'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.'