We have
all many defects in our manners, in our habits, and in our constitutional
ways of thinking and speaking and acting,--defects that tempt those who
live nearest us to fall into annoyances with us that sometimes deepen
into dislike, and even positive disgust, till it has been seen, in some
extreme cases, that home-life has become a very prison-house, in which
the impatient prisoner chafes and jibs and strikes out as he does nowhere
else. Now, when any unhappy man or woman wakens up to discover how
different life is now to be from what it once promised to become, let
them know that all their past blindness, and precipitancy, and all the
painful results of all that, may yet be made to work together for good.
In your patience with one another, says our Lord, you will make a
conquest of your adverse lot, and of your souls to the bargain. Say to
yourselves, therefore, that perfection, faultlessness, and absolute
satisfaction are not to be found in this world. And say also that since
you have not brought perfection to your side of the house any more than
your partner has to his side, you are not so foolish as to expect
perfection in return for such imperfection.
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