Even
should you now begin the attempt, and begin it in all earnestness, it
will take some time to establish your new character. _En attendant_, you
must be on the watch for opportunities of obliging others, for they will
not be freely offered to you; you must now exercise your own
observation to find out what they would once have frankly told
you,--whether you are tiring people physically or distressing them
morally, or putting them to practical inconvenience. I do not make the
extravagant supposition that all those with whom you associate have
attained to Christian perfection; the proud and the resentful, as well
as the delicate-minded, will suffer much rather than repeat appeals to
your unselfishness which have often before been disregarded. They may
exercise the Christian duty of forgiveness in other ways, but this is
the most difficult of all. Few can attain to it, and you must not hope
it.
Finally; I wish to warn you against believing those who tell you that
such minute analysis of motives, such scrutiny into the smallest details
of daily conduct, has a tendency to produce an unhealthy
self-consciousness. This might, indeed, be true, if the original state
of your nature, before the examination began, were a healthy one.
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