rlots go into the kingdom of heaven
before you." There is really no place in heaven for a disposition like
this. A man with such a mood could only make heaven miserable for all
the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born again, he
can not, he simply can not, enter the kingdom of heaven. For it is
perfectly certain--and you will not misunderstand me--that to enter
heaven a man must take it with him.

You will see then why temper is significant It is not in what it is
alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the liberty now of
speaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love,
a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the
intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within;
the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some
rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of
the soul dropt involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the
lightning form of a hundred hideous and unchristian sins. For a want
of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of
courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized
in one flash of temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to the
source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die
away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids
out, but by putting something in--a great love, a new spirit, the
spirit of Christ. Christ, the spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours,
sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what
is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and
rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does
not change men. Christ does. Therefore, "Let that mind be in you which
was also in Christ Jesus." Some of us have not much time to lose.
Remember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I can
not help speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shall
offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea." That is to say, it is the deliberate
verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to
love. _It is better not to live than not to love._

Guilelessness and sincerity may be dismissed almost without a word.
Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possession
of it