The comrade from Oregon wrote: "I have been wondering
if the statement is correct when one says, 'My temper is all
taken away.' Do you think the temper is destroyed or sanctified?
It seems to me that if one's temper were actually gone he would
not be good for anything."
The comrade from Massachusetts wrote: "Two of our Corps Cadets
have had the question put to them: 'Is it possible to have all
temper taken out of our hearts?' One claims it is possible. The
other holds that the temper is not taken out, but God gives power
to overcome it."
Evidently these are questions that perplex many people, and yet
the answer seems to me simple.
Temper, _as usually spoken of_, is not a faculty or power of
the soul, but is rather an irregular, passionate, violent
expression of selfishness. When selfishness is destroyed by love,
by the incoming of the Holy Spirit, revealing Jesus to us as an
uttermost Saviour, and creating within us a clean heart, of
course such evil temper is gone, just as the friction and
consequent wear and heat of two wheels is gone when the cogs are
perfectly adjusted to each other. The wheels are far better off
without friction, and just so man is far better off without such
temper.
We do not destroy the wheels to get rid of the friction, but we
readjust them; that is, we put them into just or right relations
to each other, and then noiselessly and perfectly they do their
work.
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