The Second Preaching Tour

149:4.1Je­sus did very lit­tle pub­lic work on this preach­ing tour, but he con­ducted many evening classes with the be­liev­ers in most of the cities and vil­lages where he chanced to so­journ with James and John. At one of these evening ses­sions one of the younger evan­ge­lists asked Je­sus a ques­tion about anger, and the Mas­ter, among other things, said in re­ply:

149:4.2“Anger is a ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tion which rep­re­sents, in a gen­eral way, the mea­sure of the fail­ure of the spir­i­tual na­ture to gain con­trol of the com­bined in­tel­lec­tual and phys­i­cal na­tures. Anger in­di­cates your lack of tol­er­ant broth­erly love plus your lack of self-re­spect and self-con­trol. Anger de­pletes the health, de­bases the mind, and hand­i­caps the spirit teacher of man’s soul. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures that ‘wrath kills the fool­ish man,’ and that man ‘tears him­self in his anger’? That ‘he who is slow of wrath is of great un­der­stand­ing,’ while ‘he who is hasty of tem­per ex­alts folly’? You all know that ‘a soft an­swer turns away wrath,’ and how ‘griev­ous words stir up anger.’ ‘Dis­cre­tion de­fers anger,’ while ‘he who has no con­trol over his own self is like a de­fense­less city with­out walls.’ ‘Wrath is cruel and anger is out­ra­geous.’ ‘An­gry men stir up strife, while the fu­ri­ous mul­ti­ply their trans­gres­sions.’ ‘Be not hasty in spirit, for anger rests in the bo­som of fools.’” Be­fore Je­sus ceased speak­ing, he said fur­ther: “Let your hearts be so dom­i­nated by love that your spirit guide will have lit­tle trou­ble in de­liv­er­ing you from the ten­dency to give vent to those out­bursts of an­i­mal anger which are in­con­sis­tent with the sta­tus of di­vine son­ship.”

149:4.3On this same oc­ca­sion the Mas­ter talked to the group about the de­sir­abil­ity of pos­sess­ing well-bal­anced char­ac­ters. He rec­og­nized that it was nec­es­sary for most men to de­vote them­selves to the mas­tery of some vo­ca­tion, but he de­plored all ten­dency to­ward over­spe­cial­iza­tion, to­ward be­com­ing nar­row-minded and cir­cum­scribed in life’s ac­tiv­i­ties. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that any virtue, if car­ried to ex­tremes, may be­come a vice. Je­sus al­ways preached tem­per­ance and taught con­sis­tency—pro­por­tion­ate ad­just­ment of life prob­lems. He pointed out that over­much sym­pa­thy and pity may de­gen­er­ate into se­ri­ous emo­tional in­sta­bil­ity; that en­thu­si­asm may drive on into fa­nati­cism. He dis­cussed one of their for­mer as­so­ciates whose imag­i­na­tion had led him off into vi­sion­ary and im­prac­ti­cal un­der­tak­ings. At the same time he warned them against the dan­gers of the dull­ness of over­con­ser­va­tive medi­ocrity.

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.

149:4.5It was not so much what Je­sus taught about the bal­anced char­ac­ter that im­pressed his as­so­ciates as the fact that his own life was such an elo­quent ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of his teach­ing. He lived in the midst of stress and storm, but he never wa­vered. His en­e­mies con­tin­u­ally laid snares for him, but they never en­trapped him. The wise and learned en­deav­ored to trip him, but he did not stum­ble. They sought to em­broil him in de­bate, but his an­swers were al­ways en­light­en­ing, dig­ni­fied, and fi­nal. When he was in­ter­rupted in his dis­courses with mul­ti­tudi­nous ques­tions, his an­swers were al­ways sig­nif­i­cant and con­clu­sive. Never did he re­sort to ig­no­ble tac­tics in meet­ing the con­tin­u­ous pres­sure of his en­e­mies, who did not hes­i­tate to em­ploy ev­ery sort of false, un­fair, and un­righ­teous mode of at­tack upon him.

149:4.6While it is true that many men and women must as­sid­u­ously ap­ply them­selves to some def­i­nite pur­suit as a liveli­hood vo­ca­tion, it is nev­er­the­less wholly de­sir­able that hu­man be­ings should cul­ti­vate a wide range of cul­tural fa­mil­iar­ity with life as it is lived on earth. Truly ed­u­cated per­sons are not sat­is­fied with re­main­ing in ig­no­rance of the lives and do­ings of their fel­lows.