e
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