True Religion

Instead, then, of finding day by day the number of heaven-taught souls increase in my eyes, I seem to draw the circle narrower and narrower; and the more that I am led to see the nature and reality of true religion, and the great mystery of godliness, I seem to see more and more how few are experimentally led into it. Notion is the grand deceit with which Satan deceives the nations; the husks which the swine eat he passes off as the bread of life. Dry doctrines, which only puff men up with pride and presumption, he palms off as the truth as it is in Jesus. A sound creed, a fluent tongue, a well-informed judgment, a ready gift in prayer, a consistent life, attendance on the means, a sanctified look, a knowledge of the Scriptures, pass off upon thousands as the religion that can save the soul.

I am quite convinced that very few persons have been taught by the blessed Spirit even the very first elements of religion, namely, repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. A man that has repented toward God has had his back broken; his mouth has been in the dust, and himself plunged into the ditch till his own clothes abhorred him. The idol of free-will has been broken to pieces, selfrighteousness stripped away, presumption plucked up by the roots, and hypocrisy torn off. Although these members of the old man will ever continue to trouble and plague the living soul, they will be hated and disallowed. “What I do I allow not,” said Paul of old. “God maketh my heart soft,” said Job (Job 23:16). And thus, when there is true repentance toward God, the heart will be softened down into meekness and contrition. But how few are lepers; how few have got the plague of leprosy in their houses, their garments, or their bodies. They have never had this spreading scab and quick raw flesh (Leviticus 13:8-10) to eat the vitals of their fleshly religion, and to make them filthy and leprous from the crown of the head to the sole of the feet. A man must know something of this inward experience before he can be said to repent toward God. And, again, how few have the other element of true religion—namely, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). Most persons’ faith is an assent and consent to the mere letter of truth. They believe because they never disbelieved. They believe because their fathers told them so; because they were taught in the Sundayschool; because they have read about Jesus Christ in the Word; because they have heard Mr. So-and-So preach about it; because they have read a tract of Dr. Hawker’s which explained the way of salvation; because they have heard others tell their experience; and because it is so wicked and dreadful not to believe in our blessed Savior.

Such are some of the lying delusions of the father of lies whereby souls are juggled into hell. A notional faith never did and never can save a soul. To be thus born of blood, and of the wi" f the flesh, and of the will of man, leaves the soul where it found it—an enemy to God, and the bond slave of the devil. And all this false notional and fleshly religion will be as stubble when the day comes that shall burn as an oven. May the blessed Lord keep us from a notional religion, which will only leave our souls exposed and naked to His terrible wrath when He shall rise up to the prey. The only faith that can satisfy a living soul is that which is the gift of God, and springs out of the inward relation of Jesus Christ. How few have experienced that work of faith with power whereby they have come out of themselves as Lazarus came forth from the tomb.

The question is, “ What has our religion done for us? ”

The question is, “What has our religion done for us?” Has it left us where it found us? Are we indeed new creatures? Have we been inwardly and experimentally translated from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son? We had better throw away our religion on the first dunghill we come to, to rot there in corruption, if we have nothing better than a name to live. But I believe no living soul can be satisfied with a notional religion: though a miserable backslider, and driven into the fields to feed swine, he cannot feed on their husks, but sighs after the bread of his Father’s house. The eyes being enlightened to see the nature of sin, the justice and holiness of God, and the miserable filthiness of self, the quickened soul can find no rest in anything short of a precious discovery of the Lamb of God; and the more that the soul is exercised with trials, difficulties, temptations, doubts, and besetments of various kinds, the more does it feel its need of that blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. What is a Christian worth without inward trials and exercises? How dead and lifeless are our prayers; how cold and formal when the soul is not kept alive by inward exercises. Where are the sighs, cries, groanings, wrestlings, and breathings of a soul that is at ease in Zion? The world is everything and Christ nothing when we become settled on our lees, and not emptied from vessel to vessel; but inward exercises, fears, straits, and temptations stir up the soul to cry, and pray, and beg for mercy. The certainty, the power, the reality of eternal things is then felt, when guilt, and wrath, and fear, and disquietude lay hold of the soul.

Mere notions alone of Christ, false hope, a dead faith, a presumptuous confidence, a rotten assurance are all swept away as so many refuges of lies when the soul is made to feel its nakedness and nothingness, its guilt and helplessness before God. And thus all their inward exercises pave the way for their discoveries of Christ—those views of His blood and righteousness, that experimental acquaintance with His person, love, grace, and work, which is life and peace. May this be our religion. It is a religion that we can die by, but it is a religion which the profane and professing world hates and derides. Mere notions alone of Christ, false hope, a dead faith, a presumptuous confidence, a rotten assurance are all swept away as so many refuges of lies when the soul is made to feel its nakedness and nothingness, its guilt and helplessness before God. And thus all their inward exercises pave the way for their discoveries of Christ—those views of His blood and righteousness, that experimental acquaintance with His person, love, grace, and work, which is life and peace. May this be our religion. It is a religion that we can die by, but it is a religion which the profane and professing world hates and derides. If you and the other friends of truth who meet together are enabled to contend for this religion, you will be hated and despised by those professors who never had their backs broken and their mouths in the dust; for you cannot sanction and uphold their religion, and will be constrained, as wine which has no vent (Job 32:19), to tell them faithfully your opinion of their state. You that contend for experimental realities are a city set on a hill: all eyes are upon you; the professor and the profane will alike watch for your halting. They would say of your little cause, “Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof’; and much would it please them if you would say a confederacy to all to whom they say a confederacy. May the blessed Lord keep your steps. Oh, how weak and helpless we are; how fond of sin, how averse to God. If He does not keep us, we must fall. Our pride, presumption, hypocrisy, lust, covetousness, carnality, love of ease, and fear of the cross must overcome us unless He is stronger than we, and prevails.

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