The “Sudan Temper” by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 6, 1905

The “Sudan Temper”

By W. A. S.

MISSIONARIES and officials report that the climate of the Egyptian Sudan induces a peculiar irritability of disposition known as the “Sudan temper.” The fight against fever, in that burning heart of tropical Africa, so wears on the nerves that missionaries feel the need of a special measure of grace in order to keep the disposition balanced.

Workers in most tropical fields will appreciate what this new term means. In fact, who does not feel that this plague of the Sudan has broken its barriers, and that the strenuous conditions and nervous strain of modern life everywhere breed a soul malaria that must be resisted continually?

It is of this very time that the prophecy says, “The nations were angry.” It takes angry people to make angry nations; and so it is that in this time all the art of the evil one will be employed to throw impatience and irritability into the hearts of men and women.

It is here that we must throw out our first line of defense. It is a true proverb that, “We have just as much religion as we have in a time of trial.” Let the occasion of trial that tends to upset the disposition be counted as a meter for testing the measure of the grace of God we are appropriating. We do not have to yield to nervous irritability of temper. There is grace sufficient, and we must have it; for of this time also it is written that there is to be a people having the “patience of the saints.” W. A. S.