BE SWEET-TEMPERED.
SOMETHING is sure to happen every day to try our temper, and it is well, therefore, to keep watch over it so that we may be always amiable.
If we give way to our temper, we not only make others unhappy, but ourselves also. After a fit of anger is over, how mean one feels as he thinks about it and remembers the naughty things he said and the foolish acts he did. He is almost ashamed to look into the face of any one who saw him when the fit was on him.
If, on the other hand, we resist the inclination to anger, we feel stronger for it, and, indeed, are stronger for it. We have gained a victory over self, and can more readily gain a victory another time. Besides, if any one has seen that we had a provocation to anger, he cannot but notice the triumph we have gained, and this becomes an example to him. It may do him great good, when at some future time, he is placed in like circumstances.
A good story is told of an English bishop who was noted for great amiability of temper. A young gentleman, whose family had been acquainted with the bishop, in making a tour through England before he went abroad, called to pay his respects to his lordship as he passed by Hastlebury. It happened to be dinnertime, and the room was full of company. The bishop, however, received him with much familiarity; but the servant, in reaching him a chair, threw down a curious weatherglass, which cost twenty guineas, and broke it. The gentleman was under great concern, and began to excuse the servant, and make an apology for himself as the occasion of the accident, when the bishop, with great good nature, interrupted him, saying, "Be under no concern, good sir, for I am much beholden to you for it. We have had a very dry season, and now I hope we shall have a change, for I never saw the glass so low in my life." That was a very witty turn of the good bishop, and everybody was pleased with it and put into a good humor. The bishop at this time was an old man over eighty years of age, an age when many become peevish and fretful, and yet he had perfect command of his temper. He must have acquired this by watchfulness and frequent prayer to God for help.—
S. S. Classmate.