Then there is temper. I wouldn’t give much for a man that hasn’t a temper. Steel isn’t good for anything if it hasn’t got a temper. But when temper gets mastery over me, I am its slave, and it is a source of weakness. It may be made a great power for good all through my life and help me, or it may become my greatest enemy from within and rob me of power. The current in some rivers is so strong as to make them useless for navigation.
Someone has said that a preacher will never miss the people when he speaks of temper. It is astonishing how little mastery even professing Christians have over it. A friend of mine in England was out visiting, and while sitting in the parlor, heard an awful noise in the hall. He asked what it meant and was told that it was only the doctor throwing his boots downstairs because they were not adequately blacked. “Many Christians,” said an old divine, “who bore the loss of a child or of all their property with the most heroic Christian fortitude, are entirely vanquished by the breaking of a dish or the blunders of a servant.”
I have had people say to me, “Mr. Moody, how can I get control of my temper?”
If you really want to get control, I will tell you how, but you won’t like the medicine. Treat it as a sin and confess it. People look upon it as a sort of misfortune, and one lady told me she inherited it from her father and mother. Supposing she did. That is no excuse for her.
When you get angry again and speak unkindly to a person, and when you realize it, go and ask that person to forgive you. You won’t get mad with that person for the next twenty-four hours. You might do it in about forty-eight hours, but go the second time, and after you have done it about half-a-dozen times, you will get out of the business, because it makes the old flesh burn.
A lady said to me once, “I have got in the habit of exaggerating that my friends accuse me of exaggerating so that they don’t understand me.”
She said, “Can you help me? What can I do to overcome it?”
“Well,” I said, “the next time you catch yourself lying, go right to that party and say you have lied, and tell him you are sorry. Say it is a lie; stamp it out, root and branch; that is what you want to do.”
“Oh,” she said, “I wouldn’t like to call it lying.” But that is what it was.
Christianity isn’t worth a snap of your finger if it doesn’t straighten out your character. I have got tired of all mere gush and sentiment. If people can’t tell when you are telling the truth, there is something radically wrong, and you had better straighten it out right away. Now, are you ready to do it? Bring yourself to it whether you want to or not. Do you find someone who has been offended by something you have done? Go right to them and tell them you are sorry. You say you are not to blame. Never mind, go right to them, and tell them you are sorry.
I have had to do it a good many times. An impulsive man like myself has to do it often, but I sleep all the sweeter at night when I get things straightened out. Confession never fails to bring a blessing. I have sometimes had to get off the platform and go down and ask a man’s forgiveness before I could go on preaching. A Christian man ought to be a gentleman every time; but if he is not, and he finds he has wounded or hurt someone, he ought to go and straighten it out at once. You know there are a great many people who want just Christianity enough to make them respectable. They don’t think about this overcoming life that gets the victory all the time. They have their blue days and their cross days, and the children say,
“Mother is cross today, and you will have to be very careful.”
We don’t want any of these touchy blue days, these ups and downs. If we are overcoming, that is the effect our life is going to have on others, they will have confidence in our Christianity. The reason that many a man has no power, is that there is some cursed sin covered up. There will not be a drop of dew until that sin is brought to light. Get right inside. Then we can go out like giants and conquer the world if everything is right within.
Paul says we are to be sound in faith, patience, and love. If a man is unsound in his faith, the clergy take the ecclesiastical sword and cut him off at once. But he may be ever so unsound in charity, in patience, and nothing is said about that. We must be sound in faith, in love, and in patience if we are to be true to God.
How delightful it is to meet a man who can control his temper! It is said of Wilberforce that a friend once found him in the greatest agitation, looking for a dispatch he had mislaid, for which one of the royal family was waiting. Just then, as if to make it still more trying, a disturbance was heard in the nursery.
“Now,” thought the friend, “surely his temper will give way.”
The thought had hardly passed through his mind when Wilberforce turned to him and said:
“What a blessing it is to hear those dear children! Only think what a relief, among other hurries, to hear their voices and know they are well.”
