the want of consideration, the want of good sense shown by those who are set in authority over us. A well-regulated and subdued spirit will escape half the pain of the most unpalatable obedience by making charitable allowances for whatever may seem most reprehensible in the motives and dictates of superiors. Habitually to look upon them as having a right to command, and their subordinates, either in relationship or position, the duty to obey, will be a sure preventive to those easily excited feelings of self-will which, in the ill-regulated mind, blaze up at any approach to a direct assertion of authority. By feelings such as these, how much may be unnecessarily added to the weight and bitterness of the daily cross! How much more difficult some unpalatable act of obedience will be to you because you fancy you detect in the command, motives of selfishness, of unkindness, almost of tyranny, at least of a vain display of

authority to the total disregard of your feelings! After all, this is probably a fancy; you may, indeed, be certain that it is, to a considerable degree, a fancy, and that your judgment and condemnation are founded upon the creations of your own imagination.

The danger of indulging such thoughts is not only that they cherish self-will, by placing yourself always in the right, the imagined aggressor always in the wrong; but still further, without breaking out into open disobedience, the habitual tenor of the thoughts must impart to looks, tone, and manner an air of impatience and insubordination, even in the midst of inevitable, but evidently unwilling obedience. Not only our duty to our neighbour, but our duty to ourselves, requires that we should take the most favourable view of the conduct, temper, and motives of those around us; and more especially is it important in the case of

those who must obey, and ought, at the same time, to respect. In every instance in which it is your duty to submit your own will to another's, exercise your ingenuity in trying to discover plausible reasons for the exercise of authority that annoys you. Argue the cause of another against yourself, and it will turn to your own good in the end. Keep steadily out of view any mean or unkind motives that may have dictated the command you object to; keep steadily in view the reasons why it was justifiable and reasonable; above all, distinctly recognising the right which those who are placed in authority over us have to claim over our obedience. As long as we only obey their wishes while they are perfectly agreeable to our own tastes and inclinations, and perfectly approve themselves to our own judgment, there is really no exercise of the spirit of obedience at all. This is a truth that cannot be too strongly im* 1 Peter, ii, 13-25.

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pressed on the mind. It may be experimentally impressed on it by the daily cross when meekly and patiently borne.

Observe carefully, during the course of this day, how and when it is that you are pained by the exercise of authority over you. Inquire carefully of your own heart, in a prayerful and humble spirit, whether the mere assertion of authority has not, by itself alone, roused the spirit of insubordination, which, natural to every strong and to many weak characters, has probably been strengthened by habitual, though unconscious indulgence. If this investigation is carried on with candour and honesty, you will probably find that the pain and irritation you experience was really caused by nothing but the assertion of the claim of authority in some manner or in some direction that wounded your haughty spirit, and that the action or conduct thus unpleasantly enforced upon you, would have approved itself to your judg

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ment, perhaps your taste and inclinations, had the idea of it originated in yourself.

When discoveries of this nature are made for the first time in the mysteries of that heart which is "deceitful above all things," as well as "desperately wicked," *it is as it were an era in existence. What a light is thrown over the sad and sinful past, when, for the first time, the truth dawns upon us, that the wrongs and the faults we have been long attributing to others, have originated in, and been caused by ourselves! This important revelation of long-indulged sins of ignorance may well be the turning point of a life, if those who mourn over the past are led by their sorrow to the Saviour, seeking at the same source forgiveness for the errors of the past, and strength to resist the temptations of the future.

In the discipline of this day it may please God to reveal to you how fatally for yourself, and how unjustly for others,

* Jeremiah, xix. 9.