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