may bray loudly and perseveringly indeed, but he will never keep the forest in awe.
From some experience in the homes of working-men, and other homes too, we are led to think that much of the harsh and discordant feeling which too often prevails there may be ascribed to a false conception of what is truly great. It is a very erroneous impression that despotism is manly. For our part we believe that despotism is inhuman, satanic, and that wherever it is found—as much in the bosom of a family, as on the throne of a kingdom. We cannot bring ourselves to tolerate the inconsistency with which some men will inveigh against some absolute sovereign, and straight-way enact the pettiest airs of absolutism in their little empire at home. We have no private intimacy with “the autocrat of all the Russias,” and may, with all humility, avow that we do not desire to have any; but this we believe, that out of the thousands who call him a tyrant, it would be no difficult matter to pick scores who are as bad, if not worse. Let us remember that it is not a great empire which constitutes a great tyrant. Tyranny must be measured by the strength of those imperious and malignant passions from which it flows, and carrying this rule along with us, it would not surprise us, if we found the greatest tyrant in the world in some small cottage, with none to oppress but a few unoffending children, and a helpless woman. O! when shall we, be just!—when shall we cease to prate about wrongs inflicted by others, and magnified by being beheld through the haze of distance, and seek to redress those which lie at our own doors, and to redress which we shall only have to prevail upon ourselves to be just and gentle! Arbitrary power is always associated either with cruelty, or conscious weakness. True greatness is above the petty arts of tyranny. Sometimes much domestic suffering may arise from a cause which is easily confounded with a tyrannical disposition—we refer to an exaggerated sense of justice. This is the abuse of a right feeling, and requires to be kept in vigilant check. Nothing is easier than to be one-sided in judging of the actions of others. How agreeable the task of applying the line and plummet! How quiet and complete the assumption of our own superior excellence which we make in doing it! But if the task is in some respects easy, it is most difficult if we take into account the necessity of being just in our decisions. In domestic life especially, in which so much depends on circumstances, and the highest questions often relate to mere matters of expediency, how easy it is to be “always finding fault,” if we neglect to take notice of explanatory and extenuating circumstances! Anybody with a tongue and a most moderate complement of brains can call a thing stupid, foolish, ill-advised, and so forth; though it might require a larger amount of wisdom than the judges possessed to have done the thing better. But what do we want with captious judges in the bosom of a family? The scales of household polity are the scales of love, and he who holds them should be a sympathizing friend; ever ready to make allowance for failures, ingenious in contriving apologies, more lavish of counsels than rebukes, and less anxious to overwhelm a person with a sense of deficiency than to awaken in the bosom, a conscious power of doing better. One thing is certain: if any member of a family conceives it his duty to sit continually in the censor's chair, and weigh in the scales of justice all that happens in the domestic commonwealth, domestic happiness is out of the question. It is manly to extenuate and forgive, but a crabbed and censorious spirit is contemptible.