Self-restraint

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 5, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 14.

Self-restraint.—A writer for the Home and Foreign Mission Record notes this peculiar trait of the people of India:—

“The people generally are singularly gentle and passive, are polite to one another, and especially to strangers, and have much more restraint over their tempers than the people of Western nations. They rightly estimate the value of self-restraint, and consider it to be an exercise of religious principle to be free from anger and to be unmoved by provocation. They will sometimes argue with missionaries with the sole object of exciting their tempers and inducing them to utter a hasty remark. Should they accomplish their object, they at once close the controversy, quietly stating that a religious man should never get out of temper. Should their efforts, however, prove futile, they will compliment him with whom they have been discussing, acknowledging that his religion must be good because it has produced such sweetness of temper. The Hindus are often scandalized at the quick, angry, overbearing spirit sometimes exhibited by Europeans, and are apt to reason that Christianity must be at fault, seeing that it fails to soften the dispositions of its votaries. It must not be supposed that the Hindus can not be roused to passion and animosity like other mortals. The records of the mutiny of 1857 tell a different tale. The truth is that they are slow to move, but when once moved, they are violent and vindictive, resisting every effort to appease them.”