Watts - Houston-Packer Collection BX5207.W3 S4x 1805 v.3

$ñCT. I V.1 IN REGARD TO OURSELVES. 497 ing consequences ; thou wilt bear the cross incidents of life without the ruffle and disturbance of thy own inward powers, without the pain and terror of thy kindred and friends, and without giving half the street notice of thy folly. But, " strange doctrine is this," saith the master of the house, " must X not ktear rule in my own family ? Must I not be heard;" says the mistress, " and obeyed by my own servants ? Must nof the authority of a father appear among his childklzen,,%nd the mother demand due honour ?" Yes by all means : And the superior charac- ter should always appear and shine bright before the household in the wisdom of the command or reproof, and not by the loud and haughty words or the terrible airs of the reprover. The authority of a parent or a master has but a poor support where it is maintained with such unreasonable and noisy resentments. Thus far concerning wrath and tyranny of the violent and sonorous kind : But pride and humour in some com- plexions have their private and sullen airs, as well as in others the sounding and the clamorous ones. The soul may be full ofself and the man an intolerable humourist, and yet never shake the house, or affright the neigh- bourhood. Should you happen to cross his will in a trifling instance, he puts on a sudden gloom of counte- nance and assumes a forbidding brow without a single word from his lips ; and sometimes it is hard to know what has offended him. Here the haughty and the sullen humours mingle their cursed influences ; the soul is like a prisoner in majesty, the wretch stalks about in dark resentment and supercilious silence: a short and dis- dainful sentence full of spite and rancour and fire shall break out at certain intervals and give notice of the hell within. The proudwrath which is pent up in the bosom as in a close and boiling furnace, must have time to vent itself by slow degrees ; in a day or two, or sometimes more, perhaps the ferment may subside, and the man return to his speech again, and to his 'hours of business, of food and rest. But after all the poisonous leaven is left still within, andwaits only for some new occasion to heave and swell and raise à fresh disturbance. I name the man only in this cursed and hateful character, if the VOL. III. g K

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