Now I do not need to follow the rest of the story, how He turns away
from them because He will not waste any more words on them, else He
had done more harm than good. He heals the man. They hurry from the
synagogue to prove their zeal for the sanctifying of the Sabbath day
by hatching a plot on it for murdering Him. I leave all that, and turn
to the thoughts suggested by this look of Christ as explained by the
Evangelist.

I. Consider then, first, the solemn fact of Christ's anger.

It is the only occasion, so far as I remember, upon which that emotion
is attributed to Him. Once, and once only, the flash came out of the
clear sky of that meek and gentle heart. He was once angry; and we may
learn the lesson of the possibilities that lay slumbering in His love.
He was only once angry, and we may learn the lesson that His perfect
and divine charity 'is not easily provoked.' These very words from
Paul's wonderful picture may teach us that the perfection of divine
charity does not consist in its being incapable of becoming angry at
all, but only in its not being angry except upon grave and good
occasion.

Christ's anger was part of the perfection of His manhood. The man that
cannot be angry at evil lacks enthusiasm for good. The nature that is
incapable of being touched with generous and righteous indignation is
so, generally, either because it lacks fire and emotion altogether, or
because its vigour has been dissolved into a lazy indifference and
easy good nature which it mistakes for love. Better the heat of the
tropics, though sometimes the thunderstorms may gather, than the white
calmness of the frozen poles. Anger is not weakness, but it is