[January 20th, 1866.]
Two errors have extensively prevailed in the Church. 1. That all religion consists in the worship of God and fellowship with him. 2. That all religion consists in the discharge of our social duties. The one assumes that all our duties concern our relation to God; the other, that they all arise out of our relations to our fellow-men. The former has prevailed in the Romish Church. For although that church places a high value on alms-giving, and is distinguished for its eleemosynary institutions and orders, yet, First, its most distinguished saints have been separated from the world, have neglected all social duties. Second, because if a man receives the doctrines, obeys the authorities, and practices the rites of the church, he is safe, no matter what his moral conduct may be. The other extreme has prevailed more among latitudinarians in doctrine; men who make doctrine and the services of piety of little account; who say that a man’s creed cannot be wrong, whose life is in the right, and resolve all virtue and religion into benevolence and its exercise.
The Scriptures teach, 1. That we owe special duties to God, as reverence, love, devotion, worship, constant obedience, etc.
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That we owe duties to our fellow-men, as parents, children, citizens, neighbors, fellow-creatures.
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That these duties are not only consistent, the one class with the other, but that they are alike indispensable. That he who claims to fulfill the one while he neglects the other is a self-deceiver or a hypocrite.
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That those which we owe to God are the higher and more important, and the foundation of the other class. No man ever performed his duties to God aright, without being faithful to his social duties.
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That the attempt to dissociate morality from religion leads to the destruction of morality, first, because of a natural tendency. Deadness to higher duties cannot long co-exist with devotion to lower; or rather, the latter cannot continue without the former. Besides, the great and efficient motives to moral duties are derived from religion. And as God is the source of all good, nothing good can continue in those who live in alienation from him. And, finally, because God judicially abandons the irreligious to immorality.
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A sixth great truth is, that obedience to God, obeying his commands from a pious spirit, is the most acceptable worship we can render to him. The Apostle James was contending against the practice of formalities. Among the Jews it was a prevailing whim, that if a man kept the ceremonial law and the tradition of the elders, he was eminently religious, a true worshipper of God. Of the Christian converts some fell into the same error. They held to faith without works. They taught that if a man believed aright, and prayed and worshipped in the sanctuary, he was all that he need be. James said, “faith without works is dead;” that outward profession and the observance of the rites and ceremonies of religion, were of no avail, unless we obeyed the commandments and became doers, as well as hearers, of the word; that the most acceptable way of serving God, is discharging our social duties aright. This was a sacrifice with which God was well pleased. Our Lord taught the same doctrine when he said, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice;” i.e., that the moral is more important than the ceremonial. The prophet Isaiah had taught the same when he said in the name of Jehovah, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts.” “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me.” “Wash ye, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well.” The worship or service of God which is acceptable to God, is to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. Two things are here included.
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Kindness to the poor and suffering, not merely in giving alms, but in kind ministrations.
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Separation from the contaminations of the world. The men who would appear as God’s true worshippers must not be immersed in the gayeties, schemes and machinations, much less in the vices of the world. They must be a holy, a peculiar people, and they must be active in the discharge of all the duties of benevolence. But if this is done as a matter of parade, to gain credit with men, it is nothing. If done to work out a righteousness of our own, or to make atonement for sin, it is nothing. If done out of mere kindness, human sympathy, it is good as far as it goes, but it is not , religious worship, or religion. A man may give all his goods to feed the poor, and even his body to be burned, yet if he have not charity, he is nothing. This service must be rendered from Christian motives, (a.) Because we thus honor Christ. (b.) Because the poor are his brethren. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto ME.”
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