And if any man for loving himself better than me? man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why yet it is but like the thorn or briar which prick and scratch because they can do no other." A nobler element of opposition to anger has arisen from that spirit of gentleness which has voiced itself in Europe, as in Asia, in varying tones for the last twenty centuries. The gentleness of Buddha has been rivalled in the writings of Seneca and Epictetus, and the influence of Christianity, leaving these far behind, has created a wide-spread enthusiasm for humanitarianism even where its more specific teachings have been overlooked. Many an opponent of revealed religion has exalted sympathy and altruism to a degree which would make us think that anger had almost been eradicated from human nature. Against all this there has been but a single important protest; it came from the "modern Aristotle," Bishop Butler. Butler believed in the necessity of resentment; though for his sermon on the subject he chose as his text, significantly enough, the words, "Love your enemies"; nor has he a word to say in favour of the anger whose object is the person who has done the wrong. The value of his discussion is rather psychological than moral, and consists in the emphasis he lays on anger as that which is naturally aroused against vice. "Every man naturally feels indignation upon seeing instances of villainy and baseness, and therefore cannot commit the same without being selfcondemned." He goes on pertinently to add, in his somewhat awkward way, 66 we should learn to be cautious lest we charge God foolishly by ascribing that to him, or the nature he has given us, which is owing wholly to our own abuse of it." S. Paul himself bade his followers "be angry and sin not," but he also gave them the caution against "letting the sun go down upon their wrath." No book has exalted forgiveness as the New Testament has dared to exalt it. The teacher who bade forgive until "seventy times seven," who commanded his disciples not to resist evil, went further and expressly identified the sin of anger with that of murder. He himself, as it was remarked of him, was content to endure also the gainsaying of sinners; while the same qualities that he looked for in man and showed in himself he found even in God. "Be ye merciful as your heavenly Father also is merciful, for he is kind to the unthankful and the evil." The mercifulness of God, indeed, is emphasised throughout the whole Bible, in words which for familiarity, as for beauty, have never been surpassed. The Psalmists, the Prophets, and the Apostles vie with one another in exalting the love and the grace of him whose "loving-kindness is in the heavens," and who "daily beareth our burdens";1 of whom they could say, "In all their afflictions he was afflicted . . . in his love and in his pity he redeemed them "; 2 "I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely"; "God commendeth his own love toward us"; "I am persuaded that neither ... height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God"; and more significant still, "God is love." 6 4 Can it then be surprising that wrath should seem irreconcilable with such a presentation of God, or that 1 Ps. 365 6819. 2 Is. 633. 3 Hos. 144, where the words immediately follow "for mine anger is turned away from them." 4 Rom. 58. 5 Rom. 838 39. 6 I Jn. 416. a theologian should confidently write, "The notion of the affection of wrath in God has no religious worth for Christians, but is an unfixed and formless Theologumenon." 1 The familiar couplet of the quaker poet : "Nothing can be good in him What we have aptly expresses our modern feeling that anger, evil in us, is incompatible with the idea of God. We can hardly tolerate, in these days, the reading of those 'imprecatory psalms" where God is represented as blasting his enemies, or even where he is implored to do so; still less can we conceive that God should be angry with the human race as a whole. learnt from the Bible about God's love makes us shrink from that which we read in the Bible about God's wrath; the New Testament has educated us to discount what has often been presented to us, by its foes, as New Testament theology; the very fortress to be attacked has been the armoury to provide weapons for its assailants. III. But if wrath is really so foreign to the nature of God as revealed in the Bible, we must in fairness ask, how it came and still comes to be attributed to him. Does Theology persist in calmly denying the most sacred convictions of Ethics? Or, to ask a question which must necessarily come first, What really is the place of wrath in the Bible? The great characters of the Old Testament undoubtedly exhibit wrath, and even, on occasion, ferocity; but we can no more conclude from this that the Bible commends such feelings than we can conclude that the Bible commends falsehood or lust. On the other hand, instances of forbearance and 1 Ritschl, "The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation." forgiveness in their histories are just as prominent, and, considering the state of society at the time, far more remarkable. In the prophets, again, are strong and unsparing denunciations, all the more perplexing because spoken expressly on behalf of God. S. Paul might be almost echoing the tone of the prophets when he said "Behold the goodness and severity of God." "Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people; . . . for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." "Wherefore my fury and mine anger was poured forth, and was kindled in the cities of Judah." 1 It is noticeable that this wrath of God is said to burn as fiercely against Israel as against the surrounding nations of heathenism; against the very people, that is, towards whom the tenderest care is manifested; "he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will joy over thee with singing."2 "I will be as the dew unto Israel." 3 The prophetic attitude, indeed, in denunciation, is that of Amos; "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities"; a passage which is echoed with striking fidelity by the Psalmist; "Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every man according to his work."5 Here, the narrow and nationalist view is transcended, but the principle that God's love and God's wrath must go together, is the What could be more relentless than the following—" He cast upon them (the Egyptians) the fierceness of his anger... he made a path for his anger or the terrible passage in which Ezekiel, trembling at same. 4 1 Is. 525; Jer. 446. 2 Zeph. 317. 5 Ps. 6212. * Hos. 145. the thought that Jehovah will destroy all the residue. of Israel, receives the reply, "Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will bring their way upon their head." 1 3 All these, it may be urged, and the numerous kindred passages, are not worthy of serious attention; they are simply projections of the writer's personal feelings of indignation and resentment into what he conceives to be the mind of God; and they are to be classed with the "barbaric" commands to "go and smite Amalek and . . . slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass "2 and to "destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods; ... and ye shall destroy their name out of that place," or the statements that "Jehovah will have his foes in derision."4 But what shall we say of the actual words of Christ? If not barbaric," they are even more severe. "Woe unto thee, Chorazin; woe unto thee, Bethsaida. . . it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee."5 "Whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea"; "so shall also my Heavenly Father do do unto you (be wroth and deliver to the tormentors), if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts"; "Then shall (the king) say . . . Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels." Could anything be more significant than the reiterated woes hurled by Christ against the 1 Ezek. 98 10. 4 Ps. 24 598. 2 I Sam. 153. 3 Dt. 122 3. 2541. |