reigns! Rest is disturbed, property destroyed, families are broken, friends are suspected, enemies are feared, laws are trampled upon, commerce is ruined, business is neglected, cities are wasted and filled with heaps of slain.

The wrath of priests hath deluged the church in blood, the blood of those of whom the world was not worthy: it hath slain its thousands and ten thousands. Detestable bigotry, what hast thou done! Cruel superstition, unhallowed rage, what havock have ye made in the fold of Christ! Nothing can be more remote from the genius of the gospel of peace, from the nature of the religion of love, or from the precepts and example of him whose name is the Prince of Peace, whose nature is love, whose first and great command is charity, and who has left us an example of meekness and lowliness of heart.

The miseries and mischiefs occasioned by lawless anger in private societies and domestic connexions, are without end. Where envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work. The disunion of churches, the distraction of families, and the disquietude of neighbourhoods, arise in general from ungoverned

anger, the root of bitterness, that fruitful source of human woes.

Be this then the subject of our present meditation and may the light of Divine revelation guide our researches, and the Spirit of peace and love seal instruction on our hearts!

Anger, according to Mr. Locke, is uneasiness, or discomposure of mind, on the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge.

Anger is displeasure: its opposite is complacency. It is that sensation which we feel when a person seeks to prevent us from ob'taining the good we wish to enjoy, when he strives to deprive us of the good we possess, or when he endeavours to bring upon us the evil we dread.

Anger is defined by Mr. Hutcheson to be a propensity to occasion evil to another, arising from the apprehension of an injury done by him. It is accompanied with sorrow and grief, a desire of repelling the affront, and making the author of it repent his attempt, and repair the damage we sustain by him.

In the sacred writings, anger is often attributed to God. He is angry with the wicked every day. Not that he is liable to those irregular emotions which produce, or are produced by this passion in men; but because he is resolved to punish the wicked with the severity of a provoked father, or an incensed

master.

Anger is often joined with fury, even when attributed to the Almighty. We read of the heat of his anger, and the fierceness of his wrath; and how much is the power of his anger to be dreaded! This sets forth the awful, the accursed nature of that which the long-suffering God so much resents; i. e. sin. The impenitent, the obstinate sinner, because there is wrath, should beware, lest he be taken away with a stroke; and then a great ransom cannot deliver him. He should flee from the wrath to come!

Neither every kind, nor every degree of anger, is to be condemned: the passion simply, and in its own nature, cannot be sinful. Two reasons, I think, may convince us of the truth of this:

1. It seems to have been planted in the original frame of human nature. Every power of the human mind is now perverted by sin. Anger, among the rest, is become a depraved passion; but it existed before it was depraved : and, being the appointment of him who is perfect in purity, must in itself be an innocent passion, allowable on just occasions, and to be exercised in a proper and becoming manner. Be angry and sin not. To endeavour to banish it entirely from our minds, would be an attempt equally foolish and fruitless.

2. The blessed and holy Jesus himself, that pattern of perfection, who has left us an example that we should walk in his steps, was, when on earth, sometimes angry. Mark iii. 5. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. Here is anger without sin; anger in one who knew none, and in whose spirit there was no guile. Nay, it would be no hard task to prove that this anger was a virtue, The hardness of their hearts called for this holy resentment. Their blindness was obstinate, their opposition to him was unreasonable to

the highest degree. Such a temper, such a conduct could not be looked upon with coolness and indifference.

If we ourselves were perfectly free from sin, and were to converse only with creatures entirely innocent, it does not appear that there would be any occasion for the exercise of anger. But we live in a world where iniquity abounds, where oppression and injustice are every day practised; and as such there are many occasions for a righteous and holy resentment. It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing. God, who does nothing in vain, has implanted in our natures the irascible passions, that we might rebuke those who trample on his laws, and treat their fellow creatures with cruelty. But our natures, alas, are so depraved and disordered through our apostacy from God, that in this as in other things, we pervert that which is right. The anger which is exercised in general, is very sinful and mischievous. It is shewn on improper occasions: it is rash, it is cruel, it is outrageous, or it is revengeful. This kind of anger is ranked with malice, wrath, and bitterness; and we are charged to lay it aside. He that is (thus) angry with his