Life and Conduct

by J. Cameron Lees

I. We should cherish a deep and strong detestation of the evil effects of bad temper in all its forms.—(a) It has a bad effect physically. It produces consequences injurious to health. The man who indulges in it habitually cannot do so with impunity. Doctors constantly warn their patients to refrain from irritating disputes, and to avoid men and things likely to provoke their anger. (b) It has a bad effect socially. The bad-tempered man is seldom a favorite with society. Men eventually dislike him and shun him as a nuisance. His family, if he has one, come to regard him with dread rather than love. (c) It has a bad effect as regards success in life. "Everything," the proverb says, "comes to him who waits." The patient and forbearing man attains his object much sooner than the man of passion and abuse. Such a person is continually thwarted in his plans. People refuse to be bullied into acquiescence; and threats, which have well been called "the arguments of a coward," raise rather than disarm opposition. (d) It has a bad effect spiritually. (1) The man of evil temper wants the calm disposition of soul necessary to communion with God. The glass through which he looks into the spiritual world is clouded and gives a distorted vision. He whose soul is filled with anger and clouded by passion cannot pray. Before he lays his gift upon the altar, he must be reconciled to his brother. (2) Scripture is full of warnings against evil temper: "He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly." "Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man thou shalt not go, lest thou learn his ways and get a snare to thy soul." "An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression." "Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath." "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." The example of our blessed Lord specially teaches the same lessen. Calmly and peacefully He pursued His divine work. "When reviled he reviled not again, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously." Before the High Priest, Pilate and Herod, His indignant silence was more eloquent than scorching words.

II. We should deliberately cultivate self-control.—If a railway train is going swiftly along, and the driver sees something on the track, he applies the brake, and thus avoids collision. In regard to temper, self-control is like the brake, and we should be ever ready to put it on. A person can come, in time, to get a wonderful control over his temper if he watches against it. The writer knew a young man who was at one time of an ungovernable temper; he used to be at times like "one possessed." But by watching and resolutely putting on the brake he grew up one of the sweetest-tempered and most lovable of men. He fought the wild beast within him, lashed it and kept it down. A merchant had passionately abused a Quaker, who received his outburst of ill-temper in silence. Being afterwards ashamed of himself, he asked the other how he was able to show such patience. "Friend," replied the Quaker, "I will tell thee. I was naturally as hot and violent as thou art. I knew that to indulge temper was sinful, and I found it was imprudent. I observed that men in a passion always spoke loud, and I thought if I could control my voice I should repress my passion. I have therefore made it a rule never to allow my voice to be above a certain key, and by a careful observance of this rule I have, by the blessing of God, mastered my natural temper." Strong resolution can do much. "If the pot boils," says the proverb, "take it off the fire." A little care, a word swallowed, a rising sentence struck down in us by a simple rule, may save us humiliation. "By reflection, by restraint and control a wise man can make himself an island which no floods can overwhelm. He who is tolerant with the intolerant, mild with the fault-finders, and free from passion with the passionate, him I indeed call a wise man."—Buddhist saying.

III. But while an act of self-control can restore the proper temper and balance to the mind when it is in danger, the best way is to keep it so that it will not go off the balance. You know that if a clock stops, we may perhaps make it go again by a shake; if it does not keep time, we can often put the hands right; but the best way is to keep the machinery always so well balanced and adjusted that it will not stop or go wrong. We may watch and control the temper when it breaks out; but the better way is to keep it so well balanced that it will not break out. The soul that is in harmony with God, that is full of the spirit of Christ, will ever be peaceful and serene. If ill-temper is our besetting sin, God's grace, if we ask it, will give us power to conquer it While we watch against it, we should pray against it also. The beautiful words of Thomas à Kempis point out to us the secret of the well-tempered and well-balanced mind: "First keep thyself in peace, and then thou wilt be able to bring others to peace." If "the peace of God which passeth all understanding" keep our hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus, our life will never have its serenity disturbed by ill-temper.

[1] I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness for some hints in this chapter to an interesting work on "Self-Culture," by James Freeman Clarke.

CHAPTER XII.

RECREATION.

Recreation is another name for amusement. Both words express the same idea. Recreation means to create over again, the building up of the system when it is exhausted. Amusement primarily is said to be derived from the halt which a dog makes in hunting, when he pauses to sniff the air in order to see in which way the scent lies. Having done this, he starts off again with redoubled speed. Both these words in themselves suggest the place that the things which they signify should occupy in life. They are for the refreshing of our strength, in order to renewed effort.

Recreation is a necessary part of life.—There are two great laws under which we live: the law of work and the law of recreation. Man has to work, and to work hard, in order to live. Work also is necessary to happiness. "He that labors," says the Italian proverb, "is tempted by one devil; he that is idle, by a thousand." The industrious life, it is perfectly plain (as we have shown in a previous chapter), is that which we should all follow. But recreation is as needful in its place as work. (a) This is the teaching of nature. God has made us capable of enjoying ourselves, just as He has made us able to think, or talk, or work with our hands. The first sign of intelligence in the infant is a smile. The child's nature unfolds itself in play, and as man grows up, it develops itself in many forms. The universe also is full of joy and gladness. The sky is blue, the sea glistens, the flowers are strewn over the earth. We speak of the waves playing on the shore, of the shadows playing on the mountain side. All this indicates that there is "a certain play element" that rejoices in the world around us. (b) This is the teaching of experience. Unvaried and unbroken toil becomes a sore burden; it breaks the spirit, weakens energy, and saddens the heart. "All work and no play," according to the proverb, "makes Jack a dull boy." There are men around us working so hard that they have no family life, no social life, no time for thought or for culture. They are simply cogs in a great wheel that is ceaselessly turning round and round—wearing themselves out before their time by excess of labor. This cannot be right. There is an interesting tradition of St. John, the disciple of our Lord, that while amusing himself with a tame partridge he was asked by a huntsman how he could spend his time in so unprofitable a manner. St. John replied, "Why dost thou not carry thy bow always bent?" "Because," answered the huntsman, "if it were always bent, I fear it would lose its spring and become useless." "Be not surprised then," replied the apostle, "that I should sometimes remit a little of my close attention of spirit to enjoy a little recreation, that I may afterwards employ myself more fervently in divine contemplation." It is said also of a most saintly man, Carlo Borromeo, that while engaged with some friends in a game of chess, the question was started, what they would do if they knew they were to die within the hour. "I would," said Borromeo, "go on with my game." He had begun it for God's glory, and in order to fit himself for God's work, and he would finish it. These anecdotes illustrate the truth that recreation is a necessary part of life, and may be engaged in with the highest object.

Recreation, therefore, is not to be regarded as an evil in itself—Men at different times have so regarded it. (a) Those who have been termed ascetics in the Church of Rome looked upon every form of amusement as sinful. Even to smile or laugh was a fault needing severe penance. They were "cruel to themselves," denied themselves all earthly joy, and placed vice and pleasure in the same category. (b) The Puritans also, in the time of the Stuarts, set their faces strongly against games and recreation of every kind. They denounced all public amusements, as Macaulay tells us, "from masques, which were exhibited at the mansions of the great, down to the wrestling matches and quoiting matches on the village green." (c) In all ages there have been good men animated by the same feeling. Life has seemed to them so serious as to have no place in it for mirth. Even one so saintly as Archbishop Leighton said that "pleasures are like mushrooms—it is so difficult to distinguish those that are wholesome from those that are poisonous, that it is better to abstain from them altogether." Those views have something noble in them. They spring from hatred of sin and from realizing intensely that

Recreation is liable to abuse.—It often leads to evil. It was the unbridled gaiety of the age, with its selfishness and sensuality, that made the Puritans denounce amusement, though the austerity they enforced led to dreadful consequences. Repression passed into excess. "It was as if the pent-up sewerage of a mud volcano had been suddenly let loose. The unclean spirit forcibly driven out by the Puritans returned with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and the last state of Stuart England was worst than the first." The history of that period shows us the mistake religion makes by frowning down all amusements as sinful. But that some may be so is equally clear. They are so (a) when they are contrary to the express commands of the Word of God. There are pleasures which are in themselves unlawful, and which are condemned by the divine law. These, God's children will shun. They are forms of wickedness which they will ever hold in abhorrence. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," with all that the words mean, though the world may regard them as pleasures, and engage in them as amusements, are evil before God. But not to dwell on this, which is evident, amusements are evil (b) when they unfit for work. "The end of labor," said the Greek philosopher Aristotle, "is to rest." It is equally true that "the end of rest is to labor." Pleasures that tempt us from daily duty, that leave us listless and weary, are pernicious. Outdoor games, for instance, ought to strengthen the physical frame, they ought to make us healthy and strong and ready for work. But when carried to excess they often produce the opposite result, and become positively hurtful. If the Saturday's play unfit for the worship and rest of the Lord's day; if an employer, as has been stated, has been obliged to dismiss his clerks more than once because of their incapacity for work owing to football matches, cricket matches, and sports generally, it is clear that these have not been for their good; and the same may be said of the effect of other forms of amusement, especially when carried to excess. The amusements that send us back to toil with a lightened heart and a vigorous mind are those only that we should engage in; all others are detrimental, and should be shunned. (c) It is necessary to say also that amusement in any form followed as the end of life becomes specially sinful. Even the heathen moralist, Cicero, could say "that he is not worthy to be called a man who is willing to spend a single day wholly in pleasure." How much more truly may a Christian feel that he "who liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth." A life that is simply play, that is simply amusement, is no life at all. It is only a contemptible form of existence. "A soul sodden with pleasure" is a lost soul. To be a mere pleasure-seeker is not the chief end of man. Nothing grows more wearying than continuous amusement, and no one needs amusement so much as he who is always at it. He loses the power of real enjoyment. He has, like Esau, bartered his birthright for a mess of pottage. He is useless to man and guilty before God.