oment, you may have many friends who delight in your society,
and admire your character: will you lose the pleasure which such
blessings are intended to confer, by envying the preferences shown to
others? Bring the subject distinctly and clearly home to your mind.
Whenever you feel an emotion of pain, have the courage to trace it to
its source, place this emotion in all its meanness before you, then
think how ridiculous it would appear to you if you contemplated it in
another. Finally, ask yourself whether there can be any indulgence of
such feelings in a heart that is bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ,--whether there can be any room for them in a
temple of God wherein the spirit of God dwelleth.[39]

FOOTNOTES:

[37] 1 John iii.

[38] 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26.

[39] Cor. iii. 16.

LETTER V.

SELFISHNESS AND UNSELFISHNESS.

This is a difficult subject to address you upon, and one which you will
probably reject as unsuited to yourself. There are few qualities that
the possessor is less likely to be conscious of than either selfishness
or unselfishness; because the actions proceeding from either are so
completely instinctive, so unregulated by any appeal to principle, that
they never, in the common course of things, attract any particular
notice. We go on, therefore, strengthening ourselves in the habits of
either, until a double nature, as it were, is formed, overlaying the
first, and equally powerful with it. How unlovely is this in the case of
selfishness, even where there are, besides, fine and striking features
in the general character, and how lovely in the case of unselfishness,
even when, as too frequently happens, there is little comparative
strength or nobleness in its intellectual and moral accompaniments!

You are now young, you are affectionate, good-natured, obliging,
possessed of gay and happy spirits, and a sweetness of temper that is
seldom seen united with so much sparkling wit and lively sensibilities.
Altogether, then, you are considered a very attractive person, and, in
the love which all those qualities have won for you from those around
you, may bring forward strong evidence against my charge of selfishness.
But is not this love more especially felt by those who are not brought
into daily and hourly collision with you. They only see you bright with
good-humour, ready to talk, to laugh, and to make merry with them in any
way they please. They therefore, in