January 29 Daily Devotional

Each instrument its differing note may bring
To swell the symphony the Master plays

First and foremost among the causes of depression I would not hesitate to put—temperament. There are, after all, certain different types of people.... I wonder whether anybody wants to say: When you are talking about Christians, you must not introduce temperament or types. Surely Christianity does away with all that...? Now that is a very important objection, and it must be answered...; temperament, psychology, and make­up do not make the slightest difference in the matter of our salvation. That is, thank God, the very basis of our position as Christians.

It does not matter what we are by temperament; we are all saved in the same way, by the same act of God in and through His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.... It does not matter what your background is; it does not matter what temperament you may happen to have been given in this world; all that does not make the slightest difference in the matter of salvation.... We glory in the fact that the history of the Church proves abundantly that every conceivable type of temperament has been found, and is still to be found today, in the Church of the living God. But while I emphasize ... the matter that temperament does not make the slightest difference in the matter of our fundamental salvation, I am equally anxious to emphasize the fact that it does make a very great difference in actual experience in the Christian life.

There is nothing which is quite so important as that we should ... get to know ourselves...; though we are all Christians together, we are all different, and the problems ... that we are likely to meet are in a large measure determined by the difference of temperament and of type. We are all in the same fight, of course, as we share the same common salvation and have the same common central need. But the manifestations of the trouble vary from case to case and from person to person. There is nothing more futile, when dealing with this condition, than to act on the assumption that all Christians are identical in every respect. They are not, and they are not even meant to be.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 14-15