But if the people only
said that the prayers and the preaching were profitable and helpful, even
when they too seldom are, then our preachers would set the profit of the
people far more before them both in selecting and treating and delivering
their Sabbath-day subjects. A lady on one occasion said to her minister,
'Sir, your preaching does my soul good.' And her minister never forgot
the grave and loving look with which that was said. Not only did he
never forget it, but often when selecting his subject, and treating it,
and delivering it, the question would rise in his heart and conscience,
Will that do my friend's soul any good? 'Rare and profitable,' said the
pilgrim as he left the gate; and hearing that sent the Interpreter back
with new spirit and new invention to fill his house of still more
significant, rare, and profitable things than ever before. 'Meditate on
these things,' said Paul to Timothy his son in the gospel, 'that thy
profiting may appear unto all.' 'Thou art a minister of the word,' wrote
the learned William Perkins beside his name on all his books, 'mind thy
business.'

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