| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 3 |
Page 4 |
For example, in the matter of temper. Perhaps there is nothing that mars the beauty of more Christian lives that ill temper in some of its manifold forms. There is no confession made oftener that this – “Somehow I cannot control my temper.” Many good people seem to think that faults of temper are not really sins, certainly not grievous sins – that they are only little infirmities, not needing even to be repented of. Then the fact that nearly everybody has the same fault seems to make it less a fault, scarcely more than a common human trait. But let us not allow ourselves to be deceived into any such minimizing of faulty temper. Think how much pain and bitterness are caused every day to gentle hearts by bad tempers. Then think how outbreaks of temper in others appear to you – how unlovely, how unseemly, and how undivine. That is just the way similar outbreaks in you appear to others. If we would be approved, we must get this vice of ill temper in us transformed into gentle, patient lovingness.
Thought for others is another of the details in which Christians should cultivate their characters. It is only when self dies and we learnt to put others in the empty place that we begin truly to live the Christian life. We cannot understand to what refinements of love the religion of Christ calls us. We are not always kind to each other, not always patient with each other, not always courteous, not always forgiving, not always large hearted and gentle. Sometimes we are fretful, irritable, sensitive, too easily hurt. We speak words which are like thorns. We doubt and suspect each other. We are too likely to take up an evil report against another. If we would be among the approved, we must let the sweetness of love for others in our lives. We admire love in others. It warms our hearts to find the whole thirteenth of I Corinthians in some life. That is the ideal for us. It vexes us to find others selfish, suspicious, unforgiving, thoughtless, and unkind. It vexes others just as much to find the same unloving things in us.
“Search thine own heart. What painest thee
In others, in thyself may be.”
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