I3T we>ef r r /3T W 62 .f OF THE U N I VERS ITY Of ILLI NOIS From the Library of Dr. R. E. Hieronymus 1942 Xlttlc ffiooKs on iReUglon Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS Second Edition. Small i,to, cloth, price gs. Characters and Characteristics of William Law NONJUROR AND MYSTIC Selected and Arranged, with an Introduction by ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D., of Free St. George’s Church, Edinburgh. ‘For the purpose of obtaining a general view of the tone, temper, and disposition of this remarkable man, no better book can ever be constructed than one edited by Dr. Whyte, of Edinburgh, and lately published in a most attractive form. . . . The present- day reader who has the wisdom either to study Law’s works as a whole, or Dr. Whyte’s admirable selection, will find himself again and again reminded, now of Carlyle, now of Newman, and indeed of almost every English author who has deeply stirred his emotional nature. ’— Speaker. LONDON; HODDER & STOUGHTON 27 Paternoster Row THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS BY ALEXANDER WHYTE D.D. LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1895 \5 r l \M (s>^R ~k q) -S Q rfi •+ Us o d c6 CQ O a a o © •r-* w TO JACOB BEHMEN * d C O N T E N T‘S i THE SANGUINE TEMPERAMENT, II THE CHOLERIC TEMPERAMENT, III THE PHLEGMATIC TEMPERAMENT, IV PAGE 3 29 57 THE MELANCHOLY TEMPERAMENT, 77 THE SANGUINE TEMPERAMENT I THE SANGUINE TEMPERA¬ MENT From the very earliest days of the medical and mental sciences the bodily constitu¬ tions of men, especially as those bodilv constitutions bear * on the mind, have been called the complexions and the tem¬ peraments. And the out¬ standing and distinctive tem¬ peraments have been classified 3 4 THE SANGUINE and designated from the earliest days as the sanguine temperament, the choleric temperament, the phlegmatic temperament, and the melan¬ choly temperament. Not that any man was ever made up of blood and of blood alone, or of choler alone, or of phlegm alone, or of black bile alone. The four tempera¬ ments, as they are found in actual and living men, have undergone as many combina¬ tions and permutations as there have been individual TEMPERAMENT 5 men and women on the face of the earth. At the same time, some one of the four great temperaments has pre¬ dominated and has had the upper hand in the construction and constitution of every several man. And thus it is that, broadly speaking, each several man among us may quite correctly be described as a sanguine man, or a choleric man, or a phlegmatic man, or a melancholy man, according as this or that temperament or complexion 6 THE SANGUINE has the ruling hand over him. ‘ So in every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Now, thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition : As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his effects, his spirits, and his powers, In their conductions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.’ ‘ The blood is the life.’ And a sanguine temperament is just good old medical Latin for a TEMPERAMENT 7 body and a mind full of blood— a body so full of blood, in¬ deed, that the blood runs over, and fills the mind also. A sanguine man, then, is a man whose blood is his staple and chief feature; and that not of his body only, but much more of his mind and his heart. The sanguine man’s whole mental and moral life, his whole intel¬ lectual character and spiritual complexion, takes the tinge and the temperature of his blood. His blood builds up his body, and fills his body 8 THE SANGUINE full of all its members and all their operations. And so is it with his mind. It is the bounding tide of blood in the hearts of our young men that keeps this otherwise old and withered world always warm and full of hope and joy. The angel of youth with his purple wings descends on this stag¬ nant pool, in the porches of which a great multitude of impotent folk lie; and, as he alights, health and love and hope and joy are spread all around him. Thus it is that TEMPERAMENT 9 while there is always a genera¬ tion of halt and withered wait¬ ing for death, there is always a new race rising up with thankful and hopeful hearts. And it is their blood that does it. It is their young blood that does it. It is their san¬ guine temperament that does it. If it were for nothing else but that it keeps bright eyes, and ruddy cheeks, and clap¬ ping hands, and dancing feet alive on this place of graves, how much we should owe both to the youthful blood of the IO THE SANGUINE body, and to the youthful blood of the soul. The onward march of man¬ kind also ; the ever-advancing providences of the Living God; the expansion and the exten¬ sion of the nations of the earth, as well as the spread and the fulness of the Church of Christ;—all these are simply bound up with the sanguine temperament. For that happy temperament is open, hopeful, believing, enterprising, and re¬ sponsive to all that is true and good. The sanguine tern- TEMPERAMENT I I perament beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. So truly good is this tempera¬ ment in a man, and so useless and so evil does that man be¬ come who is devoid of it, that, when it dulls down, decays, and dies out in any man, we may as well bury that man out of our sight at once. His day is past His work is done. Gather him to his fathers, and let his sons take up his once living name, and bear it on¬ ward into the new worlds of 12 THE SANGUINE God and of man that are ever opening their great gates to all open-minded and open- hearted men. All down human history, both sacred and profane, we see the great deliverances, the great advancements, the great conquests and attainments, the great enlargements and the great enrichments that this so generous temperament of the heart of man has achieved. Look at all the true leaders of men in all ages. Look at the pioneers and those who have TEMPERAMENT 13 prepared the way. Look at the men who opened their eyes, opened their hearts, spoke the first word, and took the first step. Look at home also. Who is the life of your house at home ? Who is your staff? Who is the wine of your life? Is it not that son or that daughter who has a heart, and a mind, and an eye, and an ear, and a hand, and a foot, and warm and bound¬ ing blood in them all ? And yet, with all that, it must be confessed, it is with 14 THE SANGUINE a certain ‘ tinge of disap¬ probation ’ that we usually speak of the sanguine tem¬ perament. Now, why is that? With so much to be said in be¬ half of this temperament, why is it that there undoubtedly is a certain tincture of disappro¬ bation and depreciation in this epithet? ‘Ye sanguine, shallow - hearted boys ! * ex¬ claims the master of insight and of expression. As much as to say that the sanguine in this world are the young. They are boys rather than TEMPERAMENT 15 men. As also that great depth and great endurance of heart do not usually reside with great warmth and fulness of heart. ‘ The man of a purely sanguine temperament/ says a medical writer, ‘ his blood soon boils and soon cools ; his heart rules his head ; action precedes thought. It is a word and a blow, and then great sorrow for it. I know two partners in business/ he con¬ tinues, ‘ one sanguine, the other bilious. The bilious has often to throw cold water on the 16 THE SANGUINE projects of the sanguine, who almost invariably fires up and says too much, and then he is miserable and ready to allow and to yield up anything. In¬ constancy and levity,’ he adds, ‘ are the chief attributes of the men of this temperament; they are good, generous, full of feel¬ ing, quick, impassioned, but fickle. Excessive and constant variety is to them as much a necessity as an enjoyment.’ That is much too strong; but, at the same time, there is some truth in it. There is TEMPERAMENT 17 just enough truth in it to justify the scornful and con¬ temptuous exclamation in the play: ‘Ye younglings! ye sanguine, shallow - hearted boys! ’ From the very fact that we usually associate the sanguine temperament with youth, there is more than a tinge of dis¬ approbation and blame when we so describe a grown-up man. He is a sanguine man, we say. We do not, in as many words, say that he is still a child ; but, at bottom, B 18 THE SANGUINE that is what we mean. When we say that a grown-up man is a sanguine man, we really mean to convey to you that he is still a boy; or, at the most, a very young man. We intend to hint that he has not really lived in the world of grown-up men at all. He has not learned his lesson in the sobering school of life. He has not yet laid to heart the defeats, the disappointments, the arrests, the overthrows, the crooks, and the crosses of human life. He is still in his TEMPERAMENT 19 salad days, and green in judg¬ ment. He is still a sanguine- hearted boy, when, by this time, he should have been a sober-minded and a serious- hearted man. We see the misleading and mischief-making side of the sanguine temperament in the way that many men take up, and run away with, this and that new thing. Good things, useful things, needful and necessary things are taken up, run away with, put out of their proper places and pro- 20 THE SANGUINE portions, and are greatly hin¬ dered and injured by men of an over-sanguine, impulsive, and enthusiastic temperament. We see political, social, ecclesiastical, religious, and many other schemes, plans, and programmes that are every day being taken up, and for a time run to death, by the over-sanguine and the inexperienced. They are all good things in their place; they are all needful and necessary things; but they are all injured past repair TEMPERAMENT 21 when they get into the hot hands of the men who think about, talk about, and will let you think about, and talk about, nothing else. Those are the men who set out to wash the Ethiopian white with rose¬ water, to bind Samson with a green grass, and to tame a leopard with a child’s toy. The mischiefs of this tem¬ perament, when it enters into religious life, we see all around us every day. The victims of the sanguine temperament are always discovering some new 22 THE SANGUINE thing in their religion—a new minister; a new evangelist; a new doctrine ; and a short cut to salvation. Like Pliable, they cannot get you to go fast enough for them. Lo here! or lo there! they are continually crying. But a short time comes and goes, and another new thing is dis¬ covered, another new nostrum, another new man. Want of depth, want of real seriousness, want of steadfastness, want of endurance, want of a lasting loyalty to any man, or to any TEMPERAMENT 23 cause,—these things have brought, not a tinge of dis¬ approbation only, but a posi¬ tive contempt and scorn on the over-sanguine tempera¬ ment, and especially on that temperament in the most seri¬ ous of all things—the soul of man and the salvation of God. At the close of his Treatise of the Four Complexions , Teu- tonicus says some things like this to those of his readers who are of this complexion. Thy complexion, he says, is a right noble complexion ; and 24 THE SANGUINE in it thou mayest live a right orderly, calm, sober, and most useful life, if only thou art on the watch over it, and over thyself in it. There is a certain scope, horizon, and atmosphere in thy peculiar complexion; and thus by means of it thou art capable of great undertakings and great attainments. Thou art happily open to what is new; look well to thyself, and keep true to that good thing when it is old,and no longernew. Thou art much inclined to love; TEMPERAMENT 25 place thy love on its right ob¬ ject ; give thy whole heart to it, and be faithful to it till death. This cold world will often gibe at thee for the warmth of thy heart. But a little pass¬ ing scorn will afterwards bring thee the more honour before God and man, and both in this world and in the world to come. THE CHOLERIC TEMPERAMENT II THE CHOLERIC TEMPERA¬ MENT From the very earliest days choler has been the univer¬ sally accepted and well- understood name of that lymph, rheum, or humour of the body which was supposed to cause heat in the mind and irascibility in the temper. ‘ If any man’s soul,’ says Behmen, ‘be clothed about with 29 30 THE CHOLERIC the choleric complexion, then he is tempted to be a fiery, fierce, fretful, and wrathful man. These things rise up in the choleric man’s soul,— anger, pride, ambition, and desire of exaltation. A wish to tread all other men under his feet; a disposition to despise and insult the poor and miserable ; tyranny and murder ;—these are in the heart of every choleric man. The devil does not much need to tempt this temperament; he has but to pipe, and the choleric man TEMPERAMENT 31 rises up and dances to his music.’ But let us begin with the good side of our somewhat suspicious subject. For God has made all things good in their proper place and at their proper season ; and bile, both black and yellow, among the rest — bile in the body and choler in the mind. This is the fiery temperament. But then, fire also is good; for was not fire the gift of Heaven at the first? Fire is a bad master indeed, but it is one 32 THE CHOLERIC of the very best of servants. And so is anger, which is just the fire of the soul. In his eighth sermon, Bishop Butler institutes a character¬ istic inquiry into anger. That profound sermon contains at once an inquiry, an exposition, a defence, and a direction, that the choleric man who reads it will never forget. Why, asks that princely teacher, why has God, who is good¬ ness and love, and who has made man in His own image of goodness and love,—why TEMPERAMENT 33 has He kindled in man the choleric temperament ? Why has He laid in man’s soul, ready for the match, the fires of anger, and resentment, and retaliation, and revenge ? And Butler answers his own difficulties as he only can answer them. Anger, he boldly answers, is a sharp sword put into our hand by Nature herself; and she does not intend that that sharp sword should rust in its scab¬ bard. As long as there are evil-doers abroad in the earth ; 34 THE CHOLERIC as long as injustice, and cruelty, and wrong are inflicted by bad men on their weak and inno¬ cent neighbours; so long will God be amply justified for having kindled the sudden fire of anger in good men’s hearts, as also for having banked up righteous resent¬ ment and recompense against the unjust and wicked man. But take this temperament as a sound state of the soul; take it as having seated itself in an honest and good heart; and then this temperament of TEMPERAMENT 35 clioler and hot coals is surely the very noblest and the very best temperament of all the four. Take a man who has been made a partaker of the divine nature, and put choler into that man’s heart, and you have the best manner of man that walks this earth. You have a true nobleman ; you have a true prince and a leader of men ; you have a true king of men. And all men see him, feel his presence among them, and confess his great¬ ness ; for he is open, and 3 6 THE CHOLERIC free, and hospitable, and full of heart. He is alive where all other men around him are dead. He is bold, brave, fearless, single-eyed, single- hearted, whole-hearted, pure- hearted. Where other men wait, and hearken, and hold in, and hesitate, and hedge, and calculate; where other men trim, and steer, and hug the shore; with an eagle eye, with an angel eye, with a divine eye, he sees the right way afar off, and is already far on in it. Opposition, resistance, TEMPERAMENT 37 suffering even, do not alter his mind nor shake his heart, unless it be still more to purify his mind and his heart, and still more to fix and settle him in the clear and sure way of truth and goodness and love. When you cast stones and discharge weapons at the man whose whole life condemns you—‘ So help me God ’ he answers. ‘ Here God has set me. Here I stand, if I stand alone.’ The man with this heat in his heart has the Son of God Himself for his ex- 38 THE CHOLERIC ample; for His disciples re¬ membered that it was written of Him, * The zeal of Thine house hath eaten Me up.’ The bad side of this tem¬ perament is naked enough and open enough to all. The whole world is full of the woe that the choleric temperament works when it is allowed to become bitter anger, soaking malice, and diabolical revenge. Nations, churches, congrega¬ tions, families, and the homes and the hearts of men, lie in ashes all around us because of TEMPERAMENT 39 anger and ill-temper. All our other evil passions, taken to¬ gether, slay their thousands, but this evil passion of anger its tens of thousands. There is always some one in every house—it is a happy house where there are not two— hot as gunpowder. The least thing—in his own house— makes the choleric man a mad¬ man. A child’s cry will do it at one time, and the same child’s laugh at another time ; a servant’s stumble ; a wife’s oversight and absence of mind; 40 THE CHOLERIC a chair or a table an inch out of its place; a message not delivered and answered to the imperious and exacting mo¬ ment ; anything ; nothing. Like the legendary white thorn of Judaea, the choleric man’s heart will kindle a conflagra¬ tion merely by chafing against itself. And then a hot look is darted ; a hot word is spoken; a hot blow is dealt;—and that house, that home of husband and wife and child, is never the same again as long as one stone of it stands upon TEMPERAMENT 41 another. And then, far worse than even that, there are the covered-up, but hell-hot, ashes of ill - will and malice and hatred. ‘ Gunpowder,’ says an old author, ‘ will take and will fall into a blaze sooner than lime, and yet lime hath the more hidden and scathing heat; it burns far longer, and far more inwardly; and if you put your hand or your foot inadvertently into it, it burns far more deadly.’ It is Paul’s fear lest their sudden anger should smoulder down into 42 THE CHOLERIC life-long hatred, that makes the Apostle beseech all his readers not to let the sun go down upon their wrath. Jeremy Taylor, in his rich commentary on the Sixth Commandment, tells us an ancient story or two as his delightful manner is. Leontius Patricius was one day extremely angry with John, the patriarch of Alex¬ andria ; but at evening the patriarch sent this message to the angry man, ‘ Sir, the sun is set/ Upon which, Patri¬ cius, being a reader of Paul, TEMPERAMENT 43 took the hint, threw away his anger, and became wholly sub¬ ject to the counsel and the ghostly aids of the patriarch. And, again, Plutarch, the prince of story-tellers, and the source of Taylor’s best stories, reports to us that the Pythagoreans were such strict observers of the very letter of this caution that at sunset they always shook hands and departed home friends. But by far the most de¬ ceitful and destructive kind of choler is choler for God. 44 THE CHOLERIC There are many men among us who would see at once that it had its rise in their own evil hearts if they were plunged into anger at wife or child or servant or dog or horse or chair or table, who are as angry as hell it¬ self on account of religion, and all the time think that they do God an acceptable service. Even Moses, who, up to that day, seemed to have been born without bile altogether,—even Moses, the meekest of men, fell, for TEMPERAMENT 45 God’s sake, into an unpardon¬ able sin. For one hot word against his erring brethren, for one hot stroke of his staff against the unoffending rock, Moses lived all his after days under a cloud, and so died. And, in times of religious con¬ troversy, our very best men say and do the most rancorous things; nurse and feed their own and other people’s bad passions; hate men, and hate even the fathers and mothers and wives and children of men who, in a few years, are ad- 46 THE CHOLERIC mitted by the whole world to have been right. Just think of a saint like Lord Shaftes¬ bury speaking of a book he did not like as having been spewed out of hell—the most beautiful book on the life of our Lord that ever was written. Of all kinds of choler, let all earnest and God-fearing men watch and beware of religious choler. The odium theologicum is the devil’s hottest, most de¬ ceitful, and most deadly coal. That man, says Jacob Behmen, who has his soul TEMPERAMENT 47 compassed about with a cho¬ leric complexion must, above all things, practise at every turn, and exercise himself like an athlete, in humility. He must every day pour the cold water of humility upon the hot coals of his own com¬ plexion. Therefore, exclaims Teutonicus, thou that art cho¬ leric, take warning and advice. Be a humble-minded man. Press with all thy might after meekness in word and thought; and so shall not thy tempera¬ ment enflame thy soul. Thy 48 THE CHOLERIC temperament is not alien to God ; only take good care of its evil tendency and tempta¬ tions. Choleric man! mortify thy temperament and thy com¬ plexion. And do it all to the glory of God. Another good thing to do is this. Say every day to yourself that you know your¬ self. Say to yourself that you have good cause to know yourself. Say how much you have suffered from yourself. And admit also and confess how much other people, and TEMPERAMENT 49 especially your own people, have suffered from you. Say to yourself that you know now, what all men have long known, that you are a very choleric and a very dangerous man. As often as you see the word temperament, or complexion, or humour, or passion in print, or hear any of those words spoken, take occasion to tell yourself on the spot what your peculiar temperament, com¬ plexion, humour, ruling passion still is. Never see gunpowder without spiritualising it. Never D 5o THE CHOLERIC see lime without taking it home. Never see fire without pouring water upon your own. Never see smoke without a prayer that the fire may not spread. Then, again, descend to particulars. Stamp out every several spark, and pour water on every single cinder in your heart. Tie up your tongue and your hands in the places and beside the people where you are tempted to lash out with the one and to strike out with the other. If you are TEMPERAMENT 51 a father, or a master, or a schoolmaster, or a minister, set a watch on the door of your lips every morning before you encounter the stupid, and the disobedient, and the injurious, and the ungrateful. If you are a public man, and if your duty leads you into places of debate and contention and division, hold your peace. Keep quiet, even if you should burst. Your silence will be your best speech. Everybody knows your mind. The cause will lose nothing, and you will 52 THE CHOLERIC gain much, both for the cause and for yourself, by keeping a watch on the door of your far too choleric mouth. Best of all, be angry, and sin not. But that attainment only comes to you after a long life of banking up your inward fires, making them burn low, and putting them out. This is the choleric man’s prayer out of the Golden Grove : Lord, let me be ever courteous, and easy to be entreated. Never let me fall into a peevish or contentious TEMPERAMENT 53 spirit. Let me follow peace with all men, offering forgive¬ ness, inviting them by courte¬ sies, ready to confess my own errors, apt to make amends, and desirous to be reconciled. Give me the spirit of a Chris¬ tian, charitable, humble, merci¬ ful and meek, useful and liberal; angry at nothing but my own sins, and grieving for the sins of others ; that, while my passion obeys my reason, and my reason is religious, and my religion is pure and undefiled, managed with 54 THE CHOLERIC humility, and adorned with charity, I may escape Thy anger, which I have deserved, and may dwell in Thy love, and be Thy son and servant for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. THE PHLEGMATIC TEMPERAMENT Ill THE PHLEGMATIC TEMPERA¬ MENT There is some confusion about the derivation and transmis¬ sion of the epithet phlegmatic, but the phlegmatic tempera¬ ment is quite well known to us. To begin with, the man of a phlegmatic temperament has escaped already all the peculiar temptations of the too san- 57 58 THE PHLEGMATIC guine man and the too choleric man. The phlegmatic man has not their hot heart in his bosom. Their hot blood does not roar in his veins. The storms of all kinds of passion that are continually surging and bursting out in them are a mystery to him. They look like wild beasts to him when their passions are upon them. Now that of itself is a great gain to the phlegmatic man. For the man of a hot heart often ruins himself past all recovery before he is a man. TEMPERAMENT 59 He has not seldom sold him¬ self for nought before he knows what he is doing. He has run himself on a hundred rocks, and all his days his prayers and his praises are full of nothing else but his broken bones. But the calm, cool, cold man escapes all that. He is not tossed about with every wind. His feet are not on the soft sand. He has his root in himself. He is a solid, stable, strong man. That is, when his phlegmatic temperament is not wholly given over to itself, but 60 THE PHLEGMATIC is balanced and redressed by its complementary and com¬ pensatory virtues. His enemies call the phleg¬ matic man unconcerned and indifferent, and so, perhaps, he sometimes is — too much. But even his unconcern, which angers you so much, has its good side. For, if he is un¬ concerned, then he is uncon¬ cerned. He says to himself that your affairs are no con¬ cern of his. If he is not busy, he is not busy in other men’s matters, not even in TEMPERAMENT 61 yours. He has forgotten, he neither knows nor cares to know, the things that so much interest so many other people in you. For the life of him, he had forgotten that there ever was a skeleton in your closet. When they ask him, he has forgotten again how old you are. He has been told—Oh ! my dear, you know how often I have told you; but, with all that, he has clean forgotten how much you got with your wife. The wearisome, careless man has 62 THE PHLEGMATIC no idea how many children you have, nor who their mothers were — the first wife or the second. You must not ask him. He has no head. He has no interest. He is all out in the facts of life. He is not a companion¬ able man. He is a most un¬ interesting man; he has no talk; he knows nothing. No, neither about your neigh¬ bours to you, nor about you to your neighbours. Phlegm has two sides. Lotze is particularly lenient TEMPERAMENT 63 to the phlegmatic tempera¬ ment. * I shall perhaps be regarded/ he says, ‘ as the advocate of a strange thesis when I say that I regard this temperament as the natural and proper tempera¬ ment of advanced age; and, at the same time, as an im¬ provement on the choleric temperament, with its preju¬ dices and its narrownesses/ All true. But then, this is not the natural temper of advanced age only; it is the natural temper of all ages 64 THE PHLEGMATIC that are advancing in truth and in goodness; it is the natural temper of all ages in which men are learning to take home to themselves the mischiefs that heat and hurry work, and to lay to heart the great need there is for sober-mindedness and self- command, foresight and fore¬ thought, among the tempests and whirlpools of human passion. Alas that all our lives should be so far ad¬ vanced before we come, by sound judgment and a well- TEMPERAMENT 65 garnered experience, to the full fruits of our several temperaments. Reason, re¬ ligion, and growth in charac¬ ter, should achieve for us that balance, and that weight, and that possession and reserve of power over our¬ selves and over our circum¬ stances which no temperament, the best, will of itself alone give; but to all which this temperament now before us is well fitted to make a large and an immediate contribu¬ tion. Then, again, just as 66 THE PHLEGMATIC advancing age gives a man an easy mastery over the rampant passions of his youth, so does this temperament go to help even a young man to that mastery, if he cares to have it. The chorus at the end of Samson Agonistes testifies in noble language to that £ calm of mind, all passion spent,’ to which the Highest Wisdom leads all His children at the last, and His children of this tempera¬ ment soonest and easiest of all. Sloth sums up, in one short TEMPERAMENT 67 and expressive word, the bad side of this temperament. Some part of what we call sloth in some men is, no doubt, in fairness to be set down to such a phlegmatic constitution that it would take the will and the energy of a giant to overcome it. There are men of such a slow - working heart; their blood creeps through their veins at such a snail’s pace; their joints are so loosely knit, and their whole body is so lethargic, that both God 68 THE PHLEGMATIC and man must take all that into consideration before they condemn them. And when we must say sloth in his case, we still take into account all that can be said in extenu¬ ation, and the phlegmatic man will not be blamed for what he could not help. He will only be blamed and chast¬ ised for what he could quite well have helped, if he had only resolved to help it. At the same time, sloth is sloth, laziness is laziness, whatever your temperament may be. TEMPERAMENT 69 Laziness, indeed, is not of the body at all; it is of the mind ; it is of the will; it is of the heart; it is of the moral character. It is not their temperaments that make shipwrecks of so many of our students’ and of our ministers’ lives. The phleg¬ matic minister has not worked harder on Sabbath than some of his people have worked every day all the week. But he is a minister, and he has no master beside him but his own conscience; and so he 70 THE PHLEGMATIC spends all Monday on the sofa with a newspaper and a novel. He will read for his pulpit—to-morrow fore¬ noon, and visit his sick in the afternoon. But to-morrow he is not very well in the morning, and it rains in the afternoon. On Wednesday he has still four whole days before Sabbath; and, besides, his letters are in terrible arrears; he has not had time to answer a note for a fortnight. A friend drops in to spend Thursday with him; TEMPERAMENT 71 but what of that? he has all Friday and Saturday to be kept shut up and absolutely sacred. On Friday fore¬ noon he is told that his old elder, who was so ill, is dead; and he is as un¬ happy a man all that day as you could wish him to be. And he has a very unhappy errand before him that afternoon in having to explain to the bereaved family how busy he has been all the beginning of the week. He sits into 72 THE PHLEGMATIC Saturday morning seeking for his Sabbath text, but has to go to bed before he has found it. All Saturday he has his meals at his desk, and he is like a bear robbed of her whelps if anybody but looks at him or speaks to him. On Sabbath morning he takes an old rag out of his drawer, and his people look at one another, as he can¬ not even read it. Brother minister, of the most remote and illiterate congregation in Scotland, sit down to thy desk TEMPERAMENT 73 early every day; and if God has made thee of a slothful, lethargic, phlegmatic tempera¬ ment, only sit down all the more doggedly. Let every lazy student of divinity, and with him every waiting, complain¬ ing, postponing probationer, go drown himself at once. The phlegmatic tempera¬ ment has its compensations at some times, in some com¬ panies, and in some circum¬ stances, but never in the study, and of all places on the earth, never in the closet. Fight 74 the phlegmatic with thy worst devil, thy sloth¬ ful self, in thy place of secret prayer every day and every night. Thy battle is set thee there. It is set thee there by the Captain of thy salvation, whose zeal ate Him up day and night. Thy crown will be won by thee or taken from thee there. Fight the good fight with thy phlegmatic tem¬ perament there. Fight with thy constitutional sloth there. Fight this day with thy pro¬ crastination there. Blot out to-morrow there. THE MELANCHOLY TEMPERAMENT IV THE MELANCHOLY TEM¬ PERAMENT It has long been a popular proverb that certain tempera¬ ments obtain and prevail among certain races and nations of men. Our old literature is full of the san¬ guineness, light - mindedness, over - confidence, and incon¬ stancy of France ; the phlegm, solidity, steadiness, and en- 77 yS THE MELANCHOLY durance of Germany; the brag and the hot breath of Spain; the quick choler—a word and a blow — of Italy; and the melancholy of England, where men take their very pleasures sadly. * A peculiar vein of constitutional sadness belongs to the Greek temperament/ says Professor Butcher in his fine paper on the Melancholy of the Greeks, in which paper its learned author traces the manifestations of that melan¬ choly down through the whole of the Greek classics. Not TEMPERAMENT 79 that all Frenchmen are light- minded ; or all Germans steady and enduring; or all Spaniards, or all Italians, choleric; or all Englishmen, or all Greeks, melancholy. But, broadly speaking, the thing is true. It may be in their race and lineage; it may be in their history ; it may be in their religious, political, or social conditions ; or it may be in all these things taken together; but there is un¬ questionably a prevailing tem¬ perament in all these, and in 80 THE MELANCHOLY all the other distinct races and nations of men. Then, again, it has been held that certain occupations, certain pursuits, certain interests, certain pro¬ fessions, and certain handi¬ crafts even, tend to produce, develop, and perpetuate cer¬ tain temperaments and certain dispositions, and there is a good deal to be said for that doctrine also. Dr. Butcher quotes Aristotle approvingly as saying that all men of genius are of a melan¬ choly temperament. And that, TEMPERAMENT 8l when it is said by one of the profoundest students of human nature the world has ever seen, is all but final. For, besides being a man of a supreme genius himself, Aristotle lived among a people, and in an age, in which genius blos¬ somed out as never before nor since on the face of the earth. And all that is wanting to make his affirmation ab¬ solutely final and conclusive is the observation and experi¬ ence of like observers and like experimenters in the ages, and F 82 THE MELANCHOLY among the races of men, since his day. And though there have undoubtedly been men of genius who were of a light, gay, elastic, and vivacious temperament; yet by far the greatest, the most original, and the most commanding men, in all ages, go to prove the author of the Ethics to have been, not only a profound psychologist and moralist in his own day, but a true pro¬ phet for all the days and all the races that have come after him. ‘ A more than ordinary TEMPERAMENT 83 depth of thought/ says Jacob Behmen, * produces this tem¬ perament.’ There you have the whole truth and the best truth in a nutshell. Let a more than ordinary depth of thought be found in any man, and that man’s mind will naturally and necessarily move among the mysteries, the solemnities, the sadnesses, and the awful issues of human life, till, as sure as shadow follows sub¬ stance, that man is a melan¬ choly man. And thus it is that when, either in life or in 84 THE MELANCHOLY literature, you meet with a man of an extraordinary depth of thought, you will see shafts of sadness and chasms of melancholy sinking down into that man’s mind and heart and character — clefts and chasms that will offend, exasperate, and scare away all light-minded and shallow- hearted onlookers. Great examples, in a great subject like this, are far better than any man’s disquisitions and argumentations upon it. For great examples are the TEMPERAMENT 85 disquisitions and the argu¬ mentations of God. Take two great examples on this matter then. And, first, take that of the author of The Four Com¬ plexions and The Divine Vision : * Before I was led into the light of God, I saw, and thought, and felt like the men around me. But when I was awakened, and went on, I fell into a great melancholy. Brooding on the darkness of this world—the height of the heavens and the depth of the earth—men, good men on the 86 THE MELANCHOLY one hand, and bad men on the other—chance, fate, provi¬ dence—the whole unfathom¬ able mystery of life, I became very dejected, melancholy, and mournful, and could find no consolation, not even in Holy Writ. The deeper my thoughts went, the deeper did my spirit fill with sadness; till, after long and sore wrestling, I got light upon many things which had been before that as dark as mid¬ night to me.’ But this deep thinker’s speculative, philoso¬ phical, and theological melan- TEMPERAMENT 87 choly only prepared the way for a spiritual and an experi¬ mental melancholy which took deeper and deeper possession of his mind and heart, till that light broke upon his melan¬ choly mind and heart in which there is no shadow, and which never sets. John Foster was a man of an extraordinary depth of thought, and this is how he writes to one of his most thoughtful correspondents :— ‘ Everything that interests my heart leads me into this mingled 88 THE MELANCHOLY emotion of melancholy and sublime. I have lost all taste for the light and the gay; rather, I never had any such taste. I turn disgusted and contemptuous from insipid and shallow folly, to lave in the tide, the stream,—of deeper sentiments. I have criminally neglected regular, studious thinking for many years. My greatest defects are in regard to religion, on which subject, as it respects myself, I want to have a profound and solemn investigation, which I foresee TEMPERAMENT 89 must be mingled with a great deal of painful and repentant feeling. What a serious task it is to confront one’s self with faithful truth, and to see one’s self by a light that will not flatter! At the last tribunal no one will regret having been a habitual and rigorous judge of self.’ Does any one ask what a true and a wise ‘ melancholy’ is? Does any one wish to know what that mourning is which our Lord pronounces to be blessed? I know no better English example of it than 90 THE MELANCHOLY John Foster ; I know no better German example of it than Jacob Behmen ; and no better example of it ever lived than the French Blaise Pascal. Dante, Cromwell, Johnson, and Cowper will occur to all in this connection. And the melan¬ choly of all these men is a mel¬ ancholy worthy of the solemn name. Their melancholy is that into which all truly great minds, and all truly deep, awakened, and enlightened hearts more and more sink down, till they and their mel- TEMPERAMENT 91 ancholy are all swallowed up in the ocean of light and liberty that is at God’s right hand. All those masters in the intellectual and spiritual life both lived and wrote in a profound melancholy; and ‘ melancholy/ says Samuel Rutherfurd, a master also, ‘is such a complexion that, when it is sanctified, it becomes a seat of mortification and of humble walking.’ Yes, let the melancholy temperament only be sanctified ; let the darkness, and the doubt, and the gloom, 92 THE MELANCHOLY and the despondency, and the querulousness, and the morose¬ ness, be all taken out of it, and you will straightway have all that depth, and strength, and detachment, and superi¬ ority, and sovereignty of mind and heart, which Ruther- furd calls the mortification and the sanctification of the saints. And, as he says, it will be a seat of humble walk¬ ing also. For the truly humble man,—who is he, but the man who has gone down deep into himself, and who abides there, TEMPERAMENT 93 and walks with God there? No man can continue to be a proud man who walks much with God in his own heart. No man carries his head high there. No man looks down on his neighbour there. He may be the most intellectual of men ; he may be the most spiritual of men ; and if only he is both, then you have the humblest man that ever was on this side heaven. If John Milton’s melancholy is the daughter of retirement and learning ; then, by the Spirit of God, 94 the melancholy she is afterwards the sure mother of humility and mor¬ tification, and thus of all the fruits of the Spirit. But sanguine, choleric, phleg¬ matic, melancholy, and all,— we all belong to the same family of the Fall. God has made us all of the same blood. And we all have our own portion and plot of human nature selected, allotted, and laid out for us to till, and to keep, and to reap in for God. Some men’s plots are harder to make much of than others’. TEMPERAMENT 95 Some men’s plots are already full of stones, and weeds, and fallen fences, through past generations of misuse and neglect One man’s vineyard will lie more to the sun than his neighbour’s; but every man’s inheritance summons him to his utmost skill, and care, and labour. With that, the most unpromising piece of ground will bring forth an honest harvest; and without that, the best ground that ever was laid out will soon run into a wilderness, 9 6 THE MELANCHOLY We cannot all have the same temperament. One will have a better and a more easily handled temperament than his neighbour. But the best temperament has its dangers; and the worst is not without its compensations and oppor¬ tunities. And a wise man will give all his attention to himself, and will hail all offered help to know himself, and to make the best of himself. To climb up and look over the wall and call the attention of the passer-by to the weeds TEMPERAMENT 97 in his neighbour’s garden,— no wise man will do that. No man but a fool will do that. Ilis own hoe and his own mattock will take up all his time and all his strength. No wise man will attend to any¬ thing in this world so much as to his own heart, and to his temperament and his cir¬ cumstances as they affect his heart. Are you, then, a man of a melancholy temperament? Is your constant temptation to gloom,andsadness,and morose¬ ness, and peevishness ? Do G 98 THE MELANCHOLY clouds, and fogs, and sour east winds hang continually over your soul ? Do you spend all your days in ‘ the melancholy inn ’ ? And would you escape all that? Or, if all that can¬ not be escaped in this life, how are you best to do ? You will be careful to read how all the great melancholians did. You will study and imitate the great men, and especially the great saints, of your own temperament. You will make a little library of the melan¬ choly men of God. You will TEMPERAMENT 99 worm into their secrets. You will work yourself into their ways. And, as you sit alone, and read their psalms and their prayers and their diaries and their letters and their confidential conversations, you will ever and anon lift up your imagination and your heart to that life on which they have now all entered; to that city where there is no night, and no sea, and where God has wiped all tears from their eyes. Now I saw in my dream IOO THE MELANCHOLY that Christiana thought she heard in a grove, a little way off on the right hand, a most curious melodious note, with words much like these— ‘ Goodness and mercy all my life Shall surely follow me; And in God’s house for evermore My dwelling-place shall be.’ So she asked Prudence what ’twas that made those curious notes ? They are, said she, our country birds : they sing these notes but seldom ex¬ cept it be at the spring, when the flowers appear, and the TEMPERAMENT IOI sun shines warm, and then you may hear them all day long. I often, said she, go out to hear them; we also ofttimes keep them tame in our house. They are very fine company for us when we are melan¬ choly ; also they make the woods, and groves, and solitary places, places desirous to be in. * His truth at all times firmly stood,’ —that melodious note went on in the wood— ‘ And shall from age to age endure.’ Edinburgh University Press T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty Little Books on Religion Edited by The Rev. W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. Elegantly bound in cloth, price I*. 6d. each. CHRIST AND THE FUTURE LIFE. By the Rev. R. \V. Dale, LL.D. THE VISIONS OF A PROPHET. STUDIES IN ZECHARIAH. By the Rev. Professor Marcus Dods, D.D. THE SEVEN WORDS FROM THE CROSS. By the Rev. W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS. 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