he cannot, simply _cannot_, enter the kingdom of heaven.
You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is
alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I speak of it with such
unusual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of
an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which
bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble
escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a
sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily
when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred
hideous and un-Christian sins. A want of patience, a want of kindness,
a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are
all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of Temper.
Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper. We must go to the
source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die
away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids
out, but by putting something in--a great Love, a new Spirit, the
Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours,
sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is
wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and
rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does
not change men.