Just Anger a Christian Virtue by Dudley Marvin Canright

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Apr 15, 1875

Just Anger a Christian Virtue.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Gail Hamilton in the Christian Union makes the following sensible remarks concerning anger:—

“Let anger, then, resume its place as an original and dignified function of the human organization, and be no more looked upon as the outburst of a rebellious outlaw, or an invincible alien. While we are not to be petty and touchy, easily provoked, self-centred, solicitous of our own dignity, imagining evil, quick to fly into a passion, strict to mark iniquity against ourselves, implacable, and revengeful; while we are to be generous and large minded, to ascribe good intent where evil intent is not demonstrable, and not to take offense unless offense is meant, we are equally under bonds not to level the barriers between courtesy and discourtesy, between justice and injustice, between right and wrong. We owe it to the wrong-doer to throw all the weight of our disapprobation against his wrong-doing. If the wrong be done not to ourselves but to others, and if in addition it be a wrong done to the weak and the helpless, it is difficult to learn from the Bible, or from our own hearts, what expression of indignation would be excessive. So far from the truth is it that an outburst of wrath must be unchristian, the sudden explosion of surprised but depraved nature, it may rather be that non-explosiveness is but an apathy of the conscience, a dullness of sympathetic perception, an outgrowth of selfishness, a defect of the moral organization.

“The only man who may be fairly inferred to have lost his temper is the man who never shows that he has any. If he that is angry with his brother without cause is in danger of the Judgment, what reason have we to suppose that he who is not angry with his brother when there is cause should go scot free? When oppression, fraud, malice are banished from the earth we can afford to be even tempered; but in their present roaring and rampant prosperity, it is Christian that our hearts should roll up mountain ranges of disapproval, and occasionally burst into volcanoes of burning indignation. God is angry with the wicked every day, and makes repentance and reformation the conditions of forgiveness. What right have we to look upon the wicked with tranquility, and take him into our confidence and companionship as if he had never sinned? To be hasty in spirit to be angry is the mark of a petty nature. To be slow to anger is one mark of a large nature. To put a ban upon anger is not the work of the Divine nature.

“The excesses of anger are to be deprecated. The man who loses control of himself in his wrath is never to be admired. That is a weakness which he should conquer. But he who holds himself well in hand, while he hurls his wrath at the evil-doer, who never loves sight of human weakness even while the flame of his indignation leaps forth to consume wickedness—he is not to be apologized for as a halting disciple. He is rather to be rejoiced over as an effective apostle. Blessed are the peace-makers indeed, but blessed also is whoever cometh in the name of the Lord though he come not to send peace, but a sword.”

Soft words and an unmoved spirit are by many considered the chief marks of a saint; while sharp words and manifest anger are thought to be always only from an evil heart. But this is a great mistake. There are times when to be calm and mild is a sin. The severest things said in the Bible fell from the lips of the holiest men when under the especial influence of the Holy Spirit.

D. M. Canright.