(b) It is natural to take account here of the pas- sage on retaliation and non-resistance in JMt S-^'^-. An"er seems to be unconditionally precluded by such a saying as, ' Whosoever smit«th thee on tlie right cheek, turn to him the other also.' It is difficult to believe that any one was ever struck on the face unjustly (as is assumed in the con- nexion) without resenting it, and just as difficult to believe that it would be for the good of humanity or of the kingdom of God that it should be so. But Jesus, who came to abolish one literalism, did not come to institute another. Mis wc.id-; are never to be rea<l a^ .'-tatnic^, Imt a- a]-|i. ,iU to conscience. AN'h.it I !'■ trarlir- in i hi- |.I;m ■ i, that there is no limit to li- laid .luun l.n,,,, han.l l.rviaid
|iiovocatiun can be so insult- In' so unjust, so irrational, so
e\a>|" i.iinm, a> 1 liai His disciples shall be entitled to ea.-l lo\ e o\ erljuard, and meet the world with weaponslike itsown. Love must to all extremities be the supreme and determining principle in their conduct, the same love, with the same interests in view, as that of their Father in heaven (v.'^) ; but no more in them than in Him does it exclude all manifestation of anger. AVliat it does exclude is tlie selfish anger whicli is an alternative to love, not the Divine resentment which is a mode of love, and expresses its sense of the reality of wron". If this died out of the world, society would swiftly rot to extinction ; but the gospel, in the sense of the words, the example, and the spirit of Jesus, is so far from ])roscribing this that it is the greatest of all ])owers for keeping it alive. For those who have learned that where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, the literal inter- pretation of words like Mt 5'"-" is a combination of pedantry and fanaticism wliicli no genius will ever make anything else than absurd.
Echoes of the teaching of Jesus on anger are probably to be traced at various points in tlie teaching of the Apostles. E.fj. in Ro 12, a chapter which often recalls the Sermon on the Mount, vv.'«--i are entirely in the key of Mt 5*^-. 'The wrath ' of Ro 12"', to which Christians are to leave room, is tlie vTath of God which will be revealed at tlie last day. God has reserved for Himself (tjioi f\Oi/ci;<ris, eyu avTairo5i!i<Tu>) the vindication of the wronged, and they are not to forestall Him or take His work out of His hands ; in the day of wrath, when His righteous judgment is revealed, all wrongs will be rectified ; meanwhile, as Christ teaches, love is to rule all oui- conduct, and we must overcome evil with good. It is perhaps with a vague recollection of Mt 5^'- that men are directed in 1 Ti 2* to pray x^pis opyfis : an angry man cannot pray. Accordingly a bishop must not be 6pyl\o9, given to anger, or of an uncontrollable temper (Tit 1'). Exhortations like those in Eph 4^', Col 3', Ja 1", show that anger was known to the Church mainly in forms wliich the Christian conscience condemned. Ja 1" is particularly in- teresting, because it reminds us of the danger (in anger) of enlisting self in the service of God, call- ing on the old man to do what can be done only by the new : 'The wrath of duiii worketh not the righteousness of God.' But though it is difficult, it need not l)e impossible that the wTath which a man feels, and under the impulse of which he ex- presses himself, should be, not ' the WTath of man,' but a Divine resentment of evil. The words of Mt IS^ or Mt 23i3ff- fell from human lips, but they are the expression and the instrument of the jealousy of Gotl. To be angry without sin is diffi- cult for men, but it is a difficult duty (Eph 4^).
Apart from anything yet alluded to is the use of the verb eii^pifiaireai to describe some kind of emotion in Jesus (Mk 1« Mt 9^, Jn 11^- ^8). Ordi- narily the word conveys the idea of indignation which cannot be repressed ; but this, though found elsewhere in the Gospels [e.g. Mk 14°), is not obvi- ously appropriate in the passages quoted. In the first two it may be due to our Lord's consciousness of the fact that the persons on whom He had con- fen-ed a great blessing were immediately going to disregard His command to keep silent about it ; the sense of this put something severe and peremp- tory into His tones. In the last two it has been explained as expressing Jesus' sense of the indignity of death ; He resented, iis something nut properly belonging to the Divine idea of the world, such experiences as He was confronted with ou the way to the grave of Lazarus. But this is precarious, and ou the whole there is little stress to be laid on any inference we can tlraw from the use of i/j-^pt- ixiirffai in the Gospels.
LiTERATrRE.— Butler, Sermons, viii., ix. ; Law, Serious Call, ch. xxi. ; Seeley, EcceHomo, clis. xxi.-xxiii. ; Dale, Atonemenf!, p. 338ff. ; Expos. Times,iv. [1893], pp. 258ff., 492ff. ; Expositor, 1st ser. i. [1875], 133 fl. JamES DENNEY.