let not the sun go down upon your wrath; neither give place to the devil." They might be angry; they must be angry. Circumstances would continually arise to call out this emotion. They were not to crush it; only to watch it, lest it changed from a feeling worthy of God into one worthy only of the devil.

What, then, is the emotion which is here, by implication, commended? I think the very surprise we feel at finding it commended is terrible proof of the necessity of St. Paul's warning. When we are angry we so often sin. Anger is so often an ignoble and unrighteous spirit, that we come to regard it as inherently a weakness. But anger is not the same as temper, or irritability, or ill-humour, or hatred. Anger is displeasure strongly excited; that is its definition. As far as I know, we have no single word to express its opposite. The opposite of love is hate; that of joy, sorrow; but I know no one word to express the opposite of anger. To find delight or pleasure in a person or thing-the feeling of the Father to the Son, as expressed in the words heard from heaven at His baptism, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;" this expresses, in a paraphrase, the opposite of anger. If the one feeling is laudable,

the other must be also. If it is our privilege, as God's children, to be well pleased with everything, every human being, that reflects His nature, it must be equally our privilege to be angry with all that is opposed to Him-with all forms of wrong. An enthusiasm of love for righteousness includes an enthusiasm of hatred of evil: and this last emotion is called, in one word, anger.

To be capable of anger is a strength, and not a weakness. God, though "He is not a man, that He should repent," though "with Him is no variableness or shadow of turning," and in Him is no weakness at all, yet is a Being-the whole Bible enforces the truth-capable of anger. "The anger of the Lord was kindled against His people." So the historians and prophets of Israel record the Divine displeasure at the sins of the nation. Nor is the meaning of the phrase at all modified by the fact on which His writers love to dwell, that the Lord is "slow to anger." The goodness of God, to which all evil is an offence, finds its expression in love and patience and forbearance, as it also finds it in condemnation of evil. In Him, as in Him alone, hatred of evil, love of His people, justice and mercy, are in perfect harmony. "Slow to anger" meant

to the conscience-stricken Jew, "slow to visit His anger." The nature of God can never be for a moment indifferent to evil. He must hate it and condemn it, though in His mercy His hand is stayed from crushing the offender, and His long-suffering labours to lead men to repentance. Our God is a consuming fire. No wrong can linger for a moment in His presence unconsumed. The evil that remains in us, and cannot wholly be extinguished in this world, shall be burnt up before the wheat can rest for ever in the heavenly garner.

Consider, again, the character of the meek and gentle Saviour, who claimed those qualities for Himself, and offered Himself as the Rest of all mankind because of them. He could be angry when the deadliest evil walked to and fro, clothed in the garb of good. No such words of indignation, so impetuous, so burning, have come down to us from Christian times as His. The sins which men called sins, even while they themselves were guilty of them, gave Him pain, but they did not move Him to anger. The purest of all beings in human form, He could bear to walk among the impure without words of bitterness or prudery. He reproved and exhorted, warned, and above all showed love and sympathy for

such sinners, to the end that He might draw them to Himself, and inspire them with a new affection. The sin which surrounded Him filled Him with grief rather than with anger; for He knew not only the acts of men, but their temptations, their ignorance, their difficulties. He knew their hearts; not only what had been done, but what had been resisted. But there were sins, not regarded as grave by society, which moved Him to show that meekness and gentleness are consistent with anger, and that couched in the strongest language of disgust and indignation. Compare the language which He used to the woman taken in adultery with that addressed to the Scribes and Pharisees, and you will understand to what I point. The former was guilty of immorality of the gravest kind; of one of the most heinous sins against God and society. What was His language? Go, and sin no more." The Scribes and Pharisees were the religious teachers of the day-men of austerity and exceeding propriety. Are we wrong in calling that anger, that is to say, excited displeasure, which found expression in such words as these?"Woe unto ye, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter; but your inward part is full of

ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not He that made that which is without make that which is within also?" There were sins which filled the Saviour with grief, and others which filled Him with anger; and in both cases His divinity shone forth with equal lustre. For the love of man and indignation against evil are alike marks of the righteous Father. The Good Physician came to save life, not to destroy it. The different diseases required different remedies. If the ignorant outcast needed love, the religious hypocrite needed the language of threatening and denunciation.

Consider, again, the character of St. Paulthe man of the finest courtesy, consideration, and humility, who could write as he did to Philemon, and with such exquisite tenderness to the Corinthians about the erring brother who had repented; he, too, was capable of anger. His brow could darken and his language rise with the strong indignation that worked within him. Think of St. John, the very apostle of charity, but also the "Son of Thunder;" who lay upon his Master's breast; and who in his last hour bade his children love one another, as the completest, most all-embracing gospel he could leave with them; think of him, and the fire of indignation