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When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I caught myself off my guard, I had not time to collect myself.

...surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has times to put on a disguise is the truth?

If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the
suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am...And if...what we are matters even more than what we do - if indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are - then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about....I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives.

After the first few steps in Christian life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.