Useful Recollections When Angry.
The great Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, composed the following subjects of reflection, to be used when he found himself in the heat of anger. They are equally as useful now in the nineteenth as in the second century, and should be generally remembered:— 1. That men were made for each other; even the inferior for the sake of the superior, and these for the sake of one another. 2. That invincible influences act upon men and mold their opinions and acts. 3. That sin is mainly error and ignorance—an involuntary slavery. 4. That we are ourselves feeble, and by no means immaculate; and that often our very abstinence from faults is due more from cowardice and care of our reputation than to any freedom from the disposition to commit them. 5. That our judgments are very rash, and apt to be premature. "And in short, a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct judgment upon another man's acts." 6. That no wrongful act of another can bring shame on us, and it is not men's acts which disturb us, but our own opinion of them. 7. That our own anger hurts us more than the acts themselves. 8. That benevolence is invisible, if it be not an affected smile, nor acting a part. For what will the most violent man do to thee if thou continuest benevolent to him, gently and calmly correcting him, admonishing him when he is trying to do thee harm saying, "Not so, child; we are constituted by nature for something else; I shall certainly not be injured, but thou art injuring thyself, my child."