An Extract.
IT is sad to see how many are the victims of religiousness. There are thousands whose ideas of Christianity are so low and erroneous, that they think the Church, with all its various appurtenances, to be an institution equipped with machinery for making goods to be hawked about for sale. Most people seem to have no realization of the great leading truth of Christianity, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners;” their conduct seems to indicate that they have imbibed the notion that Christ came not “to seek and to save that which was lost,” but to put the stamp of His approval upon such as were using their best endeavors to improve themselves; for religiousness, which is the only gospel known to the generality of professors, evidently proceeds upon this understanding.
The religious “man thinks that the worship makes the worshipper, and therefore we must set diligently about worship, in order to get ourselves accepted. The main idea that man has in connection with worship (such as prayer, and praise, and service) is, that it is the means of securing acceptance, and effecting reconciliation with God. He brings His gifts as the bribes or payments of the criminal, not as the thank-offerings of the forgiven. He worships in order to pacify God, and persuade Him to extend His favor towards him. But God cannot own a religion whose aim is to buy His love, to persuade Him to be gracious, and to accept the person of the worshipper on account of the multitude or excellence of his services.” (Romans 4:4-8.)
How different from all this is the doing of Jesus! He says, “Man, thy sins be forgiven thee,” and never breathes a whisper about any service the man had rendered for it, nor did He lay him under any obligation to serve Him for the future. He left him free, and seat him to his house, well knowing that from gratitude he would consider himself “free to serve, but not to sin.” Jesus drawing near, and freely dispensing his grace to sinners of every sort, cuts up religiousness by the roots.
It is sad, indeed, when men are taught to regard God with a merely natural veneration as “the great and dreadful God,” who dwells “in the thick darkness,” far removed from the perishing needy sinner, waiting, with cold and scornful reserve, to receive the homage of a fearing and bandaged people. This is not the God of the Gospel; for Jesus, who is God-man, is really as near to man, as condescending, and as ready to supply all his need as ever He was. “Who hath required this at your hands?” is, I am assured in my soul, the voice of the Son of God, to those who thus withdraw Him from the nearest and most assured approach of the poor sinner. But, alas! how very generally it is done. The Lord Jesus is kept at a distance, religious observances are brought near, and tens of thousands like the feelings that come from all that which is acted before them. Their minds are pleased with the matrons worship, and they mistake sentimentalism for spiritual devoutness. Their eye and ear are engaged, their feelings are charmed, a certain sense of God is awakened; but the precious, immediate confidence of the heart and conscience is refused. Jesus is not felt to be near, forgiving their sins. They have religiousness, but no faith; the ceremonies and observances of “a worldly sanctuary,” but not “the simplicity that is in Christ,” in which a purified mind ever delights to walk. Religiousness gives the soul many a serious thought about itself, and many a devout thought about God; but faith gives the soul Jesus, and the words and works of Jesus, and teaches it to have done with fleshly religiousness. (Philippians 3:3.)
And it is faith, and faith only―not religiousness and faith combined―that secures any end that is valued of God. Faith “works by love;” faith “overcomes the world;” faith “purifies the heart;” by faith “the elders obtained a good report.” Not so of religiousness. It ever works by fear, not by love. It does not “overcome the world,” but oft-times takes it away into some recess or hiding-place. It does not “purify the heart” by giving it an object, a divine object, to detach it from self, but keeps self, in a religious attire, ever before it, and leaves the conscience unpurged. And in God’s record it gets no “good report;” on the contrary, we find that religious people, the devout observers of carnal ceremonies, those who would not “defile themselves” with a judgment hall, were the most cruel and strenuous resisters of the truth. But it is the men of faith, the lovers of the truth, the poor broken-hearted sinners, who have found their relief in Jesus “forgiving sins,” who have stood, and labored, and conquered and have their happy memorial with Him, and in the records of Him whom they trusted, and in whom, by faith, they found their eternal life, and sure and full salvation. Anxious one, Jesus has power on earth to forgive sins. “ONLY BELIEVE.”
Just as thou art, without one trace
Of love, or joy, or inward grace,
Or meetness for the heavenly place,
O anxious sinner, come!