Editorial April 17, 1948 Issue

MAN IS SUPERIOR TO BAD TEMPER

Paul Stark Seeley

"The Greatest Thing in the World" by Henry Drummond is a book known to many of us, and one which can be profitably read by all of us. If we should read and ponder it at least once a year, our lives would be enriched and the world benefited. Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, once said she had intended to write such a book but Professor Drummond had done it so well he had saved her the effort.

The greatest thing in the world is Love, and Love is God. Of Love, Mrs. Eddy writes: "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love." And she adds, "Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power" (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 249, 250). Her teachings admonish us to express under all circumstances this Love which is active in the goodness it empowers. No animality is in Love; it is the pure, all-considerate intelligence that is God.

In his book Drummond reminds us that there are sins of the body and sins of the disposition. The prodigal son illustrates the former, and his bad-tempered and jealous brother the latter. Of bad temper Drummond offers this indictment: "No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom of childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands alone."

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