A Word About Temper

“Help us, 0 Lord! with patient love to bear

Each other’s faults, to suffer with true meekness; Help us each other’s joys and griefs to share, But let us turn to thee alone in weakness.”

II/T ORE than half of us are bad-tempered — at least so an English philosopher tells us. He claims that this is no mere general statement and no bit of guesswork; he gives us the figures for it. He arranged to have about two thousand people put unconsciously under espionage as to their ordinary temper, and then had careful reports made of the results. The footing up of the returns has been announced, and is decidedly unflattering to the two thousand tempers that were thus put to the test. More than half of these people — to be entirely accurate, fifty-two per centum of them — are set down as bad-tempered in various degrees. The dictionary has been wellnigh exhausted of adjectives of this order in giving the different shades of badness.

Acrimonious, aggressive, arbitrary, bickering, capricious, captious, choleric, contentious, crotchety, despotic, domineering, easily offended, gloomy, grumpy, hasty, huffy, irritable, morose, obstinate, peevish, sulky, surly, vindictive, — these are some of the qualifying words. There are employed, in all, forty-six terms, none of which describes a sweet temper.

We do not like to believe that the case is quite so serious — that a little more than every second one of us is unamiable in some offensive degree. It is easier to confess our neighbor’s faults and infirmities than our own; so, therefore, quietly taking refuge for ourselves among the forty-eight per centum of good-tempered people, we shall probably be willing to admit that a great many of the people we know have at times rather ungentle tempers. They are easily provoked; they fly into a passion on very slight occasion; they are haughty, domineering, peevish, fretful or vindictive.

What is even worse, most of them appear to make no effort to grow out of their infirmities of disposition. The sour fruit does not come to mellow ripeness in the passing years; the roughness is not polished off the diamond to reveal its lustrous hidden beauty. The same petulance, pride, vanity, selfishness and other disagreeable qualities are found in the life year after year. Where there is a struggle to overcome one’s faults and grow out of them, and where the progress toward better and more beautiful spiritual character is perceptible, though ever so slow, we should have patience; but where one appears unconscious of one’s blemishes and manifests no desire to conquer one’s faults there is little ground for encouragement.

“Manlike is it to fall into sin:
Fiendlike is it to dwell therein;
Christlike is it for sin to grieve;
Godlike is it all sin to leave.”

Bad temper is such a disfigurement of character, and, besides, works such harm to one’s self and to one’s neighbors, that no one should spare any pains or cost to have it cured. The ideal Christian life is one of unbroken kindliness. It is dominated by love — the love whose portrait is drawn for us in the immortal thirteenth of First Corinthians. It suffereth long and is kind. It envieth not. It vauuteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, eudureth all things. That is the picture; then we have but to turn to the gospel pages to find the story of a Life in which all this was realized. Jesus never lost his temper. He lived among people who tried him at every point — some by their dullness, others by their bitter enmity and persecution — but he never failed in sweetness of disposition, in long-suffering patience, in self-denying love. Like the flowers which give out their perfume only when crushed, like the odoriferous wood which bathes with fragrance the axe which hews it, the life of Christ yielded only the tenderer, sweeter love to the rough impact of men’s rudeness and wrong. That is the pattern on which we should strive to fashion our life and our character. Every outbreak of violent temper, every shade of ugliness in disposition, mars the radiant loveliness of the picture AVC are seeking to have fashioned in our souls. Whatever is not loving is unlovely.

There is another phase: bad-tempered people are continually hurting others, ofttimes their best and truest friends. Some people are sulky, and one person’s sulkiness casts a chilling shadow over a whole household; others are so sensitive, ever watching for slights and offended by the merest trifles, that even their nearest friends have no freedom of intercourse with them; others are despotic, and will brook no kindly suggestion nor listen to any expression of opinion; others are so quarrelsome that even the meekest and gentlest person cannot live peaceably with them. Whatever may be the special characteristic of the bad temper, it makes only pain and humiliation for the person’s friends.

A bad temper usually implies a sharp tongue. Sometimes, indeed, it makes one morose and glum. A brother and a sister living together are said often to have passed months without speaking to each other, though eating at the same table and sleeping under the same roof. A man recently died who for twelve years, it was said, had never spoken to his wife, though they continued to dwell together, and three times daily sat down together at the same table. Bad temper sometimes runs to proud silence. Such silence is not golden. Generally, however, a bad-tempered person has an unbridled tongue and speaks out his hateful feelings; and there is no limit to the pain and the harm which angry and ugly words can produce in gentle hearts.

“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.

“The ill-timed truth we might have kept —

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say — Who knows how grandly it had rung?”

It would be easy to extend this portrayal of the evils of bad temper, but it will be more profitable to inquire how a bad-tempered person may become good-tempered. There is no doubt that this happy change is possible in any case. There is no temper so obdurately bad that it cannot be trained into sweetness. The grace of God can take the most unlovely life and transform it into the image of Christ. As in all moral changes, however, grace does not work independently of human volition and exertion: God always works helpfully with those who strive to reach Christlikeness. We must resist the devil, or he will not flee from us. We must struggle to obtain the victory over our own evil habits and dispositions, although it is only through Christ that we can be conquerors; he will not make us conquerors unless we enter the battle. We have a share, and a large and necessary share, in the culture of our own character. The bad-tempered man will never become good-tempered until he deliberately sets for himself the task and enters resolutely and persistently upon its accomplishment. The transformation will never come of itself even in a Christian. People do not grow out of ugly temper into sweet refinement as a peach ripens from sourness into lusciousness.

Then the thing to be accomplished is not the destroying of the temper: temper is a good quality in its place. The task is not destruction, but control. A man is very weak who has a strong temper without the power of self-control; likewise is he weak who has a weak temper. The truly strong man is he who is strong in the element of temper — that is, has strong passions and feelings capable of great anger, and then has perfect self-control. When Moses failed and broke down in temper, self-control, he was not the man to lead the people into the Promised Land; therefore God at once prepared to relieve him. The task to be set, therefore, in self-discipline is the gaining of complete mastery over every feeling and emotion, so as to be able to restrain every impulse to speak or to act unadvisedly.

Then there is need of a higher standard of character in this regard than many people seem to set for themselves. We never rise higher than our ideals; the perfect beauty of Christ should ever be visioued in our hearts as that which we would attain for ourselves. The honor of our Master’s name should impel us to strive ever toward Christlikeness in spirit and in disposition. We represent Christ in this world; people cannot see him, and they must look at us to see a little of what he is like. Whatever great work we may do for Christ, if we fail to live out his life of patience and forbearance, we fail in an essential part of our duty as Christians. “The servant of the Lord must be ... gentle.”

Nor can we be greatly useful in our personal life while our daily conduct is stained by frequent outbursts of anger and other exhibitions of temper. In the old fable the spider goes about doing mischief wherever it creeps, while the bee by its wax and its honey makes “sweetness and light” wherever it flies. We had better be bees than be spiders, living to turn darkness into light and to put a little more sweetness into the life of all who know us. But only as our own lives shine in the brightness of holy affectionateness and our hearts and lips distill the sweetness of patience and gentleness can we fulfill our mission in this world as Christ’s true messengers to men.

In striving to overcome our impatience with others it will help us to remember that we and they have the common heritage of a sinful nature. The thing in them which irritates us is, no doubt, balanced by something in us which looks just as unlovely in their eyes and just as sorely tries their forbearance toward us. Whittier wifely says:

“Search thine own heart. What paineth thee
In others, in thyself may be.
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak:
Be thou the true man thou dost seek.”

Very likely, if we think our neighbors hard to live peaceably with, they think about the same of us; and who shall tell in whom lies the greater degree of fault? Certain it is that a really good-tempered person can rarely ever be drawn into a quarrel with any one. He is resolutely determined that he will not be a partner in any unseemly strife; he would rather suffer wrongfully than offer any retaliation; he has learned to bear and to forbear. Then by his gentle tact he is able to conciliate any who are angry.

A fable relates that in the depth of a forest there lived two foxes. One of them said to the other one day in the politest of fox-language, “Let’s quarrel.” — “Very well,” said the other; “but how shall we set about it?” They tried all sorts of ways, but in vain, for both would give way. At last one brought two stones. “There!” said he.” Now you say they are yours and I’ll say they are mine, and we will quarrel and fight and scratch.

Now I’ll begin. Those stones are mine.” — “All right!” answered the other fox; “you are welcome to them.” — “But we shall never quarrel at this rate,” replied the first. — “No, indeed, you old simpleton! Don’t you know it takes two to make a quarrel?” So the foxes gave up trying to quarrel, and never played again at this silly game.

The fable has its lesson for other creatures besides foxes. As far as in us lies, St. Paul tells us, we should live peaceably with all men. A wise man says, “Every man takes care that his neighbors shall not cheat him, but a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbors. Then all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.” So long as a man sees only the quarrelsome temper of his neighbor he is not far toward saintliness; but when he has learned to watch and to try to control his own temper and to weep over his own infirmities, he is on the way to God, and will soon be conqueror over his own weakness.

There is one place where our impatience, irritability and ill-temper cannot but shame us. Says the Quaker poet, again:

“My heart was heavy, for its trust had been

Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;

So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,

One summer Sabbath day I strolled along among

The green mounds of the village burial-place, Where, pondering how all human love and hate Find one sad level, and how, soon or late,

Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face And cold hands folded over a still heart,

Pass the green threshold of our common grave, Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart, —

Awed for myself and pitying my race,

Our common sorrow like a mighty wave

Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave.”

Life is too short to spend even one day of it in bickering and strife; love is too sacred to be for ever lacerated and torn by the ugly briers of sharp temper. Surely we ought to learn to be patient with others, since God has to show every day such infinite patience toward us. Is not the very essence of true love the spirit that is not easily provoked, that beareth all things? Can we not, then, train our life to sweeter gentleness? Can we not learn to be touched even a little roughly without resent ing it? Can we not bear little injuries and apparent injustices without flying into an unseemly rage? Can we not have in us something of the mind of Christ which will enable us, like him, to endure all wrong and injury and give back no word or look of bitterness? The way over which we and our friend walk together is too short to be spent in wrangling.

“They are such dear familiar feet that go Along the path with ours — feet fast or slow, And trying to keep pace. If they mistake, Or tread upon some flower that we would take Upon our breast, or bruise some reed, Or crush poor hope until it bleed, We may be mute, Not turning quickly to impute Grave fault; for they and we Have such a little way to go — can be Together such a little while along the way — We will be patient while we may.

“So many little faults we find!
We see them, for not blind
Is love. We see them; but if you and I
Perhaps remember them some by and by,
They will not be

Faults then — grave faults — to you and me,
But just odd ways, mistakes, or even less — Remembrances to bless.
Days change so many things — yes, hours;
We see so differently in sun and showers.
Mistaken words to-night
May be so cherished by to-morrow’s light.
We may be patient, for we know
There’s such a little way to go.”