Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE HI. THE SELF-DISCIPLINE SUITABLE TO CEKTAIN MENTAL STATES. Pbotebbs xxiii. 19. "Be wise, and guide thine heart in the way." I Will acknowledge not to have been able to fall upon a passage of scripture exactly to the point to which I should hope it may be profitable to direct our attention for a few moments. Though, in effect, and in a general way, innumerable passages inculcate the kind of lesson which we are wishing to enforce. The thing proposed may be stated in very few words. In our course through life, our minds are liable to be (they actually are in succession and change) placed in certain states of feeling, strongly marked, and, for the time, strongly prevailing. And this by causes, by influences and circumstances, independent of our will. "We might call them moods; by many serious persons they are denominated frames. They are produced by facts and events that we witness or hear of;—by views of the state of the world;— by particular subjects of thought, forcibly impressed on our minds;—by circumstances in our own immediate condition ; —by the state of our health;—by even the seasons of the year. And they form a state of feeling, distinguished by a stronger character, from the quiet, ordinary tone. Now the icsson we would wish to inculcate is just this; that these mates of feeling, thus involuntarily produced, should becarefully turned to a profitable account; that we should avail ourselves of what there is in them specifically adapted to afford improvement. It is hardly necessary to make the previous observation, that there are many strong feelings to which we are liable which we are not to talk of turning to account, they being absolutely evil, such as should be resisted, repressed, and crushed altogether. For instance, envy,—malice,—revenge, —a re... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.