LOVE AS A PASSION AND AS A PRINCIPLE.
By Christian Inquirer
THAT word passion has a signification which should be carefully noted. The old grammars define a verb as a word denoting "action, passion, or being," and the older writers speak of the "passion" of Christ. The word denotes subjection to force. So a man in a "passion" is not one who is exerting strength, but one who is acted upon by a powerful influence, who is driven along by an external force, as a vessel, over which the sailors have lost control, hopelessly drifts before the wind or tide. Passion implies inaction, it shows weakness, it is a slavery. Thus love as simply a passion is ignoble. So far as one is merely "attracted" or "drawn" to a given object, his affection is merely selfish. When one says that he "loves" this or that article of food he means that from it he can obtain pleasure for himself. And much of love of romance is of the same selfish kind. Even though it may not take the gross form of heartless lust, the lover may be seeking merely his own happiness, caring nothing for the interests of the one of whom he seeks to possess himself. We sometimes read in the papers of a young man's killing the girl who has refused his addresses, he showing by his crime that his love was not for her but for himself alone, that he cared nothing for her welfare, but only for his own gratification. He loved her simply as the beast loves the husks on which he feeds; he was attracted simply as the tiger is attracted to his prey. When Samson was chided for seeking a heathen bride, his defense was, "She pleaseth me." Many a young man to-day makes a foolish marriage in the same spirit, not using his judgment, but being swept along by his whims and fancies as helplessly as a log is borne on the current. Passion is not true love, it is mere selfishness. Contrast with the foregoing the love shown by the mother in untiringly watching over a feeble-minded child, or by the affectionate daughter in ministering to a parent that has grown not only old but also fretful, unreasonable, and thoroughly unlovely. This love is not selfish, seeking merely one's own pleasure, but self-sacrificing, seeking purely the good of the loved one. This is true love, the love which is grounded not in passion but in principle. Of course the active and the passive element may be combined, as when the child the mother watches over is peculiarly attractive. But love of the highest form is that in which one seeks not his own pleasure in the possession of the loved object, but the good of the one loved. And in like manner true religion or love to God is a matter not of passive emotion but of active principle. With too many persons religion is merely a matter of feeling and personal enjoyment. When religious exercises are pleasurable to them they are very devout, but when duty becomes burdensome they relapse into coldness. When there is a "big revival," with stirring preaching and arousing singing, and all the pleasurable thrill of great crowds and exciting incidents, they are tremendously religious. But when the novelty and excitement are over, and nothing remains but hum-drum, every-day work, their spirituality is a dried-up brook. In other words, when religion will yield them personal pleasure they are active in it, but when it becomes a matter of self-sacrifice they abandon it. They are acted upon from without, not acting from within. They drift on the current of emotion like a fragment of a wrecked boat, which goes up stream with the flood-tide and comes down with the ebb, when they should be like the steam craft, which goes along the same whether wind and tide be with or against it. Our religion should be, not passive and merely emotional, a movement under outside forces, but active, an inward principle, exerting itself always the same.