ructive
elements in human nature.

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.
It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men
who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but
for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This
compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the
strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are two
great classes of sins--sins of the body, and sins of the disposition.
The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder
Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt whatever as to which
of these is the worse. Its brands fall without a challenge, upon the
Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another's
sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults in the
higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the
eye of Him who is love, a sin against love may seem a hundred times
more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not
drunkenness itself, does more to unchristianize society than evil
temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for
destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for
withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in
short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence
stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient,
dutiful--let him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man,
this baby, sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry," we
read, "and would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon
the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect
upon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom
of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside?
Analyze, as a study in temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathers
upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger,
pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness,
sullenness--these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul.
In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill
temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to live
in, and for others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ
indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say unto you,
that the publicans and the ha