a model young man to all the country, and the
more so by contrast with his vagabond brother.
For association with lofty character is a painful
circumstance of this deformity. And it suggests
strange doubts as to the real virtue of much that
is reckoned virtue and gets credit for the name.
In reality we have no criterion for estimating at
their true worth men who figure as models of all
the virtues. Everything depends on motive.
The virtues may be real or only apparent, even
as the vices may be real though not apparent.
Some men, for instance, are kept from going
astray by mere cowardice. They have not char-
acter enough to lose their character. For it
often requires a strong character to go wrong.
It demands a certain originality and courage, a
pocketing of pride of which all are not capable,
before a man can make up his mind to fall out of
step with Society and scatter his reputation to the
winds. So it comes to pass that many very mean
men retain their outward virtue. Conversely,
among the prodigal sons of the world are often
found characters of singular beauty. The prodi-
gal, no doubt, was a better man to meet and spend
an hour with than his immaculate brother. A
wealth of tenderness and generosity, truly sweet
ILL-TEMPER 53
and noble dispositions, constantly surprise us in
characters hopelessly under the ban of men. But
it is an instance of misconception as to the nature
of sin that with most men this counts for nothing;
although in those whose defalcation is in the lower
region it counts, and counts almost for everything.
Many of those who sow to the flesh regard their
form of sin as trifling compared with the inconsis-
tent and unchristian graces of those who profess to
sow to the spirit. Many a man, for example, who
thinks nothing of getting drunk would scorn to do
an ungenerous deed or speak a withering word.
And, as already said, it is really a question whether
he is not right. One man sins high up in his nature,
the other low down ; and the vinous spendthrift,
on the whole, may be a better man than the
acid Christian. " Verily, I say unto you," said
Jesus to the priests, " the publicans and the har-
lots go into the kingdom of God before you."
The fact, then, that there are these two distinct
sets of sins, and that few of us indulge both, but
most of us indulge the one or the other, explains
compatibility of virtuous conduct with much un-
loveliness of disposition. Now it is this very
association which makes sins of temper appear
so harmless. There cannot be much wrong, we
fancy, where there is so much general good.
How often it is urged as an apology for garrulous
people, that they are the soul of kindness if we
only knew them better. And how often it is
maintained, as a set-off against crossness and
54 ILL-TEMPER
pitiable explosions of small distempers, that those
who exhibit them are, in their normal mood,
above the average in demonstrative tenderness.
And it is this which makes it so hard to cure.
We excuse the partial failure of our characters
on the ground of their general success. We can
afford to be a little bad who are so good. A true
logic would say we can only afford to be a little
better. If the fly in the ointment is a very small
fly, why have a very small fly? Temper is the
vice of the virtuous. Christ's sermon on the
" Elder brother" is evidently a sermon pointedly
to the virtuous ā not to make bad people good
but to make good people perfect.
Passing now from the nature and relations of
sins of this peculiar class, we come briefly to look
at their effects. And these are of two kinds ā
the influence of temper on the intellect, and on
the moral and religious nature.
With reference to the first, it has sometimes
been taken for granted that a bad temper is a
positive acquisition to the intellect. Its fieriness
is supposed to communicate combustion to sur-
rounding faculties, and to kindle the system into
intense and vigorous life. " A man, when ex-
cessively jaded," says Darwin, " will sometimes
invent imaginary offences, and put himself into
a passion unconsciously, for the sake of re-invig-
orating himself" Now, of course, passion has
its legitimate place in human nature, and when
ILL-TEMPER 55
really controlled, instead of controlling, becomes
the most powerful stimulus to the intellectual
faculties. Thus it is this to which Luther refers
when he says, " I never work better than when I
am inspired by anger. When I am angry, I
can write, pray, and preach well; for then my
whole temperament is quickened, my understand-
ing sharpened, and all mundane vexations and
temptations depart."
The point, however, at which temper inter-
feres with the intellect is in all matters of judg-
ment. A quick temper really incapacitates for
sound judgment. Decisions are struck off at a
white heat, without time to collect grounds or
hear explanations. Then it takes a humbler
spirit than most of us possess to reverse them
when once they are made. We ourselves are
prejudiced in their favour simply because we
have made them, and subsequent courses must
generally do homage to our first precipitancy.
No doubt the elder brother secretly confessed
himself a fool the moment after his back was
turned on the door. But he had taken his stand ;
he had said, "I will not go in," and neither his
father's entreaties nor his own sense of the grow-
ing absurdity of the situation ā think of the man
standing outside his own door ā were able to
shake him. Temptation betraying a man into
an immature judgment, that quickly followed by
an irrelevant action, and the whole having to be
defended by subsequent conduct, after making
16 ILL-TEMPER
such a fuss about it ā such is the natural history
on the side of intellect of a sin of temper.
Amongst the scum left behind by such an
action, apart from the consequences to the indi-
vidual are results always disastrous to others.
For this is another peculiarity of sins of temper,
that their worst influence is upon others. It is
generally, too, the weak who are the sufferers;
for temper is the prerogative of superiors, and
inferiors, down to the bottom of the scale, have
not only to bear the brunt of the storm, but to
sink their own judgment and spend their lives
in ministering to what they know to be caprice.
So their whole training is systematically false,
and their own mental habits become disorganised
and ruined. When the young, again, are dis-
ciplined by the iron instead of on the golden
rule, the consequences are still more fatal. They
feel that they do not get a fair hearing. Their
case is summarily dismissed untried; and that
sort of nursery lynch law to which they are con-
stantly subjected carries with it no explanation
of moral principles, muzzles legitimate feelings,
and really inflicts a punishment infinitely more
serious than is intended, in crushing out all
sense of justice.
But it is in their moral and social effects that
the chief evil lies. It is astonishing how large
a part of Christ's precepts is devoted solely to
the inculcation of happiness. How much of His
life, too, was spent simply in making people
ILL-TEMPER 57
happy! There was no word more often on His
lips than "blessed," and it is recognised by Him
as a distinct end in life, the end for this life, to
secure the happiness of others. This simple
grace, too, needs little equipment. Christ had
little. One need scarcely even be happy one's
self. Holiness, of course, is a greater word,
but we cannot produce that in others. That
is reserved for God Himself, but what is put
in our power is happiness, and for that each
man is his brother's keeper. Now society is an
arrangement for producing and sustaining human
happiness, and temper is an agent for thwart-
ing and destroying it. Look at the parable for
a moment, and see how the elder brother's
wretched pettishness, explosion of temper, churl-
ishness, spoiled the happiness of a whole
circle. First, it certainly spoiled his own. How
ashamed of himself he must have been when
the fit was over, one can well guess. Yet these
things are never so quickly over as they seem.
Self-disgust and humiliation may come at once,
but a good deal else within has to wait till the
spirit is tuned again. For instance, prayer must
wait. A man cannot pray till the sourness is
out of his soul. He must first forgive his brother
who trespassed against him before he can go to
God to have his own trespasses forgiven.
Then look at the effect on the father, or on
the guests, or even on the servants ā that scene
outside had cast its miserable gloom on the entire
58 ILL-TEMPER
company. But there was one other who felt it
with a tenfold keenness ā the prodigal son. We
can imagine the effect on him. This was home,
was it .'' Well, it was a pity he ever came. If
this was to be the sort of thing, he had better
go. Happier a thousand times among the swine
than to endure the boorishness of his self-con-
tained, self-righteous brother. Yes, we drive
men from Christ's door many a time by our sorry
entertainment. The Church is not spiritualised
enough yet to entertain the world. We have no
spiritual courtesies. We cultivate our faith and
proclaim our hope, but forget that a greater than
these is charity. Till men can say of us, "They
suffer long and are kind, they are not easily pro-
voked, do not behave themselves unseemly, bear
all things, think no evil," we have no chance
against the world. One repulsive Christian will
drive away a score of prodigals. God's love
for poor sinners is very wonderful, but God's
patience with ill-natured saints is a deeper
mystery.
The worst of the misery caused by ill-temper
is that it does no good. Some misery is bene-
ficial, but this is gratuitous woe. Nothing in
the world causes such rankling, abiding, unneces-
sary and unblessed pain. And Christ's words,
therefore, when He refers to the breach of the
law of love are most severe. " If any man offend
one of these little ones," He says, " it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his
ILL-TEMPER 59
neck, and that he were cast into the depth of the
sea." That is to say, it is Christ's deliberate
verdict that it is better not to live than not to
love.
In its ultimate nature Distemper is a sin
against love. And however impossible it may
be to realize that now, however we may condone
it as a pardonable weakness or small infirmity,
there is no greater sin. A sin against love is a
sin against God, for God is love. He that sin-
neth against love, sinneth against God.
This tracing of the sin to its root now suggests
this further topic ā its cure, Christianity pro-
fesses to cure anything. The process may be
slow, the discipline may be severe, but it can be
done. But is not temper a constitutional thing ?
Is it not hereditary, a family failing, a matter of
temperament, and can that be cured ? Yes, if
there is anything in Christianity. If there is no
provision for that, then Christianity stands con-
victed of being unequal to human need. What
course then did the father take, in the case before
us, to pacify the angry passions of his ill-natured
son ? Mark that he made no attempt in the first
instance to reason with him. To do so is a
common mistake, and utterly useless both with
ourselves and others. We are perfectly convinced
of the puerility of it all, but that does not help us
in the least to mend it. The malady has its seat
in the affections, and therefore the father went
there at once. Reason came in its place, and the
6o ILL-TEMPER
son was supplied with valid arguments ā stated in
the last verse of the chapter ā against his con-
duct, but he was first plied with Love.
" Son," said the father, " thou art ever with me,
and all that I have is thine." Analyse these
words, and underneath them you will find the
rallying cries of all great communities. There
lie Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ā the happy
symbols with which men have sought to maintain
governments and establish kingdoms. " Son " ā
there is Liberty. " Thou art ever with me " ā
there is Unity, Fraternity. " All that I have is
thine " ā there is Equality. If any appeal could
rouse a man to give up himself, to abandon selfish
ends, under the strong throb of a common sym-
pathy, it is this formula of the Christian Republic.
Take the last. Equality, alone ā "All that I have
is thine." It is absurd to talk of your rights here
and your rights there. You have all rights. " All
that I have is thine." There is no room for self-
ishness if there is nothing more that one can
possess. And God has made the Equality. God
has given us all, and if the memory of His great
kindness. His particular kindness to us, be once
moved within, the heart must melt to Him, and
flow out to all mankind as brothers.
It is quite idle, by force of will, to seek to
empty the angry passions out of our life. Who
has not made a thousand resolutions in this direc-
tion, only and with unutterable mortification to
behold them dashed to pieces with the first temp-
ILL-TEMPER 6i
tation ? The soul is to be made sweet not by
taking the acidulous fluids out, but by putting
something in ā a great love, God's great love.
This is to work a chemical change upon them, to
renovate and regenerate them, to dissolve them
in its own rich fragrant substance. If a man let
this into his life, his cure is complete ; if not, it is
hopeless.
The character most hard to comprehend in the
New Testament is the unmerciful servant. For
his base extravagance his wife and children were
to be sold, and himself imprisoned. He cries for
mercy on his knees, and the 10,000 talents, hope-
less and enormous debt, is freely cancelled. He
goes straight from the kind presence of his lord,
and, meeting some poor wretch who owes him a
hundred pence, seizes him by the throat and hales
him to the prison-cell, from which he himself had
just escaped. How a man can rise from his
knees, where, forgiven much already, he has just
been forgiven more, and go straight from the
audience chamber of his God to speak hard words
and do hard things, is all but incredible. This
servant truly in wasting his master's money must
have wasted away his own soul. But grant a man
any soul at all, love must follow forgiveness.
Being forgiven much, he mi^si love much, not
as a duty, but as a necessary consequence; he
vms^ become a humbler, tenderer man, generous
and brotherly. Rooted and grounded in love, his
love will grow till it embraces the earth. Then
62 ILL-TEMPER
only he dimly begins to understand his father's
gift ā "All that I have is thine." The world is
his : he cannot injure his own. The ground of
benevolence is proprietorship. And all who love
God are the proprietors of the world. The meek
inherit the earth ā all that He has is theirs. All
that God has ā what is that? Mountain and
field, tree and sky, castle and cottage, white man,
black man, genius and dullard, prisoner and pau-
per, sick and aged ā all these are mine. If noble
and hiappy, I must enjoy them ; if great and
beautiful, I must delight in them ; if poor and
hungry, I must clothe them ; if sick and in
prison, I must visit them. For they are all mine,
all these, and all that God has beside, and I must
love all and give myself for all.
Here the theme widens. From Plato to Her-
bert Spencer reformers have toiled to frame new
schemes of Sociology. There is none so grand
as the Sociology of Jesus. But we have not
found out the New Testament Sociology yet;
we have spent the centuries over its theology.
Surely man's relation to God may be held as
settled now. It is time to take up the other prob-
lem, man's relation to man. With a former the-
ology, man as man, as a human being, was of no
account. He was a mere theological unit, the
X of doctrine, an unknown quantity. He was
taught to believe, therefore, not to love. Now
we are learning slowly that to believe is to love ;
that the first commandment is to love God, and
ILL-TEMPER 63
the second /ike imio it ā another version of it ā
is to love man. Not only the happiness but the
efficiency of the passive virtues, love as a power,
as a practical success in the world, is coming to
be recognised. The fact that Christ led no army,
that He wrote no book, built no church, spent no
money, but that He loved, and so conquered, this
is beginning to strike men. And Paul's argu-
ment is gaining adherents, that when all prophe-
cies are fulfilled, and all our knowledge becomes
obsolete, and all tongues grow unintelligible, this
thing. Love, will abide and see them all out one
by one into the oblivious past. This is the hope
for the world that we shall learn to love, and in
learning that, unlearn all anger and wrath and
evil-speaking and malice and bitterness.
And this will indeed be the world's future.
This is heaven. The curtain drops on the story
of the prodigal, leaving him iuy but the elder
brother out. And why is obvious. It is impos-
sible for such a man to be in heaven. He would
spoil heaven for all who were there. Except
such a man be born again he cannot enter the
kingdom of God. To get to heaven we must take
it in with us.
There are many heavens in the world even
now from which we all shut ourselves out by our
own exclusiveness ā heavens of friendship, of
family life, of Christian work, of benevolent min-
istrations to the poor and ignorant and distressed.
Because of some personal pique, some disap-
64 ILL-TEMPER
proval of methods, because the lines of work of
some of the workers are not exactly to our taste,
we play the elder brother, we are angry and will
not go in. This is the naked truth of it, we are
simply angry and will not go in. And this bears,
if we could see it, its own worst penalty; for
there is no severer punishment than just to be left
outside, perhaps, to grow old alone, unripe, love-
less and unloved. We are angry and will not go
in. All sins mar God's image, but sins of temper
mar God's image and God's work and man's
happiness.
NUMBER II
Why Christ must
Depart
A SERMON BEFORE
COMMUNION
"// is expedient for you that T go away.'''' ā John xvi. 7.
T was on a communion night like this that the
words were spoken. They fell upon the
disciples Hke a thunderbolt startling a summer
sky. Three and thirty years He had lived among
them. They had lately learned to love Him.
Day after day they had shared together the sun-
shine and the storm, and their hearts clung to
Him with a strange tenderness. And just when
everything was at its height, when their friendship
was now pledged indissolubly in the first most
solemn sacrament, the unexpected words come,
" I must say good-bye ; it is expedient for you
that I go away." It was a crushing blow to the
little band. They had staked their all upon that
love. They had given up home, business, friends,
and promised to follow Him. And now He says,
" I must go ! "
Let us see what He means by it. The words
may help us to understand more fully our own
relations with Him now that He is gone.
S
66 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART
I. The first thing to strike one is the way Jesus
took to break the news. It was characteristic.
His sayings and doings ahvays came about in the
most natural way. Even His profoundest state-
ments of doctrine were invariably apropos of some
often trivial circumstance happening in the day's
round. So now He did not suddenly deliver
Himself of the doctrine of the Ascension. It
leaked out as it were in the ordinary course of
things.
The supper was over; but the friends had
much to say to one another that night, and they
lingered long around the table. They did not
know it was the last supper, never dreamed of it ;
but there had been an unusual sweetness in their
intercourse, and they talked on and on. The
hour grew late, but John still leaned on his
Master's breast, and the others, grouped round
in the twilight, drank in the solemn gladness of
the communion evening. Suddenly a shadow
falls over this scene. A sinister figure rises
stealthily, takes the bag, and makes for the door
unobserved. Jesus calls him : hands him the sop.
The spell is broken. A terrible revulsion of
feeling comes over Him ā as if a stab in the
dark had struck into His heart. He cannot go
on now. It is useless to try. He cannot keep
up the perhaps forced spirits.
** Little children," He says very solemnly, His
voice choking, " yet a little while I am with you."
And " Whither I go ye cannot come."
WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 67
The hour is late. They think He is getting
tired. He means to retire to rest. But Peter
asks straight out, "Lord, whither goest Thou?"
Into the garden? Back to GaHlee? It never
occurred to one of them that He meant the
Unknown Land.
"Whither I go," He replies a second time,
"ye cannot follow Me now, but ye shall follow
Me afterward.'' Afterivard! The blow slowly
falls. In a dim, bewildering way it begins to
dawn upon them. It is separation.
We can judge of the effect from the next sen-
tence, "Let not your heart be troubled," He
says. He sees their panic and consternation,
and doctrine has to stand aside till experimental
religion has ministered. And then it is only
at intervals that He gets back to it; every sen-
tence almost is interrupted. Questionings and
misgivings are started, explanations are insisted
on, but the terrible truth will not hide. He
always comes back to that ā He will not temper
its meaning, He still insists that it is absolute,
literal; and finally He states it in its most bare
and naked form, " It is expedient for you that I
go away."
II. Notice His reasons for going away. Why
did Jesus go away.-* We all remember a time
when we could not answer that question. We
wished' He had stayed, and had been here now.
The children's hymn expresses a real human
feeling, and our hearts burn still as we read it:
68 WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART
" I think, when I read that sweet story of old,
How Jesus was here among men,
He called little children like lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with Him then.
" I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,
That His arms had been thrown around me.
And that I might have seen His kind look as He said,
' Let the little ones come unto Me.' "
Jesus must have had reasons for disappointing
a human feeling so deep, so universal, and so
sacred. We may be sure, too, that these reasons
intimately concern us. He did not go away be-
cause He was tired. It was quite true that He
was despised and rejected of men ; it was quite
true that the pitiless world hated and spurned
and trod on Him. But that did not drive Him
away. It was quite true that He longed for His
Father's house and pined and yearned for His
love. But that did not draw Him away. No.
He never thought of Himself. It is expedient
ior you, He says, not for Me, that I go.
I. The first reason is one of His own stating.
" I go away to prepare a place for you. " And the
very naming of this is a proof of Christ's con-
siderateness. The burning question with every
man who thought about his life in those days
was, Whither is this life leading.? The present,
alas ! was dim and inscrutable enough, but the
future was a fearful and unsolved mystery. So
Christ put that right before He went away. He
gave this unknown future form and colour. He
WHY CHRIST MUST DEPART 69
told us ā and it is only because we are so accus-
tomed to it that we do not wonder more at the
magnificence of the conception ā that when our
place in this world should know us no more there
would be another place ready for us. We do not
know much about that place, but the best thing
we do know, that He prepares it. Eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the
heart of man what the Lord went away to pre-
pare for them that love Him. It is better to
think of this, to let our thoughts rest on this,
that He prepares it, than to fancy details of our
own.
But that does not exhaust the matter. Con-
sider the alternative. If Christ had not gone
away, what then } We should not either. The
circumstances of our future life depended upon
Christ's going away to prepare them; but the
fact of our going away at all depended on His
going away. We could not follow Him here-
after, as He said we should, unless He led first.
He had to be the Resurrection and the Life.
And this was part of the preparing a place for
us ā the preparing a way for us. He prepared
a place for us by the way He took to prepare a
place. It was a very wonderful way.
In a lonely valley in Switzerland a small band