s for a harmless little thing in its ordinary disguise. And yet
all wrath does not manifest itself thus exteriorly. Still waters are
deepest. An imperturbable countenance may mask a very inferno of wrath
and hatred.

To hear us talk, there is no fault in all this, the greater part of the
time. It is a soothing tonic to our conscience after a fit of rage, to
lay all the blame on a defect of character or a naturally bad temper.
If fault there is, it is anybody's but our own. We recall the fact that
patience is a virtue that has its limits, and mention things that we
solemnly aver would try the enduring powers of the beatified on their
thrones in heaven. Some, at a loss otherwise to account for it, protest
that a particular devil got hold of them and made resistance
impossible.

But it was not a devil at all. It was a little volcano, or better, a
little powder magazine hidden away somewhere in the heart. The imp
Pride had its head out looking for a caress, when it received a rebuff
instead. Hastily disappearing within, it spat fire right and left, and
the explosion followed, proportionate in energy and destructive power
to the quantity of pent-up self-love that served as a charge. Once the
mine is fired, in the confusion and disorder that follow, vengeance
stalks forth in quest of the miscreant that did the wrong.

Anger is the result of hurt pride, of injured self-love. It is a
violent and inordinate commotion of the soul that seeks to wreak
vengeance for an injury done. The causes that arouse anger vary
infinitely in reasonableness, and there are all degrees of intensity.

The malice of anger consists wholly in the measure of our deliberate
yielding to its promptings. Sin, here as elsewhere, supposes an act of
the will, A crazy man is not responsible for his deeds; nor is anyone,
for more than what he does knowingly.

The first movement or emotion of irascibility is usually exempt of all
fault; by this is meant the play of the passion on the sensitive part
of our nature, the sharp, sudden fit that is not foreseen and is not
within our control, the first effects of the rising wrath, such as the
rush of blood, the trouble and disorder of the affections,
surexcitation and solicitation to revenge. A person used to repelling
these assaults may be taken unawares and carried away to a certain
extent in the first storm of passion, in this there is nothing sinful.
But the same faultlessness could not be ascribed to him who e