Anger as Evidence of Error
By Editor
The National Baptist has a correspondent under the nom de plume of "Dr. Philetus Dobbs," who writes some excellent things. From an answer to the question how to find out who is right or wrong in any discussion, we take the following, which we commend to the perusal of all. There are certain religious journals that sometimes discuss the Sabbath question, that can, we think, find their picture faithfully delineated here:— "When a man gets mad in a discussion, it is so far forth prima facie evidence that he is in the wrong. I do not think that we ought to lay it up against him; it is really a very trying position; when a man has sailed in with flying colors, expecting to knock everybody down, and to have the field all to himself, and then finds that he is on the wrong side, and that he really has not a leg to stand upon, and that everybody whose opinion is worth having is on the other side. No wonder that he gets mad, and tears his hair (or the place where the hair once was), and wants to tear somebody else's. 'Tis nature (though, perhaps, not grace). But I am not speaking of the moral quality; I am speaking of the state of mind as an indication of who is in the wrong. "When you see, then, a man in a debate on some point, say of doctrine, begin to foam at the mouth, and to break things, and to sling around names, and to apply adjectives such as 'flippant,' 'idiotic,' 'ignorant,' to persons who may, by a moderate stretch of charity, be regarded as equal to himself, you will risk nothing in saying: 'That man is in the wrong.'"