great. The only greatness is
unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake.
Only a great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more
difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all, than, having sought it,
to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a partly selfish
heart. Nothing is a hardship to love, and nothing is hard. I believe that
Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke" is just His way of taking life. And
I believe it is an easier way than any other. I believe it is a happier way
than any other. The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that
there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving.
I repeat, there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving.
And half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness.
They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by
others. It consists in giving and serving others. He that would be great
among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him
remember that there is but one way--it is more blest, it is more happy,
to give than to receive.
The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: good temper. "Love is
not easily provoked." Nothing could be more striking than to find this
here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless
weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing,
a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account
in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right in the heart of this
analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns
to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature.
The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is
often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who
are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an
easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This
compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the
strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are two
great classes of sins--sins of the body, and sins of the disposition. The
Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of
the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which of these is
the worse. Its brands fall without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But
are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and
coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature
may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who
is love, a sin against love may seem a hundred times more base. No
form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself,
does more to unchristianize society than evil temper. For embittering
life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred
relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women,
for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous
misery-producing power, this influence stands alone. Look at the Elder
Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let him get all credit for
his virtues--look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own father's
door. "He was angry," we read, "and would not go in." Look at the
effect upon the father, upon the servants, upon the happiness of the
guests. Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals
are kept out of the kingdom of God by the unlovely character of those
who profess to be inside? Analyze, as a study in temper, the
thunder-cloud itself as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is
it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness,
touchiness, doggedness, sullenness--these are the ingredients of this
dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions, also, these are the
ingredients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not
worse to live in, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did
Christ indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say
unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of
heaven before you." There is really no place in heaven for a disposition
like this. A man with such a mood could only make heaven miserable
for all the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he
can not, he simply can not, enter
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