PASSION

'A man subject to like passions as we are.'--James 5. 17.

That was a very significant room in the Interpreter's House where our

pilgrim saw Passion and Patience sitting each one in his chair. Passion

was a young lad who seemed to our pilgrim to be much discontented. He

was never satisfied. He would have all his good things now. His

governor would have him wait for his best things till the beginning of

next year; but no, he will have them all now. And then, when he had got

all his good things, he soon lavished and wasted them all till he had

nothing left but rags. Then said Christian to the Interpreter, 'Expound

this matter more fully to me.' So he said, 'Those two lads are figures;

Passion, of the men of this world; and Patience of the men of that which

is to come.' 'Then I perceive,' said Christian, ''tis not best to covet

things that are now, but to wait for things to come.' 'You say truth,'

replied the Interpreter, 'for the things that are seen are temporal, but

the things that are not seen are eternal.'

Now from the texts that I have taken out of James and out of this so

significant room in the Interpreter's House, let me try to tell you

something profitable, if so it may be, about passion; the nature of it,

the place it holds, and the part it performs both in human nature and in

the life and the character of a Christian man.

The name of Passion has already told us his nature, his past life, and

his present character. The whole nomenclature of _The Pilgrim's

Progress_ and of _The Holy War_ is composed on the divine, original, and

natural principle of embodying the nature of a man in his name. God

takes His own names to Himself on that principle. The Creator gave Adam

his name also on that same principle; and then Adam gave their names to

all cattle, to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field on

the same principle on which he had got his own name. And so it was at

first with all the Bible names of men and of nations of men. Their name

contained their nature. And John Bunyan was such a student of the Bible,

and of no other book but the Bible, that all his best books are all full,

like the Bible, of the most descriptive and suggestive names. As soon as

Bunyan tells us the name of some new acquaintance or fellow-traveller, we

already know him, so exactly is his nature put into his name. And thus

it is that when we stop for a moment at the door of this little

significant room in the Interpreter's House and ask ourselves the meaning

of the name Passion, we see at once where we are and what we have here

before us. For a 'passion' is just some excitement or agitation of the

mind caused by some outward thing acting on the mind. The inward world

of the mind and heart of man, and this outward world down into which God

has placed man, instantly and continually respond to one another. And

what are called, with so much correctness and propriety, our passions,

are just those inward responses, excitements, and agitations that the

outward world causes in the inward world when those two worlds meet

together. 'Passion' and 'perturbation' are the old classical names that

the ancient philosophers and moralists gave to what they felt in

themselves as their minds and their hearts were affected by the world of

men and things around them. And they used to illustrate their teaching

on the subject of the passions by the figure of a storm at sea. They

said that it was because God had made the sea sensitive and responsive to

the winds that blew over it that a storm at sea ever arose. The storm

did not arise and the ships were not wrecked by anything from within the

sea itself; it was the outward world of the winds striking against the

quiet and inward world of the waters that roused the storms and sank the

ships. And with that illustration well printed in the minds and

imaginations of their scholars the old moralists felt their work among

their scholars was already all but done. For, so full of adaptation and

appeal is the whole outward world to the mind and heart of man, and so

sensitive and instantly responsive is the mind and heart of man to all

the approaches of the outward world, that the mind and heart of man are

constantly full of all kinds of passions, both bad and good. And, then,

this is our present life of probation and opportunity, that all our

passions are placed within us and are committed and entrusted to us as so

many first elements and so much unformed material out of which we are

summoned to build up our life and to shape and complete our character.

The springs of all our actions are in our passions. All our activities

in life, trace them all up to their source, and they will all be found to

run up into the wellhead of our passions. All our virtues are cut as

with a chisel out of our passions, and all our vices are just the

disorders and rebellions of our passions. Our several passions, as they

lie still asleep in our hearts, have as yet no moral character; they are

only the raw material so to speak, of moral character. Our passions are

the life and the riches and the ornaments of human nature, and it is only

because human nature in its present estate is so corrupt and disordered

and degraded, that the otherwise so honourable name of passion has such a

sinister sound to us. And the full regeneration and restitution of human

nature will be accomplished when every several passion is in its right

place, and when reason and conscience and the Spirit of God shall inspire

and rule and regulate all that is within us.

'On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,

Reason the card, but passion is the gale.'

And not Elijah only, as James says, and not Paul and Barnabas only, as

they themselves said, were men of like passions with ourselves, but our

Lord Himself was a man of like passions with us also. He took to Himself

a true body, full of all the appetites of the body, and a reasonable

soul, full of all the affections, passions, and emotions of the soul.

Only, in Him reason and conscience and the law and the Spirit of God were

the card and the compass according to which He steered His life. We have

all our ruling passion, and our Lord also had His. As His disciples saw

His ruling passion kindled in His heart and coming out in His life, they

remembered that it was written of Him in an old Messianic psalm: 'The

zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up.' They were all eaten up of their

ruling passions also. One of ambition, one of emulation, one of avarice,

and so on,--each several disciple was eaten up of his own besetting sin.

But they all saw that it was not so with their Master. He was eaten up

always and wholly of the zeal of His Father's house, and of absolute

surrender and devotion to His Father's service, till His ruling passion

was seen to be as strong in His death as it had been in His life. The

Laird of Brodie's Diary has repeatedly been of great use to us in these

inward matters, and his words on this subject are well worth repeating.

'We poor creatures,' he says, 'are commanded by our affections and

passions. They are not at our command. But the Holy One doth exercise

all His attributes at His own will; they are at His command; they are not

passions nor perturbations in His mind, though they transport us. When I

would hate, I cannot. When I would love, I cannot. When I would grieve,

I cannot. When I would desire, I cannot. But it is the better for us

that all is as He wills it to be.'

And now, to come still closer home, let us look for a moment or two at

some of our own ruling and tyrannising passions. And let us look first

at self-love--that master-passion in every human heart. Let us give self-

love the first place in the inventory and catalogue of our passions,

because it has the largest place in all our hearts and lives. Nay, not

only has self-love the largest place of any of the passions of our

hearts, but it is out of self-love that all our other evil passions

spring. It is out of this parent passion that all the poisonous brood of

our other evil passions are born. The whole fall and ruin and misery of

our present human nature lies in this, that in every human being self-

love has taken, in addition to its own place, the place of the love of

God and of the love of man also. We naturally now love nothing and no

one but ourselves. And as long as self-love is in the ascendant in our

hearts, all the passions that are awakened in us by our self-love will be

selfish with its selfishness, inhumane with its inhumanity, and ungodly

with its ungodliness. And it is to kill and extirpate our so passionate

self-love that is the end and aim of all God's dealings with us in this

world. All that God is doing with us and for us in providence and in

grace, in the world and in the church,--it is all to cure us of this

deadly disease of self-love. We may never have had that told us before,

and we may not like it, and we may not believe it; but there can be no

better proof of the truth of what is now said than just this, that we do

not like it and will not have it. Self-love will not let us listen to

the truth about ourselves; it puts us in a passion both against the truth

and against him who tells the truth, as the history of the truth

abundantly testifies. Yes, your indignant protest is quite true. Self-

love has her divine rights,--no doubt she has. But you are not commanded

to attend to them. Your self-love will look after herself. She will

manage to have her full share of what is right and proper for any passion

to possess even after she cries out that she is trampled upon and

despoiled. My brethren, till you begin to crucify yourselves and to

pluck up your self-love by the roots, you will never know what a cruel

and hopeless task the Christian life is--I do not say the Christian

profession. Nor, on the other hand, will you ever discover what a noble

task it is--what a divine task and how divinely assisted and divinely

recompensed. You will not know what a kennel of hell-hounds your own

heart is till you have long sought to enter it and cleanse it out. And

after you have done your utmost, and your best, death will hurry you away

from your but half-accomplished task. Only, in that case you will be

able to die in the hope that what is impossible with man is possible with

God, as promised by Him, and that He will not leave your soul in hell,

but will perfect that good thing which alone concerneth you, even your

everlasting deliverance from all sinful self-love.

And if self-love is the fruitful mother of all our passions, then

sensuality is surely her eldest son. Indeed, so shallow are we, and so

shallow are our words, that when we speak of sinful passion most men

instantly think of sensuality. There are so many seductive things that

appeal to our appetites, and our appetites are so easily awakened, and

are so imperious when they are awakened, that when passion is spoken

about, few men think of the soul, all men think instantly of the body.

And no wonder. For, stupid and besotted as we are, we must all at some

time of our life have felt the bondage and degradation of the senses.

Passion in the Interpreter's House had soon nothing left but rags. And

in this house to-night there are many men whose consciences and hearts

and characters are all in such rags from sensual sin, that when the

Scriptures speak of uncleanness, or rags, or corruption, their thoughts

flee at once to sensual sin and its conscience-rending results. Cease

from sensuality, said Cicero, for if once you give your minds up to

sensuality, you will never be able to think of anything else.

Ambition, emulation, and envy are the leading members of a whole prolific

family of satanic passions in the human heart. Indeed, these passions,

taken along with their kindred passions of hatred and ill-will, are, in

our Lord's words, the very lusts of the devil himself. The Jews hated

our Lord the more for what He said about these detestable passions, but

His own disciples love Him only the more that He so well knows the evil

affections of their hearts, and so well describes and denounces them.

Anybody can denounce sensual sin, and everybody will understand and

approve. But spiritual sin,--ambition and emulation and envy and ill-

will--these things are more easy to denounce than they are to detect and

describe, and more easy to detect and describe than they are to cast out.

These sins seem rather to multiply and to strike a deeper root when you

begin to cast them out. What an utterly and abominably evil passion is

envy which is awakened not by bad things but by the best things! That

another man's talents, attainments, praises, rewards should kindle it,

and that the blame, the depreciation, the hurt that another man suffers

should satisfy it,--what a piece of very hell must that be in the human

heart! What more do we need than just a little envy in our hearts to

make us prostrate penitents before God and man all our days? What more

doctrine, argument, proof, authority, persuasion should a sane man need

beyond a little envy in his heart at his best friend to make him an

evangelical believer and an evangelical preacher? How, in the name of

wonder, is it that men can be so ignorant of the plague of their own

hearts as to remain indifferent, and, much more, hostile, to the gospel

of love and holiness? Pride, also,--what a hateful and intolerable

passion is that! How stone-blind to his own state must that sinner be

whose heart is filled with pride, and how impossible it is for that man

to make any real progress in any kind of truth or goodness! And

resentment,--what a deep-seated, long-lived, and suicidal passion is

that! How it hunts down him it hates, and how surely it shuts the door

of salvation against him who harbours it! Forgive us our debts, the

resentful man says in his prayer, as we forgive our debtors. And

detraction,--how some men's ink-horns are filled with detraction for ink,

and how it drops from their tongue like poison! At their every word a

reputation dies. Life and all its opportunities of doing good and having

good done to us is laid like a bag of treasure at our feet, but, like the

prodigal son in the Interpreter's House, with all those passions raging

in our own hearts at other men, and in other men's hearts at us, we have

soon nothing left us but rags. God be thanked for every man here who

sees and feels that he has nothing left him but rags; and, still more,

thanks for all those who see and feel how, by their bad passions, sensual

and spiritual, they have left on other people nothing but rags.

Now, from all this let us lay it to heart that our sanctification and

salvation lie in our mastery over all these and over many other passions

that have not even been named. He is an accepted saint of God, who,

taking his and other people's rags to God's mercy every day, every day

also in God's strength grapples with, bridles, and tames his own wild and

ungodly passions. Be not deceived, my friends; he alone is a saint of

God who is a sanctified man; and his passions,--as they are the spring of

his actions, so they are the sphere and seat of his sanctification. Be

not deceived; that man, and no other manner of man, is, or ever will be,

a partaker of God's salvation. You often hear me recommending those

students who have first to subdue their own passions and then the

passions of those who hear them to study Jonathan Edwards' ethical and

spiritual writings. Well, just at this present point, to show you how

well that great man practised what he preached, let me read to you a few

lines from his biographer: 'Few men,' says Henry Rogers, 'ever attained a

more complete mastery over their passions than Jonathan Edwards did. This

was partly owing to the ascendency of his intellect; partly, and in a

still greater degree, to the elevation of his piety. For the subjugation

of his passions he was no doubt very greatly indebted to the prodigious

superiority of his reason. Such was the commanding attitude his reason

assumed, and such the tremendous power with which it controlled the whole

man, that any insurrection among his senses was hopeless; they had their

tenure only by doing fealty and homage to his intellect. Those other and

more dangerous enemies, because more subtle and more spiritual, such as

pride, vanity, wrath, and envy, which lurk in the inmost recesses of our

nature, and some of which have such affinities for a genius like that of

Edwards, yield not to such exorcism. Such more powerful kind of demons

go not forth but by prayer and fasting; to their complete mortification,

therefore, Edwards brought incessant watchfulness and devotion; and

seldom, assuredly, have they been more nearly expelled from the bosom of

a depraved intelligence.' We shall be in the best company, both

intellectually and spiritually, if we work out our own salvation among

the sinful passions of our depraved hearts. And then, as life goes on,

and we continue in well-doing, we shall be able to measure and register

our growth in grace best by watching the effect of outward temptations

upon our still sinful and but half-sanctified hearts. And among much to

be humbled for, and much to make us fear and tremble for the issue, we

shall, from time to time, have a good conscience and a holy and humble

joy that this passion and that is at last showing some signs of

crucifixion and mortification. And thus that death to sin shall

gradually set in which shall issue at last in an everlasting life unto

holiness.

'Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from

all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new

heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you . . .

Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe

thee with change of raiment. In that day there shall be a fountain

opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for

sin and for uncleanness . . . Bring forth the best robe and put it upon

him, for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is

found . . . What are these that are arrayed in white robes, and whence

came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have

washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'