humble words. The whole episode lives before us in the masterly narrative of the old chronicler; and as we gaze upon the artist's canvas, its colours unfaded after thirty centuries, we behold a perfect picture, true for all time, of the feebleness of rage, the strength of gentleness.

The lesson is one of those which each generation, indeed, each individual, has to learn over againwhich proves that it is a lesson difficult to learn, or at least to put into practice; the truth which it teaches is set forth again and again, with peculiar reiteration, by Israel's sages in their proverbial wisdom, which in turn shows the importance they attached to the subject. You have noticed the habit of these writers to identify every kind of virtue with wisdom, and its contrary with folly-it is the foolishness of sin that strikes them, and which they wish to impress upon their readers; so, in the present instance, we are told that "a fool uttereth all his anger: but a wise man keepeth it back and stilleth it It is an honour for a man to keep away from strife; but every fool will be quarrelling."

In dealing with this theme let me in the first instance safeguard myself against being misunderstood by saying plainly that there is a place for strife, a place for anger, for strong speech and strong action. We have no business to try to pass through a world of conflicting forces without taking sides; we are simply cowardly when, in order to save ourselves possible discomfort or unpopularity, we cautiously forbear uttering a word of censure upon some powerful evil or abuse. We cannot sympathise very strongly with the right if we can see it overborne without coming forward

in its defence; just as, e.g., you would not give very much for the alleged friendship of anyone who could hear you traduced and held up to scorn without quickly and warmly protesting. The truth is stated in those two famous lines of Browning's :

Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving.

It was the Divine pity and tenderness in Jesus which filled Him with Divine indignation against the hypocrisy and hardness of the professional religionists of His day; His was the wrath which has been well described as "the second, hotter flame of love "and those who have never felt the like anger when face to face with some great wrong, have small claim to be considered His disciples. I would go so far as to say that probably no vested abuse has ever been routed until men's hearts were stirred to a generous anger against it, and they determined that this must not continue. You can argue round and round some evil, show that it is wasteful of life and happiness, convince the intellect that it is unnecessary and could be remedied-and get no forwarder; but let a spark of feeling be kindled-let men and women once say with conviction, "This is wicked, and we won't have it!"—and the days of that abuse are numbered.

Be ye angry and sin not," says the New Testament: by all means let us refrain from sinning-but by all means let us be angry upon the right occasion, when some meanness has to be exposed, some injustice to be redressed, some conspiracy against the light to be unmasked.

But when we have entered this necessary proviso

against misinterpretation, we come back to the truth which the Book of Proverbs so frequently emphasises, and which both Scripture and life press upon us-the foolishness and feebleness of the habitually explosive disposition, the ungovernable temper, the petulant outbursts provoked by trifles, the storms of passion roused by any chance breeze. Here is Naaman, terribly disappointed because instead of having his leprosy cured by means of magic, he is recommended to take a course of frequent river baths-" and he turned away in a rage." Here is Jonah, annoyed beyond bearing, first because the repentance of the Ninevites has averted the doom he had prophesied on the city, and again because of the withering of the gourd which had given him shelter. "Doest thou well to be angry?" asks the Divine Voice, gently rallying him on his ill-temper. "I do well to be angry, even unto death," comes back the sulky answer, almost smothered by resentment. . . . Wasn't he foolish? Here is Peter, at the moment of supreme crisis, when his Master is being arrested, and the only thing he can do in his ineffectual wrath is to give a touch of the grotesque to the scene by an exhibition of bad swordsmanship, aiming at a man's life, and inflicting a scratch on his ear-wasn't he absurd? Here is a member of Parliament, losing all sense of decency and control over himself, spluttering incoherent insults at the Prime Minister-and what has he done except injured the prospects of the cause he was championing, and incidentally made himself ridiculous? "A fool uttereth all his anger"; and "a man of great wrath shall bear the penalty."

Now I believe that most people have a fairly keen

objection to being thought ludicrous, and hence probably the makers of maxims among the Hebrews displayed a great deal of shrewdness in laying so much stress upon the absurdity of ill-temper. The person who is always ready to fly into a towering rage when his august will is crossed not infrequently fancies he is being impressive when he "lets himself go"; well, he may succeed in frightening people, shaking their nerves, even to the extent of making them give in to his stormings sooner than live in a perpetual hurricane-but mixed up with their fear, and while they are making concessions to an individual who is beyond arguing with, there is a deep contempt for his weakness-the weakness of a man who, while he would loudly claim to be master in his own house, is not even master over his own mind. Nabal's herdsmen no doubt feared him, trembled at his tantrums, but which of them, down to the brown-skinned, half-naked youngsters that minded his goats, did not really despise his master? You can positively fancy the curl of the lip and the shrug of the shoulders with which his servant says: One cannot speak to him." And this contempt is justified; lack of self-control is a spectacle at which we have either to smile or to manifest disgust. Even Shylock, when he enters in utter frenzy after discovering his daughter's flight, wronged though we know him to be, is not tragic, but simply grotesque; and the most utterly laughable figure I can recall is that of a Continental railway official, dancing about in his rage, breathing threatening and slaughter, purple with fury, and all about nothing! You knew instinctively that this was just the ordinary, every-day routine with this good man-that that was his way, and a ridiculous,

wasteful way, of going through the day's work, with a totally unnecessary expenditure of energy, and so you watched his antics in mere wondering

amusement.

But there is, of course, a tragic side to all this, as there is to all human folly; and the medieval Church was not wrong in placing unbridled anger among the deadly sins, for when it is not curbed it becomes the source of many a rash deed too late repented of; it is the sin of Cain—it is, as has been rightly said, the especial sin of the home, the sin which darkens and poisons home-life, where so many people think themselves free from the self-restraint which governs their conduct outside. And I think I am appealing to very general experience when I say that after the fit of passion has spent itself, after the hot, angry, ugly words have been spoken, every one who has passed through that experience feels conscious in retrospect of the tragedy that has taken place, of lowered dignity, of the irretrievable injury possibly caused, but certainly sustained, and grieves that it should be so. Why, why did we allow ourselves to proceed along that unhappy line? Why could we not have left just that one thing unsaid? How did it all begin? ... How did it begin? I will tell you. All this unnecessary friction which lays waste our powers, all the giving way to temper-note the phrase "giving way," which is itself indicative of weakness-has its origin in undue self-regard, undue self-importance, which blinds us to the inviolable rights and claims of others. The world has to arrange itself in accordance with our individual desires and preferences, other individualities must forgo their development in order to fall into line with