in truth, is one, who, going regularly to church on the Lord's Day, hears the command, "Thou shalt not steal," "Love thy neighbor as thyself,"—but, on the Monday morning, hurries away to his business, and, before the sun sets that day, defrauds or takes advantage of his fellow-man in some business transaction. What is that man's religion to him? It is a mere thing of habit, a mere customary form; or at most, it is of the head, not of the heart? "God," says the Scripture, "looks upon the heart, not on the outward appearance." A man may go solemnly to church on the Sabbath day, and wear a sanctimonious countenance, and take part in all the forms of worship,—yet if his thoughts be secretly engaged with his worldly plans, what is his religious seeming but a mocker? He is of the people, whom the Scripture describes as "drawing near to God with their mouth, and honoring Him with their lips, but their heart is far from Him.[1] Or, even if he give all his attention to the service, join in the prayers, and listen to the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and thus do all that man can, so far as the head is concerned,—yet, if the truth he hears stop there, and make no impression on his heart, and is not brought out into his life and actions during the six days of the coming week,—what to him is the Sabbath service worth? it is a thing of nought. "If any one among you," says the apostle James, "seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, that one's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this,—to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one'sself unspotted from the world."[2]
Page:God Manifest.djvu/450
